devLink is one of our favorite conferences of the year, a conference whose focus is on the developer community.  devLink aims to keep the cost of the conference low, you can get into the 3-day conference for as low as $100.  At appendTo we really value this notion of giving back to the community.

We are coming to the Chattanooga Convention Center in Chattanooga, TN in force in late August (Tuesday, August 27th – Friday, August 30th).  appendTo is the Premier sponsor for devLink and will have a booth set up to showcase our offerings and what we’ve been working on as well as a surprise for attendees. Additionally, we’ll have 12 of our employees at the conference giving workshops and sessions all week long.  Here is how we’ll be giving back to the community.

Workshops at devLink

Advanced jQuery Techniques

Tues. Aug. 27th, 9AM-5PM, Meeting Room 9/10

SOLD OUT

It’s time to realize the full potential of jQuery. Join us as we delve into advanced topics surrounding front-end web development and learn how to adopt an application architecture that is maintainable and scalable, while still keeping things simple.

We’ll teach you how to utilize the jQuery library in the context of large-scale applications and show you how to dramatically improve performance, write cleaner and more concise code and increase maintainability and reusability. By the end of the day you should feel confident creating and maintaining advanced front-end-focused web applications.

Topics covered

• Event Delegation
• Traversal, Filters, and Advanced Selectors
• Simplifying Code with Conventions
• Just-in-time Initialization Patterns
• jQuery Plugins
• jQuery UI Widget Factory

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JavaScript and jQuery Foundations

Tues. Aug. 27th, 9AM-5PM, Meeting Room 7/8

SOLD OUT

A solid introduction to the core concepts of jQuery-focused front-end development that shows you how to use it to interact with and manipulate sites. By the end of the day you’ll feel more confident about using jQuery and be ready to start developing for the front-end.

During the workshop we’ll cover both the basics and some intermediates of the JavaScript programming language, as well as the jQuery JavaScript library.

Topics covered

• JavaScript 101: Variables, Primitives, Operations, Logic
• JavaScript 102: Objects, Arrays, Functions, Loops
• jQuery Intro and Selections
• jQuery Methods and Chaining
• jQuery each, Deeper into Functions
• jQuery and DOM Manipulation

Sessions at devLink

Advanced Knockout.js

Ryan Niemeyer

Wed. Aug. 28th, 4-5:15PM, Banquet Room G

Knockout.js is a powerful JavaScript library for binding your data and user interface elements together. Getting started with Knockout is easy, but as your application grows in complexity, it can be challenging to keep your code clean and performing optimally. Luckily, Knockout has a number of great extensibility points that you can leverage to build reusable solutions on top of Knockout. In this session, we will walk through a number of common problems and see how we can use these extensibility points to clean up our code, integrate with other libraries, and solve problems in an elegant way. We will dive into topics like custom bindings, observable extensions, binding providers, and custom template engines. Get ready for some code, as we work through these byte-sized problems live.

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Introduction to Propel ORM

Jordan Kasper

Wed. Aug. 28th, 4-5:15PM Meeting Room 4

Knowing how to write proper SQL is good, and that database utility class you wrote works great – but as the old adage goes: you shouldn’t rediscover sliced-bread … or something like that. This talk will introduce you to Propel – an open-source Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) library for PHP – that will make your life a lot easier.

This talk will cover:

• some ORM basics (and why you should use one)
• generating a database (and reverse engineering a schema)
• generating ActiveRecord and ActiveQuery classes
• adding validation and extending behavior
• basic CRUD operations and record queries

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100% Distributed: How to make remote work work

Mike Hostetler

Thur. Aug. 29th, 2:30-3:45PM, Meeting Room 5
Peer behind the curtain at how to build an organization that has flourished as a 100% distributed company. Hear about the lessons, failures and successes of the model. We’ll conclude with thoughts and predictions about the future of remote working.

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Object Oriented JavaScript (Yes, it really exists)

Jordan Kasper

Thur. Aug. 29th, 4-5:15PM Meeting Room 13

JavaScript gets a bad rap for not being a “full” programming language, but with the introduction of frameworks like Node, Backbone, and others, people are starting to realize how powerful this tool can be. It’s time to give JavaScript the attention it deserves and you can start your re-education by accepting that while JavaScript may exhibit some characteristics of a functional language, it really is a multi-paradigm language with strong support for Object-Oriented Programming. This talk will give attendees a crash course in Object-Oriented JavaScript covering:

• core OOP principles
• the prototype object and constructors
• member access types (public, private, & privileged)
• prototypical inheritance
• interfaces (mixins)

Developers will come out of this session ready to implement core OOP concepts in JavaScript and with knowledge of how inheritance in JavaScript differs from many of the other languages they know.

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Using Require.js in an ASP.NET MVC Application

Jonathan Creamer

Fri. Aug 30th, 9:30-10:45 AM Meeting Room 3

JavaScript dependency loading is tricky business. The scripts have to be loaded in a particular order, they have to add global variables to communicate with each other, and they block they page’s DOM while loading. Require.js is an AMD framework that helps take care of many of these issues. It’s also easy to use in an MVC application with the proper setup. This session includes an introduction to require.js and how it can be utilized in an ASP.NET MVC application.

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Hypermedia driven web applications

Bob Yexley

Fri. Aug 30th, 1-2:15PM, Banquet Room F
You’ve most likely heard the term Hypermedia, and you might even know what it is. Does it work in the real world, or is it just another buzz word? Have you used it? Should you use it? What advantages does it give you in building both server and client applications? In this presentation I hope to start a discussion around these very questions, and try to show some practical examples of how to use Hypermedia in a server-side API, and how to consume Hypermedia in a client (in my case, JavaScript) application.

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Remote Working Workshop

Mike Hostetler

Fri. Aug. 30th, 2:30-3:45PM, Meeting Room 15
Successfully working remotely is a skill that can be learned. This session will cover a variety of skills that you’ll need to be effective and provide value when working remotely.

Meet us at devLink Here is who you can expect to see at the conference.

• Amy Walters
  

  Engagement Manager
  

  

• Bob Yexley
  

  Sr. Developer
  

  

• Diana Vickers
  

  Engagement Manager
  

  

• Doug Neiner
  

  Director of Products
  

  

• John Kellar
  

  VP of Solutions Delivery
  

  

• Jonathan Creamer
  

  JavaScript Engineer
  

  

• Jonathan Sampson
  

  Director of Solutions Delivery
  

  

• Jordan Kasper
  

  Sr. JavaScript Engineer
  

  

• Mike Hostetler
  

  CEO
  

  

• Ralph Whitbeck
  

  Modern Web Advocate
  

  

• Ryan Niemeyer
  

  Sr. JavaScript Engineer
  

  

• Ted Waller
  

  Visual Design Engineer
  

  

With a special guest appearance from:

• Vernon Kesner
  

  Workshop Instructor