Hot and Awesome: Kansas City Developer Conference
Published on 19 July 2018
There are three things that Kansas City unequivocally gets right: BBQ, women in tech, and KCDC. The BBQ is self explanatory (or you still need to visit). Kansas City is ranked as the No. 2 city for women in technology. In tech, women typically earn anywhere from .90 to .95 cents on the dollar of what men do. However, in Kansas City women in tech earn 2% more than men according to an annual SmartAsset study.
Last week, the Developer Relations team represented Smartsheet at Kansas City Developer Conference (KCDC) 2018. This was an exciting event for the ~2,000 attendees and the 10th anniversary for KCDC. KCDC is tech-agnostic so the topics were quite broad—spanning multiple languages and ranging from containers to accessibility to user interface to artificial intelligence and everything in between.
Ted, Scott, and Taylor all submitted proposals and were selected to give technical talks at KCDC. Ted spoke about expert systems as well as the intersection between psychology, philosophy, and programming. Scott gave a gentle introduction to functional programming in JavaScript, while Taylor talked about serverless architecture and testing web applications.
On the last day of KCDC, the space was repurposed to host the KC Kids Conference, which introduced kids to technology and coding in an interactive environment. There was a makerspace with a broad range of hands-on activities and several breakout sessions with topics like building games, programming robots, and even using JavaScript to make music.
Smartsheet was a proud sponsor of the KC Kids Conference for the second year running. Additionally, Scott and Taylor both volunteered to run tables in the makerspace. Scott showed them how to set up and program the Lego WeDo 2.0 while Taylor helped them assemble Scribble Bots to make quirky art.
We highly recommend attending the Kansas City Developer Conference whether you’re an accomplished developer or just getting started. The broad range of topics mean there’s something exciting to learn at all times. The attendees are friendly and hungry for knowledge—making the 2,000 person conference feel approachable and downright welcoming. Do yourself a favor and make it to the next KCDC.
Want more details about what happened at the conference? Head over to Twitter and check out #KCDC2018.
