With just over a month remaining until the jQuery Foundation heads to the Pacific Northwest for jQuery Portland, the first U.S. jQuery Conference of 2013, we thought we’d take a moment to bring you up to speed on what we’ve been preparing for when we set up camp on Thursday, June 13 and Friday, June 14 at the Oregon Convention Center.

What’s In Store

We had such a great response to our Call For Papers that picking “only” 31 talks was a real challenge! Our goal was to put together a program that has something for developers with all levels of experience across the entire spectrum of front-end development, and we’re really proud of the results (and our amazing speakers, most of whom are presenting at their first jQuery conference). We’ve put together a Twitter list of all our speakers if you want to connect with them in advance.

If you’re out for the latest and greatest, you’ll probably want to spend a lot of your time in Track A, where we’ll be covering (amongst other things) how and when to use native HTML5 and CSS3 solutions to problems often solved with jQuery, mobile and A/B testing strategies, new technologies like WebRTC and Web Components, as well as future plans for selectors and indeed, JavaScript itself.

Track B, on the other hand, is a great place to shore up your foundations and learn where to take your next steps as a developer. We’ll be covering a whole lot, including JavaScript fundamentals, code organization, unit testing, single page applications (and the frameworks often used to build them), Node.js, and avoiding the kinds of small mistakes that can turn into big problems later.

Of course, you’re free to go to whichever sessions you like in either track, and there’s a lot more on offer, including a few sessions on how to learn and teach yourself and your colleagues, as well as keynotes from project leads on the latest developments in the jQuery ecosystem. Take a look at the full program to see all the talks and read the full abstracts.

Tickets & Accommodations

We’ll be selling regular conference tickets until the end of May, at which point we’ll only be selling “late-bird” tickets, which will cost $50 more, so if you’re planning to join us in Portland, you’ll probably want to act now before the price goes up!

jQuery Foundation members will always be able to buy a ticket for the discounted price of $399, so now’s a great time consider joining the jQuery Foundation to show your support and save a bit as well!

There are still hotel rooms available in our room block at the DoubleTree Portland, but the group rate of $144 per night is only guaranteed for reservations made by May 20th.

If you’re looking to bone up on your jQuery skills before the conference begins, we’ve teamed up with Bocoup to hold beginner and advanced training classes on Wednesday, June 12, for which separate tickets (and similar membership discounts) are available.

Sponsors

We’re happy to have the support of the sponsors who have already joined us to help bring jQuery Portland to life, including Splunk, Intel, AppNexus, Automattic, Infragistics, Act-On Software, and Bocoup.

There are still ways to get involved in making jQuery Portland even better, so take a look at our prospectus and get in touch if you (or your company) are interested.

See You There?

We’re really excited about the way jQuery Portland is shaping up and believe that there’s a little bit of something for everyone. (Everyone who reads the jQuery blog, that is!) Follow @jqcon on Twitter for more updates, and hopefully, we’ll see you in a month!

jQuery Conference is back and better than ever! We’re excited to invite you to the City of Roses—Portland, Oregon on June 13 and 14, 2013 at the Oregon Convention Center. We’ve got more room (and lead time) than ever before, so if you haven’t been able to make it to a jQuery Conference in the past, this is your best opportunity yet!

We’re returning to our traditional two-track lineup, which means there’ll be lots to learn and even more chances to speak. Early-bird registration is open right now, but we only have a limited number of slots, so you definitely want to act fast.

Call For Papers

A conference is nothing without a great lineup of speakers sharing their experience, knowledge, and tools with the community. Whether you’re a regular on the conference circuit or you’ve always considered speaking but haven’t yet, we’re eager to hear from you. Our Call for Papers will be open from now through March 2nd, which gives you a month and a half (at most) to prepare your proposal. We’re also continuing our “inverted” proposal process, so if there’s someone you really want to hear from, let us know.

Training Day

If you’re looking for a bit more than the regular conference experience, perhaps a more focused opportunity to grow as a developer, we’ve partnered with Bocoup to host a two-track training day the day before the conference  (June 12). With both Front End Fundamentals and Advanced jQuery courses available, it’s a great way to make the most of your trip.

Sponsors

Sponsoring a jQuery Conference is a great way to build your company profile in the jQuery community; your best opportunity to meet (and hopefully hire) top jQuery developers, evangelize your products, and help support the jQuery Foundation. We’re still looking for partners to work with us on the largest jQuery event yet, so take a look at our prospectus and get in touch to get the ball rolling.

That’s it for now; stay tuned to the blog and @jqcon for announcements about speakers, parties and all other manner of conference goodness. We’ll see you there!

With much of the East Coast bracing for the impact of Hurricane Sandy, now’s certainly a good time to take a look back on some sunnier times. Two weeks ago today, the jQuery Foundation held the first-ever jQuery Developer Summit at the Aol Campus in Dulles, Va. After a brief morning overview of our major tools and processes, over 120 team and community members set to work on nearly every aspect of our projects. We divided into 18 teams and focused on everything from triaging and fixing bugs and documentation for jQuery Core, UI, and Mobile, to working on design, implementation and deployment of our entire network of sites, to improving our automated testing and gathering and analysis of metrics on how people use our libraries and websites.

In addition to closing (and opening) hundreds of issues and tickets, and making hundreds of commits to repositories across our entire organization, it seemed that everyone in attendance, from grizzled old hands to greenhorn contributors, learned a lot. We were happy to celebrate a lot of firsts, whether it was somebody’s first commit on a jQuery repository, or their first git commit, period. Of course, not everything went off without a hitch, and we’ve been gathering feedback and figuring out how we can do even better next time.

What that means, of course, is that there will be a next time!  With such an incredible energy in the room for the two days, and a new group of contributors digging in on all of our projects, we’re certainly looking forward to another go-round. Watch this space and follow @jqcon for updates on the Developer Summit and all our other events. In the meantime, check out these recaps from Andy Couch and Carl Danley, and photos from Bowling for jQuery!

And finally, we’d like to extend a hearty thanks to each and every one of you who joined us for two days to help out and participate, we could not have done it without you! Thank you!

jQuery UK is back for 2013!

The jQuery Foundation is pleased to announce that White October are organising another jQuery UK  conference in Oxford, UK on the 19th of April 2013.

There is a call for papers and suggestions for speakers are also welcome. So if you want to take part, or want to see someone at jQuery UK you know what to do.

A very small number of tickets are on sale until the call for papers finishes on the 11th of October for a “blind bird” price of £130 + VAT.

The full speaker lineup should be announced winter 2012 and the early bird tickets will go on sale at the same time for £160 + VAT.

We’ve also listed it on Lanyrd.com if you’d like to follow along there!

Over the last eight months at the Foundation, we have been working to expand both the reach and breadth of our events, and we’re excited today to announce the inaugural jQuery Developer Summit, to be held October 15th and 16th, 2012 at the Aol Campus in Dulles, VA.

The Developer Summit will be a departure from our traditional events. Instead of two days of speakers and slide decks, we’re going to spend a morning giving you a rundown of how jQuery works, from internals of jQuery Core, to how we build and test the libraries, to how we manage our websites. Then we’ll break apart into teams, and spend the rest of our time working together to collaborate on the projects and tools we all use every day.

As this is a more intimate event (and because it’s our first time trying it), we can only accomodate about 150 people. In order to get the right mix of skills and experiences into the room, it won’t be a simple first-come, first-served process. Instead, we’ll be accepting and reviewing submissions to this application on a rolling basis from August 31st until September 7th. In other words, we have a lot of different bases we’d want to cover, so we can’t have 100 people showing up who just want to fix edge case bugs in Quirks mode!

The focus here is on collaboration, growing as an open-source developer, and having fun! If this sounds like your cup of tea, read more about the Developer Summmit now, and consider applying! And of course, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!

The jQuery team is going bowling and we’d love to have you join us! We’ll be spending the evening of Friday, April 13th at King Pinz in Leesburg, VA, a bit outside of Washington, DC. We’ll have a private room with 6 lanes from 6 to 10 PM. The night will feature unlimited bowling, dinner, desserts, drinks, and billiards. There’s even a cigar bar, if you’re into that!

Very limited space – get your ticket fast.

Bowling

• Private room with 6 lanes
• Unlimited bowling (shoe rental included) for 4 hours
• Cozy couches with cocktail tables
• King Pinz: Photos
• Private Room: 360 degree tour

Dinner

• Appetizers, entrees, and desserts
• All night

Drinks

• Open bar
• All night

Billiards

• Private billiards table and lounge area

Cigar Bar

• http://www.kingpinzbowl.com/highrollers/index.htm
• 360 degree tour

Prizes

Who will be there?

• Dave Methvin
• Yehuda Katz
• Leah Silber
• Rick Waldron
• Karl Swedberg
• Adam J. Sontag
• Scott González
• Dan Heberden
• Richard D. Worth
• Corey Frang
• Kris Borchers
• You?

Sponsors

Please join us in thanking our thouroughly awesome sponsors for this event:

We know you love jQuery and we love you for showing it.

jQuery Summit 2011

It’s that time of the year again (no, not Christmas!, something almost better!) – the annual (online) jQuery Summit. This year Environment For Humans (E4H) have a terrific line-up including sessions on jQuery plugin authoring best practices, creating interactive experiences with HTML5 and Popcorn.js and best practices for testing your jQuery code amongst others.

With some of the web’s most experienced jQuery and JavaScript professionals on board to share tips, tricks and their own experiences, you’ll be sure to learn something new that could help with your own projects. If you haven’t attended the summit before, you’re in for a real treat.

The summit is a completely online two-track conference run across two days with a track dedicated to designers and another focused completely on developers. As the event is all online, you can access it live whether you’re at home or in the office. For those worried about missing anything, E4H have you covered; all tickets include high-quality recordings that can be played back at your leisure later on.

Discount:

If you’re interested in attending, E4H have provided us with a very special 20% off discount code which can be redeemed on their event site. Just enter in 20JQUERY when purchasing your ticket or use the following link: http://jquerysummit2011.eventbrite.com/?discount=20JQUERY.

Details:

Sessions:

• jQuery & CSS Selectors – Estelle Weyl
• jQuery & HTML5 Video – Rick Waldron
• jQuery UI – Andrew Wirick
• Plugin Authoring Best Practices – Ben Alman
• jQuery & Browser Plugins – Sarah Chipps
• Progressive Enhancement – Nicholas Zakas
• jQuery & Responsive Web Design – Dave Rupert
• The State of jQuery – Adam Sontag
• Large-scale Application Architecture – Addy Osmani
• jQuery & iframe Programming – Ben Vinegar
• Structuring Your DOM-based Application – Garann Means
• Deferreds into jQuery – Dan Heberden
• jQuery Development Workflow – Anton Kovalyov
• jQuery & Backbone.js – Matt Kelly
• jQuery & QUnit – Ben Alman

Tickets: http://jquerysummit.com.

Dates:

Designer track: Tuesday, November 15th

Developer track: Wednesday, November 16th

jQuery Training At Bocoup

For those that prefer in-person training, group training is one of the best ways to improve your jQuery skills. Luckily, Boston-based Bocoup has a number of such comprehensive jQuery trainings scheduled for both January and March 2012.

Sessions will be held at The Bocoup Loft in Boston, and 10% of profits will go directly to the jQuery Foundation. If interested, be sure to sign up now since class sizes are limited!.

For more information, checkout http://training.bocoup.com/comprehensive-jquery/

Frontend Workshops in HTML5, JavaScript and jQuery

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more general frontend skills, Marc Grabanski is hosting a Frontend Masters Workshop Series for developers looking to earn a mastery in the arts of frontend development.

The training is composed of six workshops that will focus on frontend topics including jQuery, jQuery UI, HTML5 & CSS3, Titanium Mobile and building large JavaScript applications with speakers including jQuery team members Karl Swedberg and Scott Gonzalez.

For tickets and more information, see http://frontendmasters.com.

Update: For the first time ever, we have a conference signage sponsor. Thanks to custom signs shop Signazon for your support.

The Boston conference is sold out (thanks everyone!), as is the Intro to jQuery training session, but the requests keep coming! In response to popular demand, we’ve added a second training scheduled for Friday, September 30th.

The training will focus on HTML5, and be taught by jQuery Core Team Member and Bocoup trainer Richard Worth. The price will be the same $299 (which, if you’ve been paying attention to HTML5 training rates, is a steal!).

Here’s some detail from the training description:

HTML5 is the next major milestone in HTML and it’s not just another incremental enhancement; it represents an enormous advance for modern web applications. A large number of HTML5 features are already supported in browsers, so it’s time to start using them!

In our HTML5 for Programmers Workshop, you will learn how to create HTML5 web pages and web applications using semantic HTML5 markup and cross-browser HTML5 JavaScript APIs. After completing this course, students will:

• Know how to use semantic HTML5 Markup
• Know how to use cross-browser HTML5 JavaScript APIs
• Understand current browser support for the various HTML5 features
• Understand how to polyfill HTML5 features on older browsers

Our training takes a step-by-step approach, solidifying fundamental concepts and building on them to leave each attendee with a more thorough understanding of HTML5. Using a 50% lecture / 50% lab format, attendees will be able to put the concepts they have just learned to use after each section.

• HTML5 Overview
• Using HTML5 Today
• Markup
• Forms
• Canvas
• Video and Audio
• Drag and Drop
• Geolocation
• Web Storage
• Web Workers
• Communication and Web Sockets

This course is designed for software developers interested in designing, creating, and deploying HTML5 web applications. It is valuable to developers that already have experience in developing web applications. To get the most out of the course, you should be familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Prior exposure to any of these concepts will be helpful, but not required: AJAX, XML, jQuery, HTTP, REST.

It’s short notice, but we hope you can make it, so register now! As always, feel free to email events@jquery.org with any event related questions.

See you all at the show!

Hey everyone!

We recently announced the dates for our next jQuery Conference—October 1st and 2nd in Boston, MA—and we’re finally ready to open registration! Here are some top level bullet points for you:

• 2 days of jam-packed content from the jQuery Core Team and top community members, covering everything from jQuery basics and advanced techniques, to jQuery UI, jQuery Mobile, and more
• A new limited-run jQuery tshirt and other jQuery swag
• A fabulous Boston after party, hosted by our friends over at MediaTemple with free booze, snacks, great company and more
• Other sweet after-hours events, announcements coming soon

Back by popular demand, we’ve also got a full day of Beginner jQuery Training for the new folks on your team, generously provided by our friends over at Bocoup. We’ll likely be adding additional topical and/or advanced training sessions, so keep an eye here and on Twitter for announcements and updates on that.

New for this year: For the first time ever, we’ve really got an official jQuery Conference Hotel. We’ve had suggested multiple hotels in the past, but this year we’ve secured a fantastic block at the conference venue, arranged for the Core Team and speakers to stay there, and have also thrown in some hotel-guest-only perks, like priority registration and swag distribution. We’ll also be organizing some on-site evening gatherings at the hotel, and hotel guests will receive priority registration for any of those as well.

The room block we secured last year—which didn’t have these extra perks—sold out well before the conference, so make sure you book your room ASAP, and make sure it’s part of our specific room block.

The Call for Papers is still open, so if you haven’t submitted your talk yet, definitely get on that.  Speakers receive access to a fantastic speaker thank you dinner, free accommodations at the conference hotel, and if budget allows it, additional TBD renumeration.

That’s it for now; we’ll have more announcements soon as we roll out the speaking roster, announce more party details and finalize all the other conference-related goodness.

Register Now!