¡Pura Vida! Is the best way to start my review of attending WordCamp San José (formally WordCamp Costa Rica).
Organizers Roberto Remedios and Alfredo “El Puas” invited me to do a workshop at WordCamp San José 2017 earlier this year while we were all hanging out at WordCamp Miami (also a great camp to attend).
What started as a JavaScript workshop turned into a talk on advanced JavaScript and sitting in on a JavaScript panel with two other amazing speakers.
Un Poco Sobre WordCamp San José
WordCamp San José 2017 took place at La Universidad Latina de San José, Costa Rica. More than 350 people attended two days of talks with three tracks.
Most of talks were in Spanish and topics covered everything from Marketing to Development (w plenty of JS) and everything in between. Many of the talks also included sing language interpretation and a good group benefiting from it.
The layout of the venue was great, with a big open area for the sponsors right in front of the three rooms for the talks. The main sponsors had cool seating areas and the food included amazing breakfast, lunch and treats!
Let’s not forget about the after party either. The camp hosted everyone with music, food and great atmosphere at a nearby restaurant / club with a pool and hammocks (not pictured).
My JavaScript and WordPress REST API Workshop
Continuing with my 2017 JavaScript Workshop Tour, I ran a 3 hr workshop on the Friday day before the two day of talks. You can see the slides and example files for the workshop here.
The workshop covered the following:
- JavaScript Language Basics
- The Document Object Model
- Events in JavaScript
- The WordPress REST API
- Using JavaScript and the API in WP Themes
Unfortunately, my Spanish was not quite good enough to give the workshop in Spanish so props to all the bi-lingual attendees for following the talk, along with questions, in English.
I like the 3hr time span for a workshop. It let’s you really cover fundamentals and give time for practice. Big thanks to the organizers and attendees for inviting me down to do this workshop.
Next year I am going to try to do it en Español 🙂
My First “Advanced JavaScript Topics” WordCamp Talk
A few moons before the camp started, the organizers asked if I would like to do a talk in addition to the workshop. I knew I would be recording my Advanced JavaScript Topics section of my Master Course so I submitted an open ended talk entitled “Interesting Things About JavaScript” that was actually a JavaScript homage to Andrew Nacin’s Advanced WordPress Topics talk.
The talk included a number of different intermediate, advanced, new and, well, interesting things, about JavaScript that I am going into more depth on in my Master Course.
The slides might not be as helpful without the explanations but you may still gleam some things from flicking through the deck 🙂
5 + 1 Question JavaScript Panel
As an added bonus I got to sit in on a panel on JavaScript with Elio Rivero from Automattic and Gabo Esquivel who heads up the JavaScript community in San José.
The questions were basically something like this (but in Spanish except for my answers):
- Panelist Intros
- Advice for JavaScript beginners (I said CodeAcademy, Treehouse, Wes Bos and of course my free JavaScript videos)
- Top 3 Good JavaScript Practices (I suggested Testing, Coding Standards and Keep on Learning)
- Favorite JS Framework and why (Choose the best tool for the job, I like Vue for it’s architecture and ease and React for Gutenberg Blocks etc, If I was building a huge app or plugin I would also consider Angular)
- Most challenge JavaScript project (Teaching JavaScript Deeply!)
- JavaScript for WordPress in 2018 (Gutenberg, JS Widgets, More w Customizer, Keep Learning JavaScript)
Overall a Great Camp with Lots of JavaScript
Muchas gracias a los organizadores y voluntarios de WordCamp San José 2017. It won the 2017 WordCamp Award for food (rice, beans and real cooked food is soo good) in my opinion.
It also had a ton of talks on JavaScript in addition to mine, like Cross Platform React, CSS in JS, Calypso, Angular, GraphQL and even a demo of Caldera Forms in action, which I am definitely checking out for my next WP project that needs JS driven forms.
I am going to start a rumor that in 2018 you may see more than one large WordCamp in Central America around the same time period. I highly suggest you attend and get some of this Pura Vida WordCamp energía!
WordPress Educator Zac Gordon 
Reblogged this on Remediosgraphic’s Weblog.
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Thank you Zac Gordon for all the support. From now on, invited to WCCR 2018
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Thanks for coming to Central America Zac. I hope you enjoyed CR and you can share your experience with fellow speakers and colleagues so we can have top level speakers such as yourself visiting our WordCamps. Cheers!
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It was nice to meet you. I learned a lot from you thank you for sharing all that knowledge, the workshop was really cool. Maybe I will atempt to do a talk in Spanish and Costa Rican sign language at the same time next year, but I have to practice a lot.
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