Bulgaria Web Summit 2016

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An event about (almost) everything a modern web person should know.

Bulgaria Web Summit is an annual conference about the modern web.

Benefit: Practical lessons which you can immediately apply in your work and thus gain time and money. The attendance fee is actually an investment. An investment in yourselves.

Community: A balanced mixture of participants and speakers working in programming, design, marketing and business development. Find partners, colleagues or ideas to develop.

Party! In addition to the event we are planning a great party and other surprises for you. You should treat yourselves to an amazing weekend in Sofia!

The Final Schedule

Last update: 19. of February.

09:00 - 10:00

Check In + Coffee + Networking
10:00 - 10:45

The grand opening - it will be awesome!
11:00

Keynote: The Web - What it Has, What it Lacks and Where it Must Go

Taking a look at the web where it is today: the myriad of new features and possibilities we have gotten, and how the web needs to evolve to stay relevant. To give a perspective on where it came from and also comparing it to other platforms to see where we need to move forward. Getting a perspective on SLICE, Progressive Apps and thoughts about how the web can, and should be, unique.

- By Robert Nyman, Google
12:00

Communities: the good and not-so-good parts

What I have seen during my years working with various communities as an outsider but very welcomed inside. I made a lot of friends though the various foss communities I worked with.
I'll talk about:

- What is a community?
- Community - the feeling of belonging
- Gender issues
- How can communities get better
- What's good about community - how the members help each other

Conclusion: Communities are great. The people making the communities are....

- By Josette Garcia
12:45 - 14:00

Lunch Pause
14:00

Emerging Technologies

Technology is perhaps the greatest agent of change in the modern world. Although never without risk, technological breakthroughs promise solutions to the most pressing global challenges of our time.

- By Constantine Spathis, CEO Xogito
15:00

The World Is Our Interface: Design Beyond The Screen

We are in an exciting age of design: Welcome to a new era in history where our bodies, heaters, cars, bedrooms, streets and just about everything is beginning to become an interface.
This talk will present a number of exciting technologies and various interfaces to interact with them, as well as take a historical perspective on interactions with man-made objects that have evolved with us to where we are.
For simplicity’s sake, I like to group human interaction with the environment and technology into 4 ages: The age of tools, The age of the machine, The age of software and The age of the self

- By Danielle Reid
16:00

Understanding the Web with Bing and Satori

Despite the evolution of search technologies and the incredible amounts of computing power that major search players posses, today's search engine have trouble achieving what most humans can do without any problem - make the difference between a person (Gustave Eiffel), attraction (Eiffel tower), programming language (Eiffel) and a music band (Eiffel 65).

Microsoft is trying to solve this problem by building its enormous Knowledge Graph called Satori (understanding, enlightenment in Japanese). Satori is trying to develop a deep understanding of the world around us (using the web knowledge) by collecting, building and making sense of the information about "entities" (people, places, objects) and the relationships between those entities. Satori is a constantly growing graph with billions of "entities" and relations, providing searchers with a useful model of the world

- By Nikolay Alexiev
17:00

Closing Keynote: Managing for Happiness

The research is clear: happy workers are more productive workers. And it’s best when managers enjoy their jobs as well. Managing for Happiness is about concrete management advice for all workers. Practical things that people can do next Monday morning in order to change the organization’s culture, and make it a happier place to work. This is not only relevant for managers, but for everyone who is concerned about the organization. We create a happier environment by managing ourselves, and lead by example, in an environment focused on experiments and learning.

How can we inspire workers with a goal? (Answer: start your own work exposition)
How can we have a better team culture? (Answer: share your personal maps)
How can we address core values? (Answer: start sharing your value stories)
All creative workers are expected to be “servant leaders” and “systems thinkers”. In this session, you will learn how you can do that concretely, with a number of inspiring stories and examples. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see.” A happier organization starts with people managing themselves.

- By Jurgen Appelo
17:45 - 18:00

Closing talks. Raffle and more surprises. Be here!
19:30 - 23:00

Party at a secret location with Surmata Harry and all of us.

10:00

Meet MariaDB 10.1

MariaDB 10.1 was just released in October 2015, and its release focused on some central themes: Security, High Availability, High Performance, Operational Ease and overall there are many sprinklings of features that are better for developers and DBAs.

Come to this talk to learn about encryption, passwords, plugins using the audit API, replication improvements, the integration of Galera Cluster, improvements in InnoDB and the threadpool. Learn also about things that MariaDB Server still has unique to it.

- By Colin Charles
11:00

Using RocksDB to store graph data structures

In this talk we’ll go over various scenarios of how to use RocksDB which is an embeddable persistent key-value store for fast storage. RocksDB is internally used in Ingenio’s Unigraph project which is a global, language independent knowledge graph that aggregates various sources of structured data and unifies them under a single generally recognised common schema. RocksDB uses log structured merge tree (LSM-tree) data structure and we’ll cover various use-case scenarios and techniques to get the maximum from RocksDB in terms of performance and its usability.

- By Igor Mihalik
12:00

Turning any key-value store into a model-based document store

LinvoDB is a database abstraction layer which magically turns any key-value store into a model-based document store with an API similar to Mongoose / MongoDB

- By Ivo Georgiev
12:45 - 14:00

Lunch Pause
14:00

Scaling ad-hoc analytics with MammothDB

The overall architecture and challenges of integrating and scaling a web-based analytics solution that uses MammothDB as the backend

- By Alexander Aldev
15:00

Scalable Service Architectures

Service oriented architectures are getting more and more widespread popularity, because of the benefits they offer. They have some design requirements though, a very important one of them is designing services (and their combinations) for scalability and resilience. We did a couple of these in the past years and learned a lot about how to do it and what open source tools are available to achieve the goal.

In this talk I will describe the most important requirements of scalability, then our experience with them.

- By Zoltan Nemeth
16:00

Docker, DevOps, and how system administration become so interesting (in Bulgarian)

A decade ago, there were many similarities between system administrators and cult leaders. They worked in the dark, allowed few in their inner circle and their days were filled with mystery and magic. That had its charm, but also had its problems. For a developer, it was impossible to conceive how the code will behave in production. It also was impossible to create a similar environment locally, so they can test.

The "cloud" and the configuration management tools turned over a new leaf. They took hardware out of the picture and gave us tools, that moved system administration closer to programming. We're far from a stage, where every developer can do sysadmin work and vice versa, but now we are talking about DevOps. We're also talking about "immutable infrastructure", "test-driven infrastructure" and other terms that bizarrely sound more like development that system administration.

Docker fits this picture perfectly. In its essence, it's a system for Linux containers ("cheap virtualization"). But its structure and tools create a powerful environment, similar to one that a programmer would have. This talk will show the basics of docker and give you ideas about how you can start your first steps in DevOps land. You won't need to be Linux experts to get the most out of it.

- By Stefan Kanev
17:00

Nginx - your load balancer & cache

As Nginx is used on many high traffic sites, Marian will show us how we can configure Nginx to properly do load balancing and also use different types of caching. You will see configuration which is used on some high traffic web sites. Marian will also describe why were these configuration decisions were chosen and how you can stress test your changes.

- By Marian Marinov
17:45 - 18:00

Closing. Go to the main room :)
19:30 - 23:00

Party at a secret location with Surmata Harry and all of us.

10:00

ReactJS - the good, the bad and the ugly

ReactJS - the good, the bad and the ugly sides of the Facebook UI library!

- By Krasimir Tsonev
11:00

Developing data-driven hybrid apps with Drupal 7 and Sencha Touch 2

I. Introduction

1. The overall architecture
2. Why use those technologies
3. Keeping it scalable

II. Building steps

1. Configuring the Services and Services Entity modules
- REST
- Configuring the resources
2. Building our data structure
- Content types
- Taxonomies
3. User roles and permissions
4. Creating the stores and models in Sencha
5. Making the most of Sencha's UI building capabilities
6. Communication between the app and the API
7. Building with Cordova
8. Data aggregation and statistics

III. Live example (a simplified market research app with the corresponding backend)

- By Ivan Todinov
12:00

Introducing NativeScript

NativeScript is a free and open source JavaScript framework for building native iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps, which you can use with Angular 2.0. But I know what you’re thinking: another way of building apps? What makes NativeScript special? Here are a a few cool things:

- Direct access to native APIs—no plugins required. Want to create a file on Android? Run new java.io.File()—in JavaScript!
- Completely native performance through the use of a JavaScript bridge natively available on all three mobile platforms.
- Cross-platform libraries for common use cases. Need to call a JSON API? Run http.getJSON("https://api.mydomain.com/get").
- Style native apps using CSS. Yep, that’s actually a thing.
- Curious about how it all works? Come learn! Architectures will be explained; apps will be built; and fun will be had by all.

- By Sebastian Witalec
12:45 - 14:00

Lunch And Refreshments
14:00

Ember.js

A talk about Ember works, the internals, how it's different to Angular and React, and why would you choose it over other technologies.

Ember.js is an open-source client-side JavaScript web application framework based on the model-view-controller (MVC) software architectural pattern. It allows developers to create scalable single-page applications quickly and easily. It does so by incorporating common idioms and best practices into a framework that provides a rich object model, declarative two-way data binding, computed properties, automatically-updating templates powered by Handlebars.js, and a router for managing application state. Ember is a fun and structure way to quickly create apps, and has various advantages over angular.

- By Dory Zidon
15:00

Web development with Lua programming Language

Lua is a very fast and powerful scripting language that can be easily embeddable. It has been shining in industries like game development, for example. Lua is also an excellent tool as a general purpose language and can be used to develop robust applications. Its use in web developments, however, despite its great potential and incredible benchmarks, needs to be more widespread. This talk will mention the current state of Lua in web development, show some benchmarks, compare existing tools and teach developers how to get started with Sailor, an MVC web framework written in Lua.

- By Etiene Dalcol
16:00

Building Search on any platform w/ Algolia.

Why we built the Algolia engine? Why speed and UI/UX is important? A live coding session.

- By Algolia Team
17:00

AI getting practical - taking advantage of automated image recognition

What is the Imagga API, what can be built with it, and how you can start using it right away.

- By Georgi Kadrev
17:45 - 18:00

Closing. Go to the main room :)
19:30 - 23:00

Party at a secret location with Surmata Harry and all of us.

10:00 - 11:45

Workshop: Measuring Usability with the System Usability Scale

A fairly interactive workshop, with groups of 2/3 getting together, user testing a product and finally scoring the product using the SUS score.

- By Joe Dollar-Smirnov
12:00

Storytelling for multi-device design

As the number of devices we use on a daily basis grows, considering each device's role at different times, situations and contexts is becoming increasingly important. Our ability to control where a user is coming from and how they get around the experiences we design is fading. Yet our need to ensure we understand where they are in their journey, so that we can deliver the right content and interactions at the right time, and on the right device, is ever more important. In this talk Anna will look a the principles behind storytelling in design and how they can be translated onto a multi device landscape to help ensure we create better multi-device experiences for our users and healthier bottom lines for our businesses.

- By Anna Dahlström
12:45 - 14:00

Lunch And Refreshments
14:00

Workshop: Sktechnoting

Sketchnoting improves your concentration, gets your creative juices flowing and helps you focus on the big picture, and so it’s a great tool for team collaboration as well as individual practice. In this workshop I will outline some of the basic concepts of sketching, visual storytelling and how to apply them in your daily working routine. No drawing experience required!

- By Aurora Suriel
15:00

Resident good: NoSQL (in Bulgarian)

Overview of NoSQL. History, why all this happened. Main types are covered with their specific attributes, suitable use cases, data models and some notes when not to use them. Polyglot persistence is covered and Cap theorem.

- By Lyubomir Filipov
16:00

The ROI of BBQ - how to engage, empower and kickstart communities

What do a polo match in Buenos Aires, a tech conference in Zagreb, and a BBQ in San Francisco have in common? If you’re working on global or offline community building, you need to know the Toptal story — the story of how a company that lives and dies by its community has scaled its community initiatives (which include the above events and many more) and skyrocketed its growth over the last year. Toptal has organised more then 250 events in 45+ countries and launched multiple initiatives within the last year with community a team of only 2 people.

- By Kenan Salihbegovic, Toptal
17:00

Why you should become a remote worker (and how to do it now)

Remote has quickly become “the cool kid on the block” for the world of work. Many people cherish the thought of working from the comfort of their home, however few know how to achieve it, and even fewer are aware of the challenges this model of work entails.

In this talk, I will tell you why remote is no longer the future of work, but rather the present of our professional lives, how to join the army of digital nomads and not just keep your sanity, but thrive as a remote worker.

- By Ilia Markov
17:45 - 18:00

Closing. Go to the main room :)
19:30 - 23:00

Party at a secret location with Surmata Harry and all of us.