Jesse Cravens

Building Modern Web Applications and Teams that Deliver

SXSWi 2013: 'Battle of the HTML5 Hackers' and 'HTML5 Hacks' Book Signing

We had a great turnout for the ‘Battle of the HTML5 Hackers’ presentation at SXSWi on Tuesday.

SXSWi 2013: Battle of the HTML5 Hackers - Jesse Cravens and Jeff Burtoft

Using our best CDD (Conference Driven Devlopment) techniques, we walked the audience through the creation of Nerdclustr: an HTML5 mobile Application that helps nerds find other like-minded nerds at conferences events.

Using realtime and mapping technolgies, the app visualizes nerd behavior in map pin clusters.

Nerdclustr: SXSWi 2013 Ballroom G Austin Convention Center

Here is a shot of the app in action (Ballroom G in the Austin Convention Center); it performed well during the presentation. Thanks to Nodjitsu for the quality node.js WebSocket service. After a 2-day hackathon to get the app launched, I ran through a number of deployment options, many of which I have used before for Rails applications. Nodjitsu won out in that it actually supported the WebSokcet protocol and made deployment super simple using the jitsu CLI.

Jesse Cravens and Jeff Burtoft: SXSWi 2013 - HTML5 Hacks Book Signing

Nerdclustr source code is available here.

During the book signing, the bookstore informed us there were only 3 copies left. I’m not keen to the selection process of books, but I was little surprised at the limited number of technical books. This is certainly a reflection of the SXSWi demographic, and we also tailored our content and presentation style to this audience.

The slide deck is available here:

Stay tuned for our next presentation happening online, through O’Reilly Webcasts. Join us for ‘Rethinking the Possibilities of Browser-based Apps with HTML5’ on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 10AM PT.

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