Our Door is Open to the Local Tech Community

It’s a good time to connect, to find community or to foster one. An advantage to Los Angeles is that it is both big enough and small enough to find like-minds; people who share passions, common or fringe. Most likely if you look, there will be company.

On a recent Tuesday evening in January, Funkhaus played host to a community of Vue enthusiasts.* The evening was part of a monthly meetup of web-designers, of all levels - those looking to improve their skills with the frontend framework, and those seeking something like an intimate convention.

Funkhaus hosts a Vue meetup every other month. We order in PizzaNista! from around the corner**, and are glad to open our door to Los Angeles’ community of website developers.

The topic of this evening was CSS and best practices. The first talk was given by Drew Baker, Technical Director/ Partner here at Funkhaus. It opened with a disclaimer: styles and preferences vary, he would probably make controversial statements, and he wasn’t attempting to convert anyone, rather he was sharing the do’s and don’ts discovered throughout his career as a web-designer. Drew’s presentation was titled Web Development Best Practices - Learned From 10 Years on the Frontlines of a Digital Agency.

Highlights from his talk demonstrated that much of this isn't rocket science, rather just keeping steady with a process that builds redundancy across teams as a company scales over time. That, in and of itself, is informed by years of learning and integrating best practices into the fundamental way his team does their work.

A Q&A followed. There were questions about BEM, double quotes versus single quotes in HTML, and refactoring CSS files. From the audience, styling preferences opposing and supporting Drew’s were shouted out; it was a crowd eager to play offense or defense. No one hid their tricks, which felt oddly unique to be in an environment sustained by sharing, dialogue, and friendly help. People came to speak a language and optimize their own logs of best practices.

The second talk of the night was given by Jon Jandoc, Senior Front-End Engineer with the Elizabeth Warren Presidential campaign. Jon joked that he had agreed to do the talk before that night’s Democratic debate was scheduled, and that he hoped Warren’s site was working okay. His presentation was titled Tailwind CSS - Or how I learned to stop worrying and love utility-first CSS. He offered up some different approaches than Drew’s presentation, and it was a good counter-view to spur on discussion.

By 9:30 pm, all the engineers had left, leaving behind just a few slices of pizza and a vacant corner where Funkhaus desks had been moved aside to make room for folding chairs. The next day, someone from the company would feel lucky to find those refrigerated slices. Sharing can feel really good.