jQuery Conference 2009

This year's jQuery conference was held over the weekend, hosted at Microsoft's offices in Cambridge Massachusetts. If the tweets are any indication, the conference was a great sucess.The jQuery Conference is a little bit different than most conferences I've attended. The conference registration fee was an affordable $150. The conference was held over a weekend, rather than during the week. With fewer than 300 tickets available, it sold out quickly when it was announced in July. Microsoft not only donated the venue for the conference, but they were a financial sponsor.

It was quite a surprise when Microsoft announced least year that it would be shipping jQuery, an open-source Javascript library, with its next version of Visual Studio. ASP.NET leans heavily towards server-side scripting and control, yet jQuery depends only on standard client HTML, CSS, and Javascript. ASP.NET 4.0 has added important features that make it easier to use jQuery and client-side technologies in general.

As a jQuery user and volunteer for the jQuery project I am probably a bit biased, but after several years of using the library I can't imagine building complex web pages without it. This year's conference shows that it's not just a technical success, but that the jQuery community is growing. There are plans being made for more conferences next year, including ones in San Francisco, London, and a virtual conference webcast. If you missed this year's conference, you can find many of the presentations on SlideShare.