A Quick Trip to Toronto

RandomDecember 9, 2018December 9, 2018

I just got back from a few days in Toronto that I spent attending some web conferences. I had a great time, so I thought I’d share my thoughts.

Full Stack Toronto

Full Stack Toronto was the conference I had traveled in for and it was a reallty good conference. Especially if you work for a non-profit since they have a discount which made the conference ticket around $75.  I would say if you are close and can make it it is worth your time, even at full price. Specifically, Jenn Creighton’s talk on flexible React components, Joe Carlsson on React performance and Rachael McQuater’s talk on TypeScript (Yay Grand Rapids!) were really good.  There also was clearly a big push for diversity in speakers by the organizers which I really appreciated.

WordCamp Toronto

I’de never been to a WordCamp before, but have recently been spending some more time with WordPress and the new Gutenberg editor. I knew that the 5.0 release would be a few days before this WordCamp when I registered for it, so I thought it would be interesting to time to check it out. (It ended up being a few days later – today!)  This was interesting in that it was not at all who I thought would be attending. I guess I expected a group similar to who I had been at Full Stack Toronto – full-time developers, already up to speed on everything WordPress. If I had to guess that would only be about 50-70% of everyone there, with a lot more casual WordPress end users – people who use it to make websites but develop heavily. It was an interesting perspective and I am glad that I went. I knew there was some concern about page builders and Gutenberg, but even then I was surprised by the number of times it came up. 

The City

Even though I live only a few hours away, I’ve never been to Toronto before. To be honest, I knew it was a big city, but I didn’t know it was as big as it is (4th largest in North America!)  For its size it was super clean, something I really appreciate. I stayed right downtown in a super nice condo through Airbnb. It was super nice but the owner must not have been permitted to rent it out because the check-in instructions were “Walk right past security, if they stop you, tell them you are here visiting Susan” Besides that, super nice, even had a gym I could use. The Chinatown area was my favorite part, great food, tea, and fun to walk around. the Chinatown seemed more authentic, with less of the super-touristy stuff like in New York or San Francisco. The art museum was cool and free every Wednesday night. The other thing I did was head to St. Lawrence Market for a Toronto specialty – the “Pea-meal bacon sandwich.” I thought it was odd they called it bacon since it was more like ham to me, then had the embarrassing realization of why we sometimes call ham “Canadian Bacon.”