Our Top 3 Takeaways from the Comeback Event of the Year

We can’t believe it’s already been 3 weeks since 100+ Elixir developers
descended on Chattanooga, Tennessee for Gig City Elixir 2023!

Coming off a long Covid-break, the event came back in full force with
two jam-packed days of talks from some of the brightest minds in the
Elixir community. It was great to get back to in-person networking,
seeing old friends and making new ones.

While everyone is now back at their jobs having fully recovered from
conference fever, we thought we would share our top takeaways from the
event.

1. Thought-Provoking Speakers

It’s impossible to highlight all the great speakers and topics covered
over 2 days of sessions. You can view the talks here. Here are some
standouts that made an impact on us.

Bryan Hunter, HCA Healthcare

We’re pretty sure Bryan blew everybody’s mind with his talk on Waterpark, a system he and his team developed to
model millions of patients within a national health care system. Check
out the talk to see Bryan talk about the impressive development and
astounding impact on healthcare.

Steve Bussey, Supered.io

Steve has long been one of our favorite Elixir authors (his Real Time Phoenix book is a top-notch treatment of channels
and Pub/Sub, and remains incredibly relevant). His talk on managing risk
and making code more extensible and easier to use was super solid, with
immediate practical application.

Randall Thomas, Apocalypse How?

A talk on Ethical Programming Randall is one of the most thoughtful people we’ve met. He does an incredible job
of infusing the moral weight and seriousness of the work we do with
humor and grace, while also seamlessly connecting the past and the
present and then making those connections visible and visceral. We learn
something new every time we hear Randall speak.

Andrew Ek, Launch Scout on Building Better Forms in Live View

Our very own Andrew Ek presented an approach to building better forms with
LiveView. If you’ve been around since the beginning of LiveView, you may
have puzzled at how to use it to build a best-in-class validation,
accessibility, and overall form experience. Andrew’s talk iterated on
the problem, presenting obstacles and solutions that everyone who works
in LiveView can use to improve the experience, including some of the
more recent changes to the LiveView library in this area. Watch for this
video to drop on YouTube and you’ll be sure to pick up some practical
knowledge right away.

2. Community & Connection

Part of what makes Elixir so special is the people in the community. We
really enjoyed how many genuinely kind, thoughtful, and talented people
there in the Elixir development community and how welcoming everyone is
to new folks. Gig City Elixir is a special conference because of how
hard the organizers Bruce and Maggie Tate work to make it an exceptional
environment both for established veterans and brand-new developers.

Outside of the sessions, everyone had an opportunity to connect during
social hours, dinners and some after-hours fun including some
competitive shuffleboard table matches. Amos King of Binary Noggin and Ben Wheat of Kamana Healthcare held court at the table most of the
night, but lost a nail-biter match to our own Jay Hopper and Sigu Magwa
of Podii. (not braggin!).

3. Tech Insights

LiveView, Nerves, Ash, and a whole lot of other really neat and
ambitious projects are only getting started. In spite of powering
significant and sizable applications that businesses depend on and being
a great foundation for building software, all 3 of those
libraries/frameworks (and many others) are nowhere near their ceilings
in terms of what they can eventually be and the problems they can solve.
We expect Elixir, the BEAM, and OTP to continue being an excellent,
lively ecosystem to build software.

Wrap Up

It was great to have the opportunity to be a platinum sponsor this year.
Thanks to all who stopped by our booth to chat and grab some swag.
Congrats to Meredith Leu of Luna Physical Therapy for winning our Bose
Speaker prize giveaway!

We would like to thank Maggie and Bruce Tate from Grox.io for hosting an incredible event. We also want to give a shout-out to our fellow
sponsors Adobe and WYE Works for helping make this event possible. It
takes a village and we are grateful to be part of this incredible
community.

See you next year!