After many long months of planning, RVA JavaScript Conf 2017 went off last Friday without a hitch! We are truly grateful to all of the attendees and the Richmond/Charlottesville software development communities for making it such a huge success. The conference sold out over a week ahead of time, which is more than we could have hoped for our first year. Just look at this crowd!

We sent out a survey after the conference, and so far we have had almost half of all attendees respond. Out of those responses, over 96% responded positively when asked how likely they were to recommend a friend attend RVA JavaScript Conf next year. We know the conference wasn’t perfect this year (we are taking everyone’s feedback to heart!), and so that level of positive response was truly overwhelming for us.

I would personally like to thank the organizers whose hard work made the conference possible. Hundreds of hours of work went into organizing this conference. Al Tenhundfeld, Trish Mahan, Gaelen Kash, and A’braham Barakhyahu put a ton of time and effort into making this conference a reality. Without their hard work it wouldn’t have happened.

In addition to the organizers, we also had a wonderful group of volunteers that gave up their sleep and arrived at the conference in the wee hours of the morning to help us get everything setup and get everyone checked in. The volunteers made the registration process go incredibly smoothly, and for that we are immensely grateful.

I would also like to thank our sponsors for taking a chance on a first year conference! For those who have been involved in conferences in the past, you probably know that conferences are expensive! Especially hosting it at a nice facility like the Westin. Altria was our gold sponsor, which had a huge impact on the conference. Our silver sponsors were Snagajob, CapTech, Singlestone, Carmax, and Simple Thread (that’s us!). Our bronze sponsors were Vaco, maconit, and RTS Labs. I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but without these sponsors, the conference would not have happened. The ticket sales alone are nowhere near enough to pay for a conference like this.

And last, but certainly not least, I want to thank all of the presenters who volunteered their own time to come and speak at RVA JavaScript Conf. We had a ton of great presenters, and we hope we can get many of them to come back next year!

So, thank you RVA! You made this conference a huge success!