GraphCMS hosts GraphQL Day Bodensee 2019!

The GraphCMS team was busy this summer organizing and co-hosting the first GraphQL Day Bodensee in the picturesque city of Konstanz. This one day conference brought over 100 members of the GraphQL community together from all around Europe to discuss all things GraphQL and network with others curious about the technology.

The international lineup of 12 speakers from 9 different countries covered topics ranging from lessons learned in GraphQL implementation, to the importance of doing background research when choosing a new technology, to a SWOT analysis of GraphQL.

One of the GraphCMS developer advocates, Jesse (@motleydev), set the stage for the conference with some opening remarks.

Carolyn Stransky (@carolstran) from Blacklane started the morning with the question on everyone’s mind; should we use GraphQL? Caroyln covered several of the companies behind the GraphQL-based technologies we use and ethical decisions to keep in mind when building applications today.

Next up, Nader Dabit (@dabit3) of AWS Cloud gave a great talk on how you can increase developer productivity using GraphQL. Nader demonstrated how he used GraphQL to build a real time music app and invited the audience to participate in a real time event based chat application that he live coded during the talk!

After a well-deserved coffee break, Roy Derks (@gethackteam) of Hackteam started off the next round of talks by walking us through the journey into building a GraphQL server. Roy explored the various packages available when building your server, and discussed how to move forward with GraphQL, even when your backend team says no.

Taking the stage after Roy, our very own Head of Development, David Gustys (@DavidGustys). His speech discussed the GraphCMS experience using GraphQL in production and the bumps along the road as we grow.

David also shared his experience with using Node.js in production and how you can easily add unnecessary complexity to your application by installing package after package.

David ended the talk by previewing some upcoming changes to the GraphCMS stack, including several new features. Be sure to check back in with GraphCMS to learn more.

We then heard from Emma Bostian (@EmmaBostian), from LogMeIn, who offered insights on how to build a portfolio that shows off your work and personality using GraphQL and Gatsby. One piece of advice was to use portfolios to show off your own creativity and not worry if you are starting your career without an extensive portfolio.

After a delicious lunch break and stop at the waffle and coffee cart, Mikhail (@freiksenet) of Gatsbyjs kicked off the afternoon with a talk on the difference between programmatic and declarative GraphQL schema definition and the best use cases for programmatic schema definition.

Nikolas Burk (@nikolasburk) from Prisma surprised the audience with an impressive amount of live-coding while demonstrating the powers of the new Photon ORM. Way to go Nikolas!

Aleksej Dix (@aleksejdix) from oddEVEN showed us that sometimes the most common method is the simplest and most efficient with his talk, “Server Side Rendering Javascript Apps with Nuxt.js, Apollo, and GraphQL.”

We were all ears for Rhys Evans (@wheresrhys) from The Financial Times who gave us insights about how the FT integrated GraphQL into its microservice infrastructure.

Marion Schleifer (@rubydwarf) of Hasura demonstrated how to make GraphQL work using food ordering app where audience members “ordered food” to show how GraphQL can be used without the monolith.

Tobias Meixner (@meixnertobias) from BrikL rounded out the evening with a SWOT analysis of GraphQL and the best use cases for production.

We want to say a quick thanks to all of the people who helped make this event possible: our co-organizer Honeypot.io, all of our amazing speakers, and of course the event sponsors, HolidayCheck, AWS Cloud, and Gatsby.js. All of your work and contributions turned GraphQL Day Bodensee into a truly wonderful, memorable event.

Co-organizing and co-hosting GraphQL Day Bodensee was such a rewarding experience that GraphCMS is eager to host more community events in the future. If you are interested in attending future GraphCMS events, join our events calendar which has information on what is to come from the GraphCMS team. Join our events calendar here.