Week-in-Review: Age Presents No Barrier to Web Development at WordCamp Los Angeles

WordCamp Los Angeles had more than a few pleasant surprises in store for the BoldGrid team. Chris, Steve, and Sash made the trip across town from our Los Angeles office to the beautiful campus of Cal State LA. Things started early on Saturday morning when Steve and Chris showed up bright and early to avoid the infamous LA traffic and set up the booth before the attendees arrived.

Things went quite smoothly, with dozens of attendees stopping by to say hello, learn about BoldGrid, and pick up a Tide pen. The crowd had a surprisingly even mix of experienced web design and development professionals and newer users just taking their first steps into the world of WordPress. This gave our team a great opportunity to explain to both groups exactly how BoldGrid could improve their respective site building and maintenance experiences. Judging from the response, it seems the LA attendees really fell in love with the ease-of-use, power, and adaptability of BoldGrid. Several tried out the software overnight and reported back on Sunday about their experiences. A few who had tried BoldGrid in the past even agreed to give it another try to check out the new features and functionality and seemed quite pleasantly surprised by the updates. Saturday’s after party took place on campus, just around the corner from the event itself. The camaraderie between the attendees and the sponsors made the whole experience rewarding and uplifting, even though it took place after a very long day. On Sunday, Chris returned, this time with Sash, to wrap up a great WordCamp weekend. The absolute highlight of the whole weekend happened shortly after lunch when 11-year-old Jansen Henschel gave a talk entitled “So Easy Even a Kid Can Do It: Using WordPress as a Platform for Portfolios.”

The incomparable @jansen_henschel presenting during @WordCampLAX #wclax #prodigy pic.twitter.com/pOSBreuEaX

— BoldGrid (@boldgrid) October 3, 2017

The title turned out to be a bit of a misnomer, as this was no ordinary kid. Young Jansen can already code in HTML, CSS, Javascript, C#, Ruby, Rails, Python, WordPress, and other languages and studies college level calculus. With a poise and understanding far in excess of his years, he made a presentation full of humor, insight, and technical detail that kept the audience’s rapt attention for the full hour and made Jansen a star for the rest of the event.  Check out this video of his presentation: https://www.pscp.tv/w/1mrGmmydRMWGy?t=8s Overall, the interest and enthusiasm about BoldGrid at this event left the team feeling happy, excited, energized, and looking forward to the next one.