It all started in 2013 with 4 R/GA Bucharest guys – Adrian Olaru, Mihnea Belcin, Andrei Rosca and Gabi Totoliciu, who wanted to get in touch with frontend developers in Romania. That’s how the first Frontend Development Meetup in Bucharest was born. Today there are over 400 members, and the numbers keep growing. The mission, as defined by this group, is to get frontend developers under one community, so they can help each other to get better at writing code through knowledge sharing.

The First Frontend Development Meet Up

Frontend Development Meetup 3 — Getting ready for the first Frontend Development Meetup in Bucharest

As you may already know, good things come to those who wait and work hard, so after all kinds and ups and downs, the First Frontend Development Meetup took place on August 6th, at TechHub (probably the best cradle in Romania for technology geeks and startups).

The event opened with a surprising and well-received introduction by Shrek (Adi Olaru) and Hell Boy (Mihnea Belcin) about the mission of the Frontend Development Community, followed by two hours of speakers and presentations. Barry Wacksman & Chris Stutzman’s book “Connected by Design,” was also mentioned during the Q&A.

One Happy, Engaged Audience

Frontend Development Meetup 2 — Happy audience @ the first edition of Frontend Development Meetup

Around 100 people, mostly frontend developers, were present and it seemed the topics were so interesting that everyone remained throughout the whole event. The delicious snacks, free beer and Red Bull drinks given to all participants by some very good-looking girls played a part in loosening their tongues, yet if it wasn’t for Mihnea’s engaging math-driven CSS and the controversial SVG presentations, this event wouldn’t have been as successful as it was. There were at least 10 questions following each presentation, many engaging talks among the participants during the breaks, posts and pictures shared on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Relevant Content

The first Frontend Development Meetup in Bucharest @ TechHub supported by R/GA

Math-Driven CSS with Mihnea was an engaging presentation about the many ways of combining mathematics with CSS. He illustrated a number of problems developers currently have and how this can be solved with the help of mathematics. His final experiment which made use of “Leap” made the public ask for more. His presentation slides can be seen on Mihnea’s blog and an article about the same subject is already listed on R/GA’s Tech Blog

SVG with Armin was an introduction to vector graphics, and how to use them in the browser. Although his talk was introductory and he gave few practical examples, it sprung a fierce debate on performance, svg vs css and other practices.

What’s In It for R/GA Bucharest?

You may wonder why would our office would partner in such an event. Well, the answer is quite simple. Well, first of all here you’ll always meet the A-players. Those Romanian guys who do the frontend magic. Secondly, because it’s a great chance for all our frontend guys to gain more knowledge and stay updated with what Romanian tech guys are up to. Last, but not least important, it’s a chance for us to show the kind of work we do at R/GA Bucharest.

Life @ R/GA Bucharest

We have met great people here that share our passion for technology; people we would like to keep close to us, so we are definitely going to go back and talk about the cool stuff we do at R/GA. And if you would like to see how life at R/GA is, just have a look here: