Still Buzzing from Codebar Unconference 11: A Day of Grassroots Tech Magic at Google HQ London

Still Buzzing from Codebar Unconference 11: A Day of Grassroots Tech Magic at Google HQ London 🐝

Hello, fellow coding enthusiasts! 👋🏻

If you’ve ever left a tech event feeling truly energized—not just from the coffee, but from the people, the ideas, and the raw, unfiltered passion in the room—then you’ll understand why I’m still riding the high from Codebar Unconference 11, held this past Saturday at Google’s stunning HQ in London.

This wasn’t your typical conference. There were no keynote speakers flown in from Silicon Valley. No corporate sponsors plastering logos on every slide. No rigid schedules dictated from the top down.

This was an unconference—a beautiful, chaotic, democratic celebration of learning, sharing, and community. And it was electric.

What Makes an Unconference So Special?

For the uninitiated: an unconference flips the traditional conference model on its head.

🫵🏻 You pitch the talks.
🫵🏻 You vote on the schedule.
🫵🏻 You decide what matters.

On Saturday morning, we gathered in Google’s Major Tom auditorium. Dozens of us scribbled down session ideas and pitched them to the room:

• “Web Portfolios in 30 seconds using JSON & AI”
• “Junior vs. AI”
• “From Hello World to Side Projects: Building in Public”
• “Introduction to Tokenization”
• “Career Advice Side Quest: Networking Without Being Weird”
• “First Steps in Sustainable Development”
• “Mindmaps in React – Visualizing State Like a Pro”
• “Kubernetes for the Rest of Us”

Within 30 minutes, the schedule board was packed. The energy was palpable. No one was “above” anyone else. Whether you were a junior dev or a staff engineer, your voice mattered.

That’s the magic of Codebar.

The Sessions That Stole My Heart (and Brain)

With so many great talks running in parallel, choosing was agonizing. I wish I’d had a clone (or three). Here’s what I managed to catch—and why each one left a mark:

1. From Hello World to Side Projects

Led by a developer who’d gone from bootcamp grad to shipping three open-source tools in under a year, this session was pure inspiration. Key takeaways:

• Start ridiculously small. Your first commit can literally be console.log("hello").
• Ship early, ship ugly, ship often.
• Use GitHub Pages + Netlify to deploy in minutes.
• Document your failures—they’re your best content.

“Side projects aren’t about perfection. They’re about proof.” 💁🏼‍♀️

2. Career Advice Side Quest: How to Network Without Being Weird

This one hit close to home. We’ve all been there: standing awkwardly at a meetup, business card in hand, rehearsing a pitch that sounds like a sales script.

The facilitator broke it down into actionable, human steps:

• Lead with curiosity: “What are you working on?” beats “What do you do?” every time.
• Follow-up is magic: Send a meme, a resource, or a “thinking of you” note within 48 hours.
• Be a connector: Introduce two people who should know each other. You’ll be remembered.

3. Mindmaps in React 🗺️

Okay, this one was a revelation. Using libraries like react-mindmap and d3, the presenter built a live, interactive mind map where nodes represented components, and edges showed data flow.

Mind. Blown.

I walked away with:

• A Figma template for component planning
• A CodeSandbox starter kit
• A new appreciation for visual debugging

4. Kubernetes – Beyond the Buzzword

I’ll be honest: I’ve always found K8s intimidating. But this hands-on workshop demystified it with a live minikube cluster and a simple Node.js app.

We:

• Wrote a Deployment YAML in under 5 minutes
• Exposed it with a Service
• Scaled it with one command
• Watched it heal itself when we “killed” a pod

No slides. Just terminals, laughter, and collective “Aha!” moments.

The People: The Real MVPs

Tech events are only as good as the humans in the room. And this one? Overflowing with legends.

Shoutouts to all of the brilliant minds I had the pleasure of meeting:

And of course, the incredible Codebar organizers—volunteers who poured their hearts into making this free, inclusive, and joyful.

You all made this day unforgettable.

The Unconference Ethos: Learning from Peers, Not Podiums

There’s something profoundly humbling about learning from someone who’s just one step ahead of you.

No ego. No gatekeeping. Just shared struggle and collective growth.

“The sharpest insights don’t come from the main stage. They come from the person sitting next to you, debugging the same error at 2 a.m.”

Codebar proves that when you open the doors wide—to beginners, career switchers, underrepresented voices, and curious tinkerers—magic happens.

Thank You, Codebar. Thank You, Google. 🙏🏻

Huge gratitude to:

• Codebar for creating and sustaining this inclusive, grassroots community.
• Google London for opening their beautiful offices and fueling us with coffee, snacks, and a literal mountain of chips! 🍟

Want In Next Time?

If you’re in tech (or want to be), get involved with Codebar:

• Attend a local workshop
• Host or coach at an event
• Join the Slack community
• Pitch a talk at the next unconference!

You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to care.

Still buzzing. Still grateful. Still learning.

Happy coding! Stephie Oj. 🐙💖