WebAssembly (abbreviated Wasm) is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. Wasm is designed as a portable target for compilation of high-level languages like C/C++/Rust, enabling deployment on the web for client and server applications.
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WebAssembly is designed to maintain the versionless, feature-tested, and backwards-compatible nature of the web. WebAssembly modules will be able to call into and out of the JavaScript context and access browser functionality through the same Web APIs accessible from JavaScript. WebAssembly also supports non-web embeddings. (Source - webassembly.org)
WebAssembly Live! Extended Speakers
FEATURED INDUSTRY EXPERTS
01
SecondState

Tim McCallum
Works @SecondStateInc
Tim is a prolific open source software contributor as well as a researcher and writer. Tim writes Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for SecondState; who have software developers and team members in Dallas, Austin, Beijing, Shanghai, HongKong Taipei and of course Australia, where Tim is permanently based.
Second State builds the next generation open source “operating system” for the cloud and the decentralized web. The Second State Virtual Machine (SSVM) is a WebAssembly runtime optimized for server-side applications. It works seamlessly with existing application frameworks, such as Node.js, but provides a secure and lightweight runtime at native performance. It is a managed alternative to native code, and is ideal for building AI and big data microservices. The SSVM also powers decentralized applications as the execution engine for leading public blockchains, such as Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum Classic, Polkadot / Web3, Oasis, and CyberMiles. Second State is a Venture Capital backed startup with offices in USA, Taiwan, Mainland China, and Australia.
Connor Hicks
Software Developer, 1Password
Creator, Suborbital
Connor Hicks is a software developer based in Ottawa, Canada. Connor works on security and distributed systems projects, leading Product Discovery at 1Password as well as building the Suborbital open source project. Connor is a strong believer in building security and privacy into the core of all software, and is exploring the next generation of web service development with technologies like WebAssembly.

02
Suborbital
Gen Ashley - Host/Moderator
Founder, TECH(K)NOW
Lead, Google Developer Group London
Lead, NASA Space Apps Challenge London
Ambassador, Google Women Techmakers
Gen is the Founder of TECH(K)NOW Day - a conference focused on Women in Technology. She is a very active leader in the Tech community in London and is an Ambassador for Google Women Techmakers. She is also a lead for NASA Space Apps Challenge London, Twitter Developer Community London and Google Developer Groups London. She is also part of the leadership committee for Ada's List (a network for women in technology).. She was the Head of Developer Outreach at Skills Matter and a former VP at Citigroup. Gen helped lead Anita Borg Institute London and was actively instrumental in delivering the very first 1-Day Grace Hopper Conference in Europe (GHC/1 which is now called HopperX1) which was held in London. She was Director of Women Who Code London and built up a community of around 6000 women in tech.

04
TECH(K)NOW
07
Shopify

Mitch Dickinson
Engineering Manager, Shopify
Mitch Dickinson is an Engineering Manager at Shopify, where he's worked for more than 2 years, in Waterloo, Canada. Most recently, he has been leading the effort on using WebAssembly to make a more extensible commerce platform for all Shopify merchants.
Prior to joining Shopify, Mitch helped build several startups in the Waterloo region. He loves working on scrappy teams and solving tough customer problems with innovative use of technology.
Jay Phelps - Panelist
Co-Founder, Outsmartly
Previous - Senior Software Engineer, Citadel Securities & Netflix
Jay is a Reactive Programming nut and compiler/language design enthusiast. He has contributed to various open source projects like Binaryen and AssemblyScript, is a W3C WebAssembly Community Group member, was previously on the core team of RxJS, and is the author of git-blame-someone-else.

06
​
Outsmartly
WebAssembly Live! London Speakers - September 18, 2020
The Panelists
FEATURED WASM LEADERS
03
Scott Logic

Colin Eberhardt - Panelist
Technology Director, Scott Logic
Colin Eberhardt is the Technology Director at Scott Logic, a UK-based software consultancy where they create complex application for their financial services clients. He is an avid technology enthusiast, spending his evenings contributing to open source projects, writing blog posts and learning as much as he can.
Gen Ashley - Moderator
Founder, TECH(K)NOW
Lead, Google Developer Group London
Lead, NASA Space Apps Challenge London
Ambassador, Google Women Techmakers
Gen is the Founder of TECH(K)NOW Day - a conference focused on Women in Technology. She is a very active leader in the Tech community in London and is an Ambassador for Google Women Techmakers. She is also a lead for NASA Space Apps Challenge London, Twitter Developer Community London and Google Developer Groups London. She is also part of the leadership committee for Ada's List (a network for women in technology).. She was the Head of Developer Outreach at Skills Matter and a former VP at Citigroup. Gen helped lead Anita Borg Institute London and was actively instrumental in delivering the very first 1-Day Grace Hopper Conference in Europe (GHC/1 which is now called HopperX1) which was held in London. She was Director of Women Who Code London and built up a community of around 6000 women in tech.

04
TECH(K)NOW
The Speakers
FEATURED INDUSTRY EXPERTS
Jay Phelps
Co-Founder, Outsmartly
Previous - Senior Software Engineer, Citadel Securities & Netflix
Jay is a Reactive Programming nut and compiler/language design enthusiast. He has contributed to various open source projects like Binaryen and AssemblyScript, is a W3C WebAssembly Community Group member, was previously on the core team of RxJS, and is the author of git-blame-someone-else.

02
Outsmartly
Martina Kraus
Consultant | Speaker | Trainer
Angular & WebAssembly
Martina is a Google Developer Expert in Angular and Web Technologies. As a Senior Frontend developer, she focuses on implementing highly scalable software-solution with WebAssembly and Angular.
Besides giving workshops as an Angular Trainer, she founded the JavaScript User group and is a core member of the ngGirls Team. She also organizes the German Angular conference NG-DE.

04
Google Developer Expert
05
EPAM

Vitalii Bobrov
Lead JavaScript Engineer, EPAM
Vitalii is a Lead JavaScript Engineer at EPAM Poland and co-organizer of Angular Wroclaw.
Vitalii is keeping up-to-date with the latest Web Platform features and doing great experiments with it. This guy is not just a nerd, but a tech speaker, and Web Audio enthusiast.
Ingvar Stepanyan
WebAssembly Developer Advocate, Google
Ingvar is an obsessed D2D (developer-to-developer) programmer who is excited about and have worked on various parsers, compilers, tools & specifications.
Currently looking for even more ways to help developers as a WebAssembly Developer Advocate at Google.

06
07
Wasm3 / Blynk

Volodymyr Shymanskyy
Co-founder/Systems Architect, Blynk IoT Platform
Volodymyr is co-author of Wasm3, the fastest WebAssembly interpreter. He combines his technical skills and product development, constantly exploring new possibilities and experimenting with technologies like Distributed Computing, Web Bluetooth, LoRaWAN, Embedded/IoT and of course WebAssembly.
Also, he's giving workshops and creates some funny prototypes from time to time.
Mitch Dickinson
Engineering Manager, Shopify
Mitch Dickinson is an Engineering Manager at Shopify, where he's worked for 18 months in Waterloo, Canada. Most recently, he has been leading the effort on using WebAssembly to make a more extensible commerce platform for all Shopify merchants.
Prior to joining Shopify, Mitch helped build several startups in the Waterloo region. He loves working on scrappy teams and solving tough customer problems with innovative use of technology.

08
Shopify
Schedule
Times are in BST or UTC+1
TALKS from SEPTEMBER 18, 2020
01:00pm - 01:15pm
Welcome, Intros
01:10pm - 01:30pm
Mini Panel Discussion
01:30pm -
2:00pm
Ingvar Stepanyan - Asyncifying WebAssembly for the Modern Web
WebAssembly is great as a target for a low-level code, but in order to do something useful, it needs to interact with the outer world. On the Web, this means performing all sorts of I/O through Web APIs, and here comes the challenge: they are designed to be asynchronous, but WebAssembly is not.
Let's take a look at this problem and see how it can be fixed, as well as at some examples we can build by combining power of both modern Web APIs and a fast native compilation target.

02:00pm -
02:30pm
Martina Krauss - WebAssembly All The Things
Best practices for building tiny web-bundles

02:30pm -
03:00pm
Vitalii Bobrov - The Future of Audio Processing in the Web
WebAssembly opens a door for professional-grade audio software for the Web, allowing to compile plugins written in C, C++, or Faust. Faust is not only the tragic play by Goethe but a programming language for digital signal processing (DSP). During the talk, I compile Faust plugins right in online IDE into WebAssembly and load them as Web Audio Modules into a web-based guitar processing app.

03:00pm - 03:15pm
Coffee Break
03:15pm -
03:45pm
Sven Sauleau - More WebAssembly in Your Projects
The WebAssembly Community Group is actively working on improving the interoperability between languages, allowing a seamless integration in our day to day projects.

03:45pm -
04:15pm
Volodymyr Shymanskyy - Wasm3
The Story. Why interpreters? IoT Applications. BBC Microbit Demo. Tools. Wasm and Wasi metainterpretation. Challenges and What's Next?

04:15pm -
05:00pm
Jay Phelps - Compiling Your Own Language to WebAssembly
Creating your own programming language, even a simple one, can be extremely rewarding. Not only is it fun to experiment with new syntax designs, but demystifying how they work can help you better understand the benefits, tradeoffs, and optimization strategies of the popular programming languages you use day-to-day.
In this talk, we’ll cover the basics that make up a compiler, discuss tips on language design, and make our own simple programming language that compiles to WebAssembly.

05:00pm -
05:30pm
Mitch Dickinson - Making Commerce Extensible with WebAssembly
Over the past 15 years, Shopify has built a globally distributed, commerce platform. We have one of the largest Rails monoliths on earth. A core mandate is to keep this codebase simple, only building what most merchants need most of the time. To support additional requirements, we need advanced customization tools pluggable by third parties. These customizations need to be synchronous, secure and lightning fast.
To solve this problem, we have turned to WebAssembly on the server. Our team is building a synchronous customization platform on top of WebAssembly. We are building a developer SDK using AssemblyScript and Lucet that will allow partners to write synchronous plugins to our commerce platform. This talk will cover the architecture of this solution and it will go deep on how WebAssembly has enabled us to run untrusted code in a fast and secure way. This involved building a layer around Lucet that allows us to represent and transmit higher level data types to and from WASM modules. With WASM we are able to run these plugins securely and guarantee a result in just a few milliseconds.
And with good developer tools and enough hooks on top of our monolith, we will be able to allow third parties to extend our commerce platform.

05:30pm -
06:15pm
Aaron Turner - WebAssembly & AssemblyScript in 2020
A look at the growth of the AssemblyScript & WebAssembly community. With some thoughts on how WebAssembly & AssemblyScript are being used, and how you can get involved!

06:15pm -
07:00pm
Panel Discussion and Q&A with Ben Smith, Alon Zakai, Colin Eberhardt
Join us for this exciting panel discussion and Q&A with Wasm Leaders Ben Smith, Alon Zakai and Colin Eberhardt!




Book Your Free Ticket
Schedule
Times are in British Summer Time (BST or UTC+1 or GMT+1)
TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 2021
02:00pm - 02:15pm
Welcome, Intros
02:15pm -
03:00pm
Tim McCallum - The path from on-premises infrastructure to zero-infrastructure: Powered by WebAssembly
Traditional web applications, which use the on-premises architecture model, require many bricks-and-mortar components. These include buildings, servers, generators, cabling, air-conditioning services and much more. In addition to this, there are costs associated with hiring, housing and managing professional Information Technology (IT) staff, in areas such as system administration, security and so forth. There is no doubt that moving to cloud computing solutions provide reductions in cost and increases in efficiency. However, the paradigm has shifted and the stand-alone, stack-based, WebAssembly (Wasm) Virtual Machine (VM) architecture has ushered in a way for untrusted code to be executed in a sandboxed environment. Second State has built what can be best described as an Anything as a Service offering for the open web. Now users from a myriad of different schools, startups, projects and companies can efficiently share cloud server infrastructure safely without jumping through any of the traditional cloud computing hoops. Anyone can launch and execute custom code via the open web without being tied into a monolithic cloud provider. No usernames, no passwords, no proprietary authentication or access control. Just secure HTTP requests on the open web. In addition to changing server-based services, this new technology brings end-user apps back to the web, where they belong. No more app store rules, review processes or proprietary application frameworks. Now, Javascript, APIs and Markup are all that are required to build sophisticated applications for the web.

03:00pm -
03:30pm
Yuta Saito - Porting Swift to WebAssembly
WebAssembly is now a compilation target of Swift. SwiftWasm project compiles Swift into Wasm using LLVM. It was an interesting challenge because Swift uses some architecture-dependent techniques. This talk covers the story of bringing Swift to WebAssembly: Porting the Swift compiler, interacting with JavaScript, interoperation of async API using JavaScript event loop.

03:30pm -
04:00pm
Coffee Break
04:00pm -
04:30pm
Connor Hicks - Building function-based server applications using WebAssembly
WebAssembly can help us build server-side applications with some incredibly desirable properties; isolated execution, near-native performance, polyglot codebases, and more. I've spent the past year building a framework called Atmo that will empower developers to build applications in their favorite languages, and deploy them extremely easily using WebAssembly and modern tooling. I'll give a deep dive into how Atmo works, and how it will make building web applications easy and secure.

04:30pm -
05:00pm
Robert Aboukhalil - WebAssembly and SIMD: A match made in the browser
This talk explores how WebAssembly SIMD can enable compute-intensive calculations in the browser. I'll showcase a concrete scenario where WebAssembly SIMD results in order-of-magnitude speedups. As we'll see, while WebAssembly makes it *possible* to run compute-intensive tools in the browser, it is SIMD’s performance that makes it *practical* to do so.

05:00pm -
06:00pm
Panel Discussion and Q&A with Jay Phelps, Mitch Dickinson, Connor Hicks, Robert Aboukhalil, moderated by Gen Ashley
Join us for this exciting panel discussion and Q&A




