The first sfPot in 2023: UX, API & pizzas

Last week, the first sfPot of 2023 took place at UX-Republic, in Paris. A sfPot focusing on UX with the presentation of Symfony UX, but not only. We also had an introduction to the Melodiia project, and the evening continued with a social event.

The sfPot introduction: a speaker stands in front of the audience presenting a slide on a large screen.

The sfPots are the much-awaited Symfony community meetups in the Paris region. The AFSY, the French Symfony Users Association, organizes these events. It is an opportunity for the community to meet and share technical topics in a friendly atmosphere. At SensioLabs, we love these meetups. SensioLabs previously hosted a sfPot in November 2021 in Asnières (read the related blog post here).

The first sfPot of the year was on January 17th at UX-Republic. UX-Republic is an online user experience (UX) design specialist. Like SensioLabs, it belongs to the Smile group. UX-Republic welcomed us at 7 pm in their gorgeous office just in front of the Saint-Lazare train station in Paris.

Symfony UX and Melodiia in the spotlight at the sfPot

Seated attendees listening to the speaker at the sfPot 2023

UX topics are increasingly critical in Symfony. Especially since the launch of Symfony UX, led by Titouan Galopin in the Symfony core team. Since then, other initiatives have emerged, such as Turbo.

So Titouan talked about Symfony UX at the sfPot. He mentioned the main goal of Symfony UX, which is to integrate Javascript tools in a Symfony application thanks to the Stimulus framework. Symfony UX enables a back-end developer to create very advanced interfaces without always knowing about the front end. Titouan also presented the new features of Symfony UX.

Then, Maxime Veber talked about Melodiia, a new solution presented as an alternative to API Platform. Melodiia wants to simplify API management and give more flexibility to developers than API Platform. This open-source project is starting up, and Maxime described the main achievements for now. In the future, Melodiia could become a complementary tool to API Platform for API management.

The first sfPot with the Symfony community in 2023

After these exciting talks opened new perspectives on Symfony, UX and APIs, the audience continued to share at the social event. Pizzas, beers, and soft drinks were on the menu.

It was a perfect way to catch up with friends after the holiday season and meet new faces. But most of all, to share our common passion for Symfony.

The social event with pizzas, beers and drinks at the sfPot 2023

In recent years, due to Covid and health restrictions, sfPots have been scarcer. In 2023, we hope to see more regular sfPots so that the community can meet up more often. Of course, for this to happen, we need speakers: if you want to speak at an upcoming sfPot, write on the AFSY slack to Julien or Maxime.