London.js at Checkatrade on Tuesday 29th April 2025 🧱

Kicking off our Q2 events for 2025...

Join **London.js** on Tuesday 29th April 2025 from 6pm hosted by Checkatrade

📣 Register now to avoid disappointment as **London.js** access is limited and spaces fill fast!

Doors open at 6:00pm, **London.js** starts at 6:30pm, ends 9pm.

Address - Focus Point, 21 Caledonian Road, London, N1 9GB
Map - https://maps.app.goo.gl/kjALja9faQ4T3Wo28

Our April Talks 🌈💻🌍

Sam Larsen-Disney - Founder @ HackathonParty & Senior Design Engineer @ Clarify - From Chaos to Clicks: What HackathonParty taught us about productionising a side project

What happens when you take a side project from late-night idea to real-time product used by hundreds of hackers? In this talk, Sam will share how building HackathonParty—and testing it live at hackathons—taught them what it really takes to productionise a chaotic little JS tool into something people rely on under pressure.

Shane Osbourne - Senior Software Engineer at DuckDuckGo - 3 steps towards faster deployments

Teams that optimise for faster deployments also fix bugs quicker, get feedback sooner, and ship better code. Learn these three practical steps to speed up your projects and make engineering decisions that everyone will thank you for.

Craig Bates & Alex Kharlanovskyi - Engineering at Checkatrade - Search Unchained: How Checkatrade Replaced Elasticsearch with a Custom, AI-Ready Stack

In this talk, we’ll share the journey of moving off Elasticsearch to a custom-built search solution powered by TypeScript services and Postgres with advanced custom indexing. Discover how integrating GoRules empowered our business stakeholders to directly control search behaviour, adapting dynamically to supply and demand. We’ll also explore how our data scientists enhanced search relevance with custom ML/AI ranking functions. This shift is not only helping to reduce our SaaS costs but also lowered the barrier for engineers across multiple teams to contribute to search innovation—enabling faster delivery of new products like sponsored listings and entirely new search-driven features at Checkatrade. Join us to learn how we unlocked flexibility, collaboration, and smarter search at scale.

Our Sponsors

Checkatrade, the UK's leading platform for home improvement, has connected consumers with trusted tradespeople for over 25 years. With a network of more than 50,000 vetted trade businesses, Checkatrade facilitates over three million jobs and £7 billion of business for UK SMEs annually.

*Come to *London.js** & learn more about the changing face of JavaScript.

We're a very inclusive meet-up representing a diverse community of awesome engineers 🌈

The London.js organisers

James McLeod, Open Source Program Lead, NatWest Group
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmcleod/

Jordan Potts, Head of Contract, Albany Growth
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-potts-numi/

Will Laing, Co-Founder, Plan:it
https://www.linkedin.com/in/willhlaing/
https://weareplanit.com/

Refreshments
A variety of food & drink will be served. We will endeavour to cater for allergies & dietary requirements. This won't just be pizza & beer either...

Things to note

• A desire to explore JavaScript from different points of view is absolutely recommended
• Feel free to bring your JS projects along
• All engineering levels are welcome
• Please RSVP to secure a place
• Please ask plus 1's to sign up to the group & RSVP
• Spaces are limited so techies get priority

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Code of conduct: http://confcodeofconduct.com