Meet FITC featured speaker Matias Niemelä

Matias Niemelä is a core developer on the AngularJS project working primarily on animations, tutorials and documentation as well as core-level contributions. While not working on AngularJS, Matias raises the bar on tech blogging via his website yearofmoo.com. He also performs speaking engagements, attends meetups and hosts pair programming tutoring sessions. He lives in Toronto and has over 10 years of solid full-stack web development and software engineering experience.

1) Tell us about your early beginnings, how did you get your start? 

I started out by self teaching myself web development. Then programming. Then large websites. Then I studied Computer Science. And now it's been ten years. The past year and a half is when things really took off after I put a solid focus on blogging and open source and it was a huge streak of luck that AngularJS took off the way it did. My passion even got me a job working with the AnguarJS team. Guess I was at the right place at the right time.

2) For those new to the industry, how do you recommend they break in? 

Focus on something you're passionate about and put the time into getting really good at it. Then channel your efforts into helping others learn and benefit from what you have learned and the great ideas you have to offer. This could simply mean blogging, sharing ideas, tutoring, hosting talks, writing books, contributing to open source or developing something new. As long as your heart is in it and you're focussed then great things will happen.

3) Favourite cartoon character or superhero, and why? 

Ra's al Ghul (from Batman). He has genius-level intelligence and he has mastered just about everything you can think of. Plus he's immortal.

4) If you had one superpower (or wish), what would it be?

Teleportation and Psychokinesis. Also being fluent in possibly ever language in the world.

5) If you weren't doing what you are now, what would we find you up to?  

Reading, meditating or getting better at lucid dreaming while living on a snowy mountain in a Scandinavian country.

Appreciate your time, Matias! 

Matias will presenting Realtime “Eye Candy” with AngularJS at Web Unleashed in Boston November 7 and at Spotlight: Advanced JS December 7 in Toronto.