Personal projects

I'm currently contributing (or have contributed) my time to the following communities:

  • Front-end Development South Africa (FEDSA)

    I manage the daily operations of this 6000+ member, non-profit organization. It was co-founded with two good friends, Justin Slack and Shailen Naidoo, in order to advocate for and support various efforts to improve the state of front-end development in South Africa.

  • ZA Tech and ZA Product Design

    I spend a fair bit of time attending to administrative tasks on both ZA Tech, a 17 000+ member Slack workspace used by the South Africa tech community at large, and it's sister workspace ZA Product Design.

  • Codebridge (2017 - 2023)

    I ran this 2500+ member organisation alongside JD Bothma. Codebridge used to be an open-community exploring the intersection between technology and social good.

I've also contributed to the following open-source projects:

Teaching

I'm currently (or have previously) teached/created the following courses:

Here are some interviews, talks and articles I've written:

  • 🎪 UX South Africa 2024: Everyday From Footguns
  • 🎪 Wordcamp 2024: CSS View Transitions: The Future of Animation on the Web
  • 🎪 UX South Africa 2023: When Design Systems Go Bad
  • 🎪 DevConf 2023: Mental Illness and Vurnerability in Tech
  • 🎪 DevConf Conference 2022: Introduction to Web Components
  • 🎪 NodeJS Africa Conference: The Good Parts: 15 Years Later
  • 📻 Mycelium Network Podcast: Episode 007
  • 📻 Kode vir Khakis: Episode 004
  • ✍ CSS Tricks: Using Feature Detection to Write CSS with Cross-Browser Support
  • ✍ Free Code Camp: A Guide to GraphQL for front-end developers
  • ✍ Prototypr: Setting yourself up for failure
    • Client-work

    I've consulted and/or worked alongside the following teams:

    I've also worked alongside some super-talented individuals:

    • Head of Tech
      RunwaySale

      “I worked with Schalk during my tenure as Head of Tech for RunwaySale. From the first interview you could tell that Schalk had expert knowledge about the web, and in particular the front-end.

      Schalk's thirst for knowledge and quest for producing great solutions was infectious.At the time RunwaySale was running on the Magento 1 platform, and Magento's frontend-templating system, is well-known for being unfriendly towards developers. Yet Schalk, having no Magento knowledge, led the re-design of the RunwaySale website.

      He invested in building a knowledgeable team, and promoted study courses which would up skill the frontend team.”

    • CTO
      Umazi

      “It is an absolute pleasure having Schalk part of the team.

      Even though he is part-time, he takes extra care to fit within the team's culture and process - he also is equally committed to the success of the deliverables.The quality of his work has been exceptional. He has a keen eye for UI/UX, so he will not simply execute but give feedback on improvements that can be made.

      Lastly, the team has greatly appreciated having him involved seeing that he has extensive experience and knowledge of the latest trends, best practices and patterns, and a willingness to mentor others in these areas.”

    • Co-Founder
      Palmetrics

      “Schalk is extremely proficient in the technologies that he works with, but does not confine himself only to the technical aspect.

      Schalk takes the initiative to understand the bigger problem being solved and the use case of the task at hand and will take the lead to suggest implementations that may be more suitable.

      It is easy to see that he is passionate about his work. He is an easy individual to work with and brings value to every project that is fortunate to have his participation.”