Trek Glowacki on Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-organizer | UGtastic Archive

August 23, 2026 • UGtastic Archive

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Hi, it's Mike with UGtastic! In this conversation recorded on-site at Groupon in Chicago, I sit down with Trek Glowacki to discuss Ember.js architecture, open source core teams, and organizing developer meetups.

The Interviewer

Mike Hall

Interviewer, UGtastic

The Guest

Trek Glowacki

Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer

The Conversation

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

Hi, it's Mike with UGtastic. I'm here again at Groupon, and I'm sitting here with Trek Glowacki, who co-organizes the Chicago Ember.js, but is also a member of the Ember.js Core Team. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me. So, Ember.js, right now we're in kind of a whole bunch of client-side frameworks, and Ember is one of the big ones. What got you into Ember so much that you became part of the Core Team?

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

That's a good question. Back in, I started programming in Rails, sort of serious development in Rails like a lot of people did, and I was doing mostly client work. And I got to the point that my clients, the expectations they had about what a web application could do sort of get higher and higher, thanks to things like Facebook and Gmail. And they started demanding sort of higher levels of interactivity and reactivity than a server-generated app can generate. And so at the time, like many people, I was searching for a framework, but also realizing the stuff out there wasn't very good and working on a framework. And this was around the time that a previous framework called SproutCore had been forked to sort of adopt more of web standards. And I was basically trolling Yehuda Katz on the internet, saying like, this is awful, why isn't this done yet? And his pitch was like, you know, this has been a work in progress for multiple years, and this is how far we are. If you can think of any other project that has started, go work on that. But it's a hard project, and we're the ones making the progress. And I was like, you're right, so I have to go help, because I've tried to do this myself.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

He called you out.

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

He called me out. He was like, stop complaining and start helping. And at that time, one of the major drawbacks of all the frameworks were there's just no documentation about how to use any of them. So I just cracked my laptop and started with the first file alphabetically, opened it up, read through the code, figured out what it did, and wrote the documentation for it. And I sort of did that throughout the entire framework and in doing so, basically taught myself how the whole system worked.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

Yeah, documentation is very difficult. Most people aren't very good at it.

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

Yeah, it's tough. You need someone who is both a skilled developer to sort of dive in and understand the nuances of the architecture, but also is an articulate writer. Having both of those skills is sort of complicated. I have two degrees: an undergrad in English literature and a master's degree in human-computer interaction. So I think the two of those combined is kind of like an ideal person to go around and being like, how does this work? And if the answer is nobody knows, to tell the world how it works.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

Yeah. And so you started doing this documentation. How does that transition from being a contributor to being a member of the team?

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

So at the time we didn't have like an official core team. It was just a free-for-all of people contributing however they felt they could best help. And I was doing a lot of contributions, both code and documentation. And then before the first ever conference, March of two years ago, a lot of the heavy contributors were sitting in a room and it was like, this should be our core team. These would be the people that sort of guide the framework moving forward. So it was kind of just who's here, who's contributing, who doesn't seem like a total bozo. Because in any open source project or any project in general, you get people who are heavy committers, but sort of have a weird notion about how things should be done either because of a strange perspective or limited experience. So there's the combination of like, who's committing heavily and who seems like they're not going to commit craziness into the codebase.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

Yeah. So there's trust.

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

Yep. A lot of trust involved.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

So you're involved in Ember. Now you're running a user group. How did that come out? This is your first user group.

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

Yeah. So the Ember.js user group was my first one. I kind of fell into it. There was a lot of enthusiasm in Chicago early on for Ember. I was already overwhelmed doing my full-time job here at Groupon, doing UI development, and then all my open source contributions. In a lot of ways, it's like I work two full-time jobs. And then someone was like, we should do a meetup. And I'm like, yes, you should do a meetup, and I'd be happy to attend. So he started doing those and also had limited time. So there were just a lot of mess ups in scheduling times and getting speakers. So I think we scheduled once in September of two years ago and then failed to actually hold the event like four or five times in a row. And then in January, he was just like, I can't do this anymore. And I was like, I guess it's my responsibility now.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

Yeah. So you didn't let it die.

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

I did not let it die, no.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

So you learned a lot. Did it change the way you interact with the community? I mean, before, mostly you were online communicating with people. Now you're actually meeting in meatspace with people.

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

Yeah. I mean, I learned a lot about both who's using Ember and sort of what difficulties they have, which definitely informs where public APIs need to be nicer. But I also learned a lot about running a user group. I think there's this perception that a lot of people have that it's not that hard to put one together. Or sometimes people want to charge for user groups, like five, ten bucks, and people understand like, why would you charge? They should be free. That understanding that just the materials cost of a small meetup can easily be like five, six hundred bucks. If you toss time in there, for small 30, 40-person meetup once a month, you're pushing like one, two thousand dollars worth of time, which is kind of eye-opening for me. So I'm much more appreciative now of other meetups that I go to. The hard work that goes into that is pretty impressive.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

Yeah, people don't realize the personal time that goes into that. If you think about if you're a consultant...

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

Yeah. If I were billing at my hourly rate for a meetup, it would have to be really... no one could afford it.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

Has it overall been a positive experience? Has it been enjoyable?

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

Yeah, I think it's super fun. I'm always excited to see the ways people are using Ember. Back when we started fairly early on, we were very heavily pushing for like Ember.js is for apps. It's not just a view layer, like Angular or React is. I mean, I think the React guys are basically like, we're kind of a replacement for jQuery, we're not a full application framework. And Ember is a full application framework. And we kept getting people doing presentations of like, I built this content site in Ember, or like my HTML and CSS person doesn't know a lot of JavaScript, he uses it as a rapid prototyping tool, which was just like, oh, I never would have thought people would use it that way. We're very focused on the application case. But it turns out when you end up with a meaningful set of primitives, you can compose them in all sorts of useful ways.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

Yeah, it sounds like it's more like how Rails has become: a multi-purpose, general application foundation. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me.

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

Thanks.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

And just real quick, you're on Meetup, right?

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

Yep. We're on meetup.com. Our next meetup should be later this month. When people use the meetup site to propose topics, when we have people say that sounds like a cool topic, then we go searching for a time and a venue.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking

Okay. So if you're interested in Ember and JavaScript, check out the Chicago Ember.js Meetup. Thanks!

Trek Glowacki Ember.js Core Team Member & Chicago Ember.js Co-Organizer ▶ Speaking

Yep. Thanks.