React Finland

TL;DR; The tickets are here.

The third edition of React Finland will take place 25-29.05.2020. The workshops take place from 25th to 27th of May while the two day conference is held between 28th and 29th. The week will end in an afterparty and most likely the local community will arrange side events during the workshop days so you have unofficial program at side.

React Finland will be followed by a future-oriented live coding conference, Freezing Edge, that will be held for the first time. Compared to React Finland, the scope is broader and the approach is different. Like React Finland, Freezing Edge is a single conference as well but it's more experimental by its nature while it aims to bridge developers across different domains while showing the future of development.

Single Track#

As with the previous editions of React Finland, this time we'll follow single track format as well. The event will take place in Paasitorni. We've capped the amount of people to 400 to keep the conference relatively small as the size gives the conference its own flavor. Technically we could fit more but it's a good amount regardless.

Three Days of Workshops#

Compared to the previous year, this year we'll have three days of workshops. Three of them has been designed as a design systems trilogy so you can go from close to zero experience with design systems into someone who can begin to implement them in practice. I've listed the highlights of the setup below:

• Each workshop is provided in a full-day format (9:00-17:30 including breaks)
• The price includes a light breakfast, lunch, and a coffee break (other drinks available as well if you don't like black Finnish coffee)
• The workshops take place during three days. This means you'll have a chance to learn about multiple topics in-depth and we'll give you a discount if you decide to do so.
• On 25th, we'll start the conference with a single workshop - Design Systems 101. This beginner-level workshop gives understanding on how to create and maintain your own design systems.
• On 26h, we'll continue with the following workshops - Modeling React Applications with Statecharts, Advanced React, From Legacy to React, Full stack apps with React and AWS, Test React Applications, Modern Forms with React, Design Systems for React Developers
• On 27th, Kent will hold React Performance workshop (replaces the testing one), Design Systems for React Developers is replaced with Resilient Component Libraries with React, and Full stack apps with React and AWS is replaced with a React Native workshop.

I believe the setup we have lets you tailor a curriculum that fits your needs. Often a workshop is run twice so you'll have more flexibility should you want to participate in a specific one. As with the conference, we follow tiered pricing based on demand so if you buy early, you'll get your tickets cheaper.

Two Main Themes, 20 Speakers#

Themed sessions is one of the ingredients that makes React Finland the conference it is. In 2020, we're going one step further by theming entire days. The first day of the conference will be legacy themed while the second day is focused on the future.

As a developer, I often find myself working with legacy systems. That said, often all the discussion seems to be future-oriented. Because of this, we'll spend the first day of React Finland looking at legacy related topics and figure out how to deal with an aging codebase and maintain our sites and applications effectively.

The second day of the conference takes a look at the future and tries to imagine what React development might look like tomorrow.

Within these overall themes, we'll still have themed sessions as usual. We still haven't specified them exactly, but they'll become clear as the conference approaches. In contrast to other conferences, we choose speakers, not topics (no CFP) and then design the program to fit the roster.

So far we've confirmed 19 of 20 speakers we aim to have. We haven't fixed exact topics yet but you can learn about our speakers below:

• Rachel Nabors - You might know Rachel from her animation work. These days she works in React core team.
• Kent C. Dodds - Kent C. Dodds is one of the better known React educators. If you have ever used react-testing-library, you know who I'm talking about.
• Nader Dabit - Nader is one of the regular faces in the React community. Most likely he'll show us the future of JAMStack.
• David Khourshid - David has the rare honor of taking part in React Finland for the third time as a speaker. As usual, I expect him to blow our minds with something related to statecharts!
• Farzad Yz - Farzad, a local developer, will show us how to tame UI complexity using finite state machines.
• Jared Palmer - Jared is perhaps most well known for developing Formik, a form solution for React. He has developed numerous other packages as well and you might recognize him from those.
• Nik Graf - I've heard Finland is one of Nik's favorite countries so I'm happy to welcome him back to React Finland.
• Tejas Kumar - Tejas is a well known figure in the React community and after stunning Finland in 2019 now he is coming back!
• Tae'lur Alexis - Tae'lur is the founder of Code Everyday.
• Jeremy Wagner - Jeremy has heavy focus on performance in his work and in his endnote, he'll show us how to make it boring!
• Rebecca Hill - Although we spend plenty of time debugging, often we don't spend time learning the tools. Rebecca will show us how to debug effectively with React.
• Monica Lent - Monica gave a stunning talk in the previous React Finland and now she is back. I would expect an amazing session again.
• Laura González - Laura is a developer at Facebook.
• Madalyn Rose Parker - Madalyn from Gatsby will discuss accessibility in the context of React.
• Kenigbolo Meya Stephen - Kenigbolo, a local developer, will likely give a legacy system related talk.
• Ivan Orlov - Ivan is the main developer of FuseBox bundler. It has first class support for TypeScript and the tool represents the new wave of bundlers.
• Vivek Nayyar - Vivek will show us how to keep a codebase up to date with the power of codemods.
• Emma Wedekind - Emma is a well-known figure in the React community.
• Isa Silveira - Isa will deliver the endnote of the conference but I'll keep that one as a surprise.

As mentioned earlier, the exact themes and topics will emerge over time. Especially with a technology like React, it's better to fix these things rather later than sooner given changes can happen so fast.

Eight Lightning Talks#

In contrast to earlier years, now we'll run lightning talks during the breaks in parallel with panels. Doing this addresses a couple of problems we've encountered so far:

• It lets us to include more casual content to the schedule.
• It allows us to get inexperienced speakers on stage and give them experience in a conference setting.
• Usually I get feedback for a lack of a call for papers (CFP) procedure and doing this lets us address this concern to some extent.
• It allows more spontaneous talks to occur as likely we won't fill all slots before the conference.

To make this possible, we'll do slightly longer breaks (45 minutes over 30 minutes) but in return you can either hangout at the sponsor lounges, check out lightning talks, or participate in the panels.

Four Panels#

At the same time with the lightning talks, we'll run panels with the speakers of the previous session. We'll do this in collaboration with the webbidevaus podcast and it's going to be a podcast recording held live!

Doing this lets us to get panels back to the conference and I believe it helps us to interact with our valued speakers in a meaningful manner as we won't run QA for the talks. Instead, we expect panels and long breaks address the need for interaction with speakers.

Two MCs#

As last year, Jani Eväkallio and Sara Vieira will MC the conference. They'll make sure we'll stay awake and entertained for the entire conference.

Two Parties#

To follow the convention from the last year, we'll organize an alcohol free show after the first day. All I can say is that it will be something developers will appreciate.

The afterparty following the second day of the conference will have alcoholic and non-alcoholic options and we'll do our best to provide good space for different kinds of people again as some of us might not enjoy loud music and such.

Conclusion#

I believe React Finland 2020 will be a great event. We are taking the same format with careful tweaks and hope to push it a notch further. The pricing begins from 299€ and you can buy tickets now.

If one conference isn't enough, check out Freezing Edge 2020. It's a live coding focused conference held right after React Finland on 1st of June. Technically the scope is far broader and you should expect to learn what's coming while learning more about other domains of development.

React Finland 2019 - Mood Video#

To get an idea of what React Finland 2020 will be like, consider the mood video from 2019: