React Finland

As we had to cancel React Finland 2020, we moved the event to 2021. The original reason for cancellation, the pandemic, is still on-going, and we monitor the situation day by day. That said, we’re committed to organizing an event this year, even if it means going entirely online.

In this post, I outline our plan and invite you to take part in our planning process.

TLDR; Take part in our call for participants to shape the conference. The conference takes place from 30th of August to 3rd of September with an online fallback.

The plan for React Finland 2021#

The conference will be held from 30th of August to 3rd of September and last an entire week. If the situation permits, we’ll run a live portion for the last two days. The first three days are about networking and learning together.

Three days of learning together, two days of conference#

The first three days are dedicated to online workshops and smaller, topic-specific sessions. Given connecting people around themes is one of the building blocks of React Finland, going this way feels like a decent way to do it. In a live conference, this usually happens during the breaks and outside of the official program. In the approach, we’ll provide the same opportunity but online.

The last two days of the event will go more in-depth around the topics that were discussed during the week. I expect some of this content will be emergent. Instead of focusing on talks, our focus is on interactivity.

Live event is optional and arranged if the situation allows#

At the moment, there’s a chance that we’ll be able to run a parallel live event in Finland, especially for the local participants, but we won’t know for sure until it’s May. In case we can run live, it’s going to be a mix of local speakers and remote ones while we’ll make sure the content is accessible online as well.

To get going with the plan, we’re happy to invite you to take part in our call for participants. We want to know what kind of topics you want to learn about and what you expect from the coming event so we can refine our plan further.

What about my ticket for React Finland 2020?#

Our original commitment was that you can move your ticket to our next live event. As it seems unlikely that international travel will be feasible in 2021, we’re happy to let you move your ticket to the following year.

That said, especially for Finnish nationals, it seems it’s possible to use your ticket this year, assuming we can run the live portion. As mentioned, we’ll know more in May as we have to make a final decision on this.

Likely the majority of the online portion of React Finland 2021 will be available for free. Online workshops will be a paid offering. Ideally, we can provide local classrooms if the situation allows it, but only time will tell.

The financial challenge is to find models that allow us to keep going despite the challenging situation. So far, we haven’t been lucky with government support. That said, we are grateful to our sponsors for their understanding and commitment.

Conclusion#

It seems unlikely we can run a full-blown live version of React Finland this year. That said, we’re committed to organizing a hybrid event with an online fallback. It’s challenging, yet simultaneously we’re confident that we’ll be able to run a good conference for everyone involved and not let the pandemic beat us.

To help us shape the 2021 event, take part in our call for participants.