React Finland

The call for papers for React Finland 2021 is close to done and it's a good time to give you idea of what's to come. Due to the worsening pandemic situation in Finland, we've moved our focus fully online. As an exception, there will be a small live event in Vienna during the conference week but apart from that we'll remain online as it's the safest and most responsible option in these difficult times. We're still committed to organizing a live event in late May, 2022, and we believe the situation will have improved enough by then.

The conference program has condensed in one week. We have a late vodcast style session for each day. The first two days are filled with workshops and the last three have the main content with varying themes.

For those registered, we'll provide access to an online venue where you can meet other visitors so be sure to hit "Register" to get your spot.

Workshops#

We have settled with six workshops:

• Modeling React Apps with XState - David Khourshid - Starts from 99€ - Cancelled due to low demand
• Video on the web - Doug Sillars - Starts from 79€ - Cancelled due to low demand
• Testing React Native Apps Using Cypress - Gleb Bahmutov - Starts from 79€ - Cancelled due to low demand
• Current state of SSR in React, its limitations and its future - Jan Peer Stöcklmair - Free
• MicroFrontends in React - David Leitner - Starts from 99 € - Cancelled due to low demand
• Powering Next.js with Drupal - David Corbacho Roman and Mario Vercellotti - Free

The workshops span from three to four hours and it's a good chance to dig into a topic you want to learn more about in an efficient manner. A couple of hours with an expert can save many hours of googling.

To respect the time of our instructors, the workshops will only be held if enough people sign up so make sure to refer them to your friends as well.

Vodcasts#

Instead of trying to move a live conference online, we decided to go another way. Through experimentation at our YouTube channel, we found out a couple of things:

1. Online content should be short and to the point to be interesting
2. It's important to provide interactivity
3. It's better to have a small, active audience than a large passive one

Due to this reason, we'll run all of the conference content in a vodcast format. Each session takes about 1.5 hours and there are three speakers with a 15 minute slot for each. Between the slots, there's QA for which we pull your comments from YouTube and Twitch. The sessions aren't completely predefined and there's room for maneuver based on your input.

All the sessions will be streamed live with closed captions and they'll be available immediately to be watched later. You can shape the sessions only by participating live, though.

See our YouTube channel to understand what the vodcasts looks like in practice

Vodcast picks#

The conference schedule has the broadest collection of topics React Finland has ever had. It's largely possible due to the fact that we were able to invite speakers from all around the world due to smaller budget constraints. That said, we're still compensating our speakers monetarily so that they don't have to do this for nothing as we appreciate their time. Just because it's online doesn't mean you shouldn't get paid after all.

To give you some idea of what's to come, we'll cover themes like architecture, styling, content management, state machines, GraphQL, techniques, frameworks, documentation, accessibility, React Native, testing, scaling, specific techniques, and the future of work. It's within these themes where you'll find some specific demonstrations/talks.

We'll discuss topics like xstate, how to make games, solid.js, hooks, web components, micro frontends, css-in-js, zero-runtime css-in-typescript, headless CMSs, state machines and statecharts, GraphQL automation, CDNs, Apollo Federation, delegation, Verdaccio, zero build pipelines, Aleph.js, Deno, SSR & SSG, documentation, low-hanging accessibility fruits, internationalization, the legal side of accessibility, screenshot testing, integration testing, micro animations, KISS for design systems, documenting your components, monorepos with Nx, video streaming, scaling branding and theming, security, the future of software development in Finland, inclusivity, and how to become a React developer. That's not to say we won't cover more topics than this but at least these topics are guaranteed.

Given there's so much content, we don't expect you can follow all the content live. It's more about finding the sessions that make the most sense for you and perhaps participating in those. The short session length makes it easier to participate in the bits that are relevant for you.

What about my ticket?#

If you already have a ticket for our last year's (2020) event, it's automatically moved to the next year.

Conclusion#

Although the conference is forced mostly online, we're confident the conference week will be full of excitement and fresh ideas. Although React itself is somewhat stable and popular, I believe this year's React Finland will be able to contribute in a positive way to the ever growing React community and ecosystem in its own way.