Chain React is back!! Our hosts Robin and Mazen are joined by Gant Laborde and Justin Huskey to chat about the return of the wildly popular React Native conference.
Chain React is back!! Take a peek behind the curtain in this Chain React-themed episode. Robin and Mazen are joined by Gant Laborde and Justin Huskey, the organizers of the premiere U.S. React Native conference! We dive into everything you've ever wanted to know about the Chain React conference: how it started, who it's for, and why now is the perfect time to bring it back.
This episode is brought to you by Infinite Red! Infinite Red is a premier React Native design and development agency located in the USA. With five years of React Native experience and deep roots in the React Native community (hosts of Chain React and the React Native Newsletter), Infinite Red is the best choice for your next React Native app.
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Todd Werth:
Welcome everyone to React Native Radio podcast brought to you by Tai Kwon Jive, the most trusted cryptocurrency vendor in the world. Episode 265, Chain React Is Back.
Robin Heinze:
Hey, Mazen, what's that noise in the background?
Mazen Chami:
They're cutting a tree right in front of my house.
Robin Heinze:
Did you want them to cut that tree down?
Mazen Chami:
I did not. About a month or two ago, a tree doctor came from the city with a mallet. I call him a tree doctor because he had a mallet and he kept hitting the stump close to the roots of the tree and would look at it after he would hit it. I'm still puzzled every time I tell this story because it's confusing, but he walks away and says, "Yes, tree needs to go. It's dead." I was like, "Okay, sure."
Robin Heinze:
Of course, it's dead. You just hit it with a mallet.
Mazen Chami:
Right, you killed it, but it's actually fully gone and there's just a stump. They're going to do the, I think they call it stump grinding later, but now that we see it, it's actually hollow in the middle. Tree doctor or tree vet, whatever you want to call him-
Robin Heinze:
Tree doctor was right.
Mazen Chami:
He was right. Vets are only for pets.
Robin Heinze:
Do you go to medical school for that? I don't-
Gant Laborde:
You actually get kicked out of medical school for hitting people with a mallet like that to see if they're dead by the way.
Mazen Chami:
Exactly.
Robin Heinze:
Now was everything around your house spared from falling tree debris?
Mazen Chami:
No, and that's the other part of it. We told them to come back in a week because my neighbor, he's in a band. He's in a band. Let's just keep it that way. They're decent I think in my opinion, but I'm not a heavy metal fan. I don't know. He's on a tour in Mexico. He must be good if you're on tour in Mexico, but unfortunately his car is parked right underneath the tree. According to them, they were like, "Oh, it'll be fine. We'll work around it."
Yet, it didn't work out too well because his windscreen is totally smashed in and so is our two street lights. The whole time they were lifting the tree over the electrical wires that come to our house. With every sound of the chainsaw, I sprint and look and just make sure the lines are still up and nothing is going to happen. I still have power and I'm still here.
Robin Heinze:
Your poor neighbor is going to come home to a broken windshield.
Mazen Chami:
I wonder if his roommates have told him about it yet. That's what's happening in Durham land.
Robin Heinze:
That's what's happening in Durham. If you hear any chainsaws in the background of today's episode, that's why. There's not any chainsaw massacre happening. You've probably noticed that Jamon is not here. We are very sad he couldn't make it today, but you have me instead. I am Robin Heinze, your host for the day and friendly software engineer at Infinite Red. I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with my husband and my two kids. I'm also joined by my distinguished co-host, Mazen Chami.
Mazen Chami:
I feel like I need the pins like the North Korean Army now with that.
Robin Heinze:
We should get pins with all of our adjectives. I love it. Mazen is also a senior software engineer here at Infinite Red. He's a former professional soccer player and coach and lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and son. We are very fortunate today to have two also distinguished guests, Gant Laborde and Justin Huskey.
Gant Laborde:
Hello.
Robin Heinze:
Hello, Gant Laborde has, actually they have both been on the podcast before if you remember. Gant Laborde is our CIO extraordinaire at Infinite Red and he's also captain of the Chain React conf team. He lives in New Orleans, Louisiana with his now fiancée and his little daughter. Then, we have Justin Huskey. He is Chain React co-captain and he lives in Vancouver, Washington and he loves the Los Angeles Dodgers and Starbucks.
Mazen Chami:
Darby-
Robin Heinze:
You just went to-
Justin Huskey:
That's the most accurate description of myself I've ever heard.
Robin Heinze:
You just went to a Dodgers game, right, Justin?
Justin Huskey:
I did. It was a tough loss. They lost by six points, but I don't know. What I love about baseball is it's one of those things where you can actually get up and go do other things while there's sports playing. It's like having an event happening outside in the stadium and there's a little bit of sports happening in the middle. I just ate all sorts of foods to my heart's desire and then I caught a little bit of the game at the same time.
Robin Heinze:
You're like, "Okay, I guess there's still baseball happening over there."
Justin Huskey:
There's still. You basically pay for a really expensive night out to eat.
Robin Heinze:
There you go. I love it.
Justin Huskey:
I wonder if they do well, do they do better in sales or they do worse? Do they do better in sales? It's not a bad idea like, "You know what? We really need to sell a little bit more. You mind?"
Robin Heinze:
Can you guys-
Gant Laborde:
Work in-
Justin Huskey:
You mind forcing a few errors?
Robin Heinze:
Being worse at baseball for a while.
Gant Laborde:
Let people go get nachos.
Robin Heinze:
Let's get on with it. This episode is sponsored by Chain React Conference. America's best React Native Conference is back and better than ever. It will be in Portland's beautiful Armory from May 17th through the 19th. We have workshops. We have speakers. We have lightening talks. We have a great hallway track and many attendees have said in the past that it's the best conference that they've ever been to, period.
Go to ChainReactConf.com. If you haven't gotten tickets yet, get tickets. Come join us. We want to see you. Also, forever sponsor Infinite Red. Infinite Red is a premier React Native design and development agency located fully remote in the US and Canada. If you're looking for React Native expertise for your next React Native project, hit us up at Infinite.Red/ReactNative.
Gant Laborde:
I love that different sponsorship levels. They have gold, platinum, diamond. Infinite Red is Unobtainium. Good luck.
Robin Heinze:
I mean Chain React and Infinite Red are basically the same sponsor at this point really.
Gant Laborde:
It's the same happy people doing the same happy thing.
Robin Heinze:
Exactly.
Gant Laborde:
Exactly.
Robin Heinze:
Giving ourselves a big self five like, "Hey."
Justin Huskey:
What a bunch of nerds.
Robin Heinze:
We are.
Mazen Chami:
It's like the Spider-Man meme.
Justin Huskey:
The Spider-Man meme.
Mazen Chami:
It's like the Spider-Man like you, you.
Gant Laborde:
I love it.
Justin Huskey:
Let's be like that.
Robin Heinze:
You may have guessed already, but our topic for today is of course Chain React 2023. We're going to do a bit of behind the scenes getting hyped up for this conference. Obviously, you've heard us mention it a lot, but we want to pull back the curtain a little bit and show you how the sausage is made. That's why we have our lovely Gant and Justin here who have been heading up the ship for the last, gosh, however long we've been planning this. It feels like forever.
Gant Laborde:
If you ever see me, I'm only 23 years old and I look like I'm in my 40s.
Mazen Chami:
I want to actually ask you, Gant, since we're talking about 2023 Chain React, when was day one of planning and what was that day like?
Gant Laborde:
Day one of planning Chain React in general back in 2016 where we did our first one in 2017.
Mazen Chami:
2023 for this one.
Gant Laborde:
That's a great question because one of the things that really is difficult is with a passion project the hardest thing for anybody to get past is a start, stop mentality. That's exactly what the pandemic did to us. We had Chain React.
Robin Heinze:
That really hurt.
Gant Laborde:
Chain React 2020 was on the books, paid. Things were happening. We were going to do it in 2020.
Robin Heinze:
People had tickets. Speakers had flights.
Gant Laborde:
It was a significant event. It was a great followup to our past three conferences. This was going to be the fourth one in 2020. We were staring at that ready to get rocking and rolling and then pandemic and pulling that was hard. Pulling it in 2021 was really hard and pulling it in 2022 was gut-wrenching. It was just the world still needed time. We needed people to be safe, happy. The idea here is how do you have a welcoming, friendly event when people are extremely worried about taking something home, interacting with one another?
The biggest reason we're bringing people there is for them to interact. 2023 almost happened as a waterfall from a brook that's been holding. You were like, "Oh, look at this cute little trickle of water." Then, finally we said, "Guess what? We're booking. We're doing this. We're going to find out how to make this happen." When you sign the contracts now there's no out for COVID. There's no out for all kinds of stuff. You are on the hook. It was like a bungee jump.
You're sitting there staring at the edge. You're identifying the cables and making sure that they look fresh. You don't want anything to look second rate and you're staring over the side. Then, once you tip over that side and say, "Hey, we signed the contracts. We have the venue. This is the date. This is what we're going to do," you're over that side. It was I guess breathtaking in a good and bad way and now we're on that ride having a great time.
Robin Heinze:
Finding out what a conference looks like in a post COVID world and so far so good, so far so good.
Gant Laborde:
I'm so happy it's back. We need this. We all need this. We need Meta to announce things at a conference. We need Amazon and we need Microsoft speakers. We need to be able to go reach out and talk to them and ask them questions in a space.
If you take a look at the biggest complaints that end up happening about React Native, it's sometimes people feel like they just don't know what's coming and what's going on and where things are going. You get trickles of information or blog posts, but nothing beats actually showing up in person and seeing a person's eyes as they're explaining to you what the vision is. The clarity and that high bandwidth communication is priceless.
Robin Heinze:
Absolutely, plus who doesn't love Portland, the Pearl District, and The Armory? I'm so excited.
Justin Huskey:
Actually, what's been really cool is that Kent and I went onsite to actually look at what's going on with the venue. We looked at the restaurants that are nearby. Honestly, we walked the path that everybody who's staying at the official hotel to the venue is going to be doing every morning and every evening as they're going back and forth. One thing that was awesome, because I'm somebody who lives 20 minutes from Portland, is that we talked with several of the people who are up in their management levels, up in their leadership, and they're all super excited for Chain React to come back.
They're saying, "Just having a conference at The Armory brings in people to our restaurant, which is something we haven't really had in a long time and we've been really trying to get people back in." They've been doing it. What makes me really proud is to bring Chain React back to Portland, get people to experience that, see that it's vibrant down there. It's fun. Then, all of those businesses that are all set up around The Armory are all going to benefit from that in a way that I don't think they have in a long time. It'll be really great to have that back.
Robin Heinze:
Absolutely.
Gant Laborde:
The places by there, by the way, Portland's experience is very, very unique. It is its own melting pot. I know they don't identify themselves as a melting pot, but I've never been to a place where I could play pinball while eating Thai food. It's just like, "What are you all doing here?" They're just living their best life and the food is delicious and the people are, they're eccentric and interesting. It's fits technical vibe perfect.
Justin Huskey:
The dream of the '90s are alive still.
Gant Laborde:
I might've seen an ad about that.
Robin Heinze:
I want to go back in time a little bit further. I want to go back to how Chain React came to be at the very beginning. We're a development agency. How did we end up hosting a conference?
Gant Laborde:
My goodness.
Robin Heinze:
How did that happen?
Gant Laborde:
That was a wonderful experience because we speak at a lot of conferences and we were on the forefront of React Native as soon as it was out. One of the things that we have done in the past is we've thrown conferences. We've thrown them for other technologies. It's just in our blood. When there was no US React Native Conference there was this moment of, "Okay, are we doing this," and all the creative.
Robin Heinze:
I think we have to do this.
Gant Laborde:
Exactly, and just all of a sudden we started talking about it. Jamon did a fantastic Twitter post on why it's called Chain React. He eloquently stated it. It was quite specifically you've got this one atom for React and then you've got these multiple platforms going wide with this chemical exothermic reaction of these things interacting with each other as well as with people. You get this chain reaction and that was the idea of bringing Chain React in.
We've got iOS, Android, web, and you've got multiple platforms. At the very first one, we talked about TV OS and a whole bunch of other technologies. We're sitting there. We're looking at it. There's no conference for this. Then, as things happen, we just go, "All right, we're throwing it." Get in touch with the right people and in 2017 we threw the first Chain React.
Robin Heinze:
Here we are six years later.
Gant Laborde:
What I love about that is people showed up at the first Chain React saying, "I want to work in React Native," because it was cool then. It was not a thing. They said, "I want to work in React Native. I want to do all this cool stuff." Then, the next Chain React people showed up and they're like, "My company sent me. I work in Chain React. I mean I work in React Native."
Robin Heinze:
You went from people wanting to learn and get into React Native to people who are working in React Native and want to talk to other people working in React Native.
Gant Laborde:
Yes, that's one of the many rewards of actually hosting these things. You get to see all the positive stories along the way. It's just so cute because at this moment you see this person and they're just happy to be there. Then, they build this entire life, this entire career around that and they connect with all the people and they're still wearing Chain React 2017 shirts. I love it.
Robin Heinze:
Mazen, you actually first came to be aware of Infinite Red through Chain React, right?
Mazen Chami:
Correct, I think I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but 2019 Chain React was the one I attended. I was building an app at the time in React Native. It was my first one doing it alone. I was at a startup. I was the only one in charge of the mobile app and we were doing some Bluetooth stuff. I needed help on the Bluetooth and testing front because again, being the only one on the team, I was stretched thin. I just needed a little bit more resources and testing and Bluetooth stuff.
I Googled and essentially found Chain React, came out there, fell in love with the conference. I actually was getting ready to purchase my 2020 ticket right when Durham shut down. I was like, "Okay, this might not be happening. I'm going to hold off a little bit," and here we are. It was that and then it eventually led me onto the podcast and then from there here we are.
Robin Heinze:
Now you're doing an episode of the podcast about Chain React. Life is funny.
Mazen Chami:
Helping prep for Chain React in many ways too, it's full circle.
Justin Huskey:
Mazen, can I ask you? You were going to purchase a ticket in 2020 and decided to hold off. Was your plan all along to get into Infinite Red so you didn't have to pay to go to the next conference that happened afterwards?
Mazen Chami:
I was hoping that wouldn't be set up.
Justin Huskey:
You were hoping, putting a lot into that.
Mazen Chami:
Don't tell Todd and I think we'll be fine. Don't tell.
Justin Huskey:
Got you.
Robin Heinze:
See, the joke is on you because even though we don't have to pay for tickets, we pay in blood, sweat, and tears.
Mazen Chami:
Exactly.
Justin Huskey:
That's true.
Robin Heinze:
Emphasis on tears lately, but we'll get there.
Mazen Chami:
It's like I wanted to go to the conference every year for free, but I now need to work it. I don't technically go to the conference.
Gant Laborde:
Smart move.
Robin Heinze:
We definitely put the Infinite Red team to work. Can we get an overview for the listeners about what all goes into putting on a conference? How is the Infinite Red team involved? Give us a picture.
Gant Laborde:
No problem, I'll say if you've ever planned your own wedding, just multiply that by 10. No, actually it's a very rewarding style of work. One of the things is it is very complicated worrying about the experience of a bunch of people, making sure that you have a welcoming and friendly environment for a diversity of topics to come in and be exciting in a single track conference and make sure everybody is well-rested, glued, caffeinated, and set.
You relive the same day probably 10 times a day thinking about the experience that you're trying to deliver and then filling the holes in it. It's a little bit like building an app in a sense, but you can't go full engineer with it. You can't continue to just think about it from one dimension. We have a team of people here at Infinite Red where we've actually diversified the facets that come into what is the experience that we want to have?
Then, people run each of those different facets of Chain React and bring them all back together under this one system. Honestly, the mobile app is a huge undertaking. One, we have to build a React Native app for free in our spare time or we allocate time for it. It's going to be open source. It's got to be stable and dependable. First of all, I'll just say building an open source app and handing it to React Native developers once it's in React Native is inviting a lot of opinion.
Mazen Chami:
Thanks for the pressure, Gant.
Gant Laborde:
You're very welcome.
Robin Heinze:
It's a very vulnerable moment for sure. Mazen knows this intimately. He's doing most of the work to get the app ready to go right now and is very familiar with the pressure of building a React Native app for React Native developers to use at a React Native conference.
Mazen Chami:
It's so different. It's so different. Again, we've talked about Mercari. That was a big app that we released. Some other clients, large clients that we've worked on so far, the pressure is different. You're right in saying for React Native developers. Initially working with Mercari, it's not like there was no pressure. There was pressure, but it's in a different sense because now you're dealing with people who are expecting a specific user experience.
Now if the app were to crash for a user, they wouldn't take it so personally. They might just be like, "Oh, whatever," close the app, open the app back up, and continue type deal. For the conference, the pressure is if the app crashes, we're getting Tweeted about it. We're getting GitHub issues. Someone might call us out on stage about it.
Robin Heinze:
Right, "God, the React Native company can't even build."
Mazen Chami:
Exactly, it's like, "Oh, why would you hire these guys to build your app for you?" That's stressful on its own. It's almost like can I back out of it now?
Justin Huskey:
Right.
Gant Laborde:
Josh Weitskin always said that when he would play chess if he thought about the people watching him play chess, because he was a child prodigy, if he thought about the people and the sign and all the things like that, that's where he played his worst games. The truth is you all are amazing. Sorry, you all, again from New Orleans, you all are the amazing developers. You're doing a fantastic job. You're your own worst critic and I love what's going on with the app. I get it.
What we're doing here if you take a step back, and this is the problem with engineering bringing on some of these things that's really about an experience, it's that if we care and we've put that into the app, people experience that and they see that. If there's any updates or changes or modifications, at the end of the day the very premise that Chain React is built around is connection, friendliness, welcoming, and talking about technology in a way that engineers can talk about problems and mistakes.
That becomes extremely valuable. I dare say you're probably almost robbed from an amazing growth experience, perhaps even a future talk, if your app runs flawlessly. Again, I'll say Josh Weitskin had to lose to value chess. I am using this analogy and eventually it will break down of course because all analogies break down. In this moment here, I think this pressure is, I hate to say this. This is a great pressure, but probably mostly you put it on yourself.
Mazen Chami:
No, I agree with you. You said the analogy breaks down. Hopefully, the app doesn't break down also.
Robin Heinze:
If it does, be gentle with us.
Gant Laborde:
Catches on fire.
Justin Huskey:
Mazen, you want to plug your Twitter handle real quick so that people if they have any questions or comments-
Robin Heinze:
We know exactly when your app is crashing @MazenChami, that's your man right there.
Mazen Chami:
You mentioned, Gant, the atmosphere that Chain React creates. I totally agree with you. I think I'm still in touch with everyone that I met in 2019, the people that were attending the workshops and stuff. There's this one guy. He knows who he is. He was in a different workshop. He was in the beginner workshop. I was in the testing workshop and we just collaborated. During lunchtime, we would sit down, compare notes. He had some questions.
Gant Laborde:
I love it.
Mazen Chami:
I'd help him out and we're still in touch sending pictures of my family. He sends pictures of his family. We're really close and it all stemmed from sitting down at registration on the table and someone approaching being friendly, being vulnerable, and just talking. What is this? Four years later, we're still talking and we're pretty close. He actually mentioned he's coming to Chain React. We're going to meet up again for the first time.
Justin Huskey:
That's great.
Mazen Chami:
It's really a great environment to be in.
Gant Laborde:
To be honest, there's this constant concern of whether or not YouTube coders should leave in their mistakes or not. I love when people aren't trying to be deities in coding world. This conversation happening on this podcast, talking about the vulnerability that comes along with taking on a huge endeavor, doing coding like that and all the other parts of Chain React, I love this part. This is humanity. This is the connection of it. Kudos to being willing to talk about that part and how difficult it could be.
Justin Huskey:
Absolutely, actually one of the reasons I'm involved in Chain React, which is funny because I actually came into it as a designer as a background, I actually don't do React Native coding. Yet, I've been to a lot of different conferences for design where it doesn't quite have the vibe quite right, where it just feels like everybody is there competing a little bit with each other.
What I absolutely love about Chain React since the very first beginning of planning is that people outside of Infinite Red, when I met them at Chain React they are still friends of mine. We're both in the tech industry, but we're in two different areas of it. Yet, they're still welcoming. We still do meetups outside of Chain React and everything. What I love about Chain React is that it is a way to bring that entire community together in one spot and you see just how impressive the React Native community is.
They're very welcoming, very inclusive. Half the time it doesn't even matter if they're into React Native. They're still willing to talk with you about what you are interested in and about UX and stuff like that. I love it and it's really nice. This is my first year helping Gant plan it and it's really nice to think about, "Oh, people are going to be gathering over here. How do we provide a good experience for them at lunch? Where are they going to be talking?"
It's all based around how to prioritize them and prioritize the experience they have in a way that I think other conferences sometimes don't always get. That's why I think there's a lot of effort put into it like that sweat and tears you mentioned, Robin. It's really just because we're trying to always one-up ourselves in many ways and provide a better experience than you could if you just got a conference off the shelf.
Robin Heinze:
Absolutely, I think a question that maybe a lot of people had right after we canceled in 2020 is why not go remote for 2020, 2021, 2022? Many other conferences did. React Native EU did remote. A lot of other conferences did a remote option. Why not Chain React? I think I probably know the answer, but if you could, speak a little bit to why not go remote?
Gant Laborde:
One fun fact is that people are always asking us why we don't live broadcast Chain React. Now we do package up the videos and put them on YouTube. The announcements are amazing. The videos are amazing, but we don't do a live broadcast. That is quite specifically because if a speaker goes long or short, we don't want to be adhering to thousands of people who aren't there, who didn't come in, who aren't getting that interaction.
We're feeding the energy of one room and that is the place where we're cooking. We're caring about that experience. In that same vein, when people started going remote conference in 2020 I know I can't be the only person who experienced absolute Zoom fatigue, a call back to work during conferences, a bit of is anybody even on the other side of the screen? Am I talking to someone? This is-
Robin Heinze:
As a speaker, right? As an attendee and a speaker, you had both experiences.
Gant Laborde:
Exactly, and people were trying to recreate in person conferences as remote conferences. That was just an interesting thing. They were trying to take people's entire days. They were trying to continuously have parts. They were trying to actually somewhat recreate the hallway track, but imagine a giant hallway track where everybody who spoke went into every single other person's ear. It was not properly structured and there was no system in place to do that.
Now we love remote work here at Infinite Red. We've been doing it for a long time, but there are certain things that we learned on how there's a difference between in person and remote. I think that while I've seen some amazingly executed remote conferences, we knew where the bar was for Chain React and we knew that there was zero chance of recreating that experience online.
Kudos to everybody who did. I saw some really cool online conferences that leaned into all kinds of new ways and made me think of really cool ideas, but around halfway through 2020 you couldn't pay me to sit at a screen longer than I already had to. I was done with it. That was just never something that we could figure out to do at the caliber that we want to do.
Robin Heinze:
Makes total sense. Now that we're back in person, what about 2023 should people be excited about? What are we bringing to Chain React 2023 that's going to set it apart from Chain React 2019? What's going to get people hyped up?
Gant Laborde:
I talked to Justin about Portland at first because there was a lot of political stuff. There was a bunch of other things. I said, "Justin, our business is okay." Justin gave me the most, I'll let Justin tell you the report he gave me. He drove around and he said, "Are we going to do Chain React in Portland in 2023?" Like he said, he's 20 minutes away and I'll let you tell them what you told me because that got everything started.
Justin Huskey:
How the whole process started is that I drove over there just to see how it is. I hadn't been over there in a while. I love Portland. It's place I used to go to every weekend. Then, stuff shut down and I hadn't been over there in a while. No fault of their own, I just got stuck in my own routine here at home. I drove over there, had dinner at a restaurant, and just scouted out different locations that we might be able to use for Chain React. What I saw was awesome.
It was busy. I got a book at Powell's and I had to wait in a giant line, which was awesome. I haven't had to do that in a while. I've never been so proud to wait in a line. I reported that back to Gant and said, "I think looking around it looks like things, the vibe has definitely shifted. Things are looking really good and it would be really nice to bring everybody back to Portland." One of the things that I absolutely love and actually why I think in person is a little bit different than when you're on online even is that Gant and I did all sorts of planning about maybe we could do it over here.
Maybe we could do it over there. Maybe you walk over that. Then, he flew in for a weekend and he was here for I think two days, three days maybe. Him and I got together each day to go from the hotel all the way down to the venue and have dinner together. We had lunch together. All the planning that happened in that amount of time is I think probably two or three times more than anything we've done remotely.
The experience, I mean we're still telling different stories from that. He got to experience what I experienced on that first drive, which is that Portland, it's busy. People are out doing things. We had to get our reservation for a dinner, which was awesome. Again, I'm telling you I've never been so happy to wait for tables and lines and basically just stare at nothing while I wait for food.
Robin Heinze:
There was this definite sense after the pandemic that Portland, specifically downtown Portland, had died with the pandemic and that's so not true. This is our chance to showcase that Portland is alive and happening and is very vibrant still.
Mazen Chami:
Going off of what Robin said, I forgot who it was, but someone at Infinite Red mentioned that downtown Portland was boarded up and completely shut down and almost like a ghost town-
Gant Laborde:
In 2020 and stuff.
Mazen Chami:
During the pandemic.
Robin Heinze:
My in-laws still think that it is.
Justin Huskey:
Depending on what you're watching, you still think it is.
Mazen Chami:
True, but that's awesome that that whole vibe has shifted from being completely closed down to now just being so vibrant. I remember just the restaurants around The Armory, not even going too far, just the one block radius you're going to see from the front door. There was a lot of activity and movement. That is amazing to hear that it's coming back and that we can also potentially add to that.
Gant Laborde:
That's the seed for the vibe that we need. We need, "Oh, hey, I'm a poet and I didn't know it." What happens there is that we get that. You start going there. We open up for sponsorships. Sponsors are looking for React Native voices. They're looking for opportunities. Meta is looking to give talks. Amazon is looking to give talks. Everybody has been clawing at this resurgence of these places and that's the second part that comes in there.
Then, you feed that into the fact that we have after parties, people who've been hitting us up on Twitter saying, "When is Chain React coming back?" All these pieces, the signs are out there. You take a look at them each individually and it's all saying, "Okay, this is what's coming back." Then, with that feeling we have lots of new things. The after party being at Expensify, it's going to be an amazing after party. We have the new architecture workshop. That's going to be an amazing workshop. All these different pieces that are coming together, it's what we wanted plus.
Robin Heinze:
You mentioned Meta wanting to give talks and being excited about getting back to Chain React. I want to bring it back around to the tech for a bit. Specifically, this is 2023 and the last time we did this was 2019. React Native itself is in such a different place than it was. Not only the world is in a different place, the conference is in a different place. Not literally, it's still at The Armory.
Gant Laborde:
Technically, the world is revolving.
Robin Heinze:
React Native itself is in a different place and the conference is going to reflect that. We're really making React Native the focus. In past years, it's been React Native and some React JS talks all encompassing. We're really going. There's plenty of React conferences, great React conferences. This is a React Native conference. All the talks are React Native specific. React Native isn't new or novel anymore. It's its own thing. It's holding its own. We're not React adjacent anymore. We're React Native. We're our own thing.
Gant Laborde:
That's why it's a can't miss event because it's grown up. In 2017, there was a lot of novelty ideas of people looking to first time approach iOS and Android in the same code base. That's a proven point now. React Native is proven. It's been adopted by Amazon. It's been adopted by Microsoft. It's been adopted by major companies all around a lot of the clients that we work with.
I never know which ones I can name and which ones I don't. One of the things is you've got all this grown up and that's why our beginner workshop for the first time ever is small and our advanced workshop is big. This is the first time that that's happened because we're looking at a huge industry important event versus wouldn't it be cool if I wrote this during a hackathon in React Native?
Mazen Chami:
Just to give the listeners, let's go back in history. When the last Chain React happened in 2019 we were on version 0.60.
Robin Heinze:
It had just come out.
Mazen Chami:
Just come out, I think it was like-
Robin Heinze:
Brand new.
Mazen Chami:
A week, a maybe the month before.
Robin Heinze:
What are we on? 71 now?
Mazen Chami:
71 something, I think we're on the verge of 72 also. New features were auto linking, Android X. The Lean Core initiative had just begun I believe. I think that version stripped some stuff out. Did it Now this is me trying to dig in the archives. Didn't the second speaker announce Hermes?
Gant Laborde:
Yes.
Mazen Chami:
Actually announced it?
Robin Heinze:
Hermes was announced for the first time at Chain React 2019.
Mazen Chami:
The first speaker I remember was like, "Hey, my app sucks. It's so slow. How do I fix it," and then built into Hermes and all that stuff.
Robin Heinze:
Now Hermes is default both platforms, almost an afterthought now. Of course, everyone is using Hermes.
Mazen Chami:
I feel like we're not going to talk about Hermes for a while again. The last one, which some of us suffered through, is the React Native Upgrade Helper was just released. That is something that's no longer a pain point. You can see the evolution that's happened. Our apps were slow. We had this big bloated React Native core that's now much slimmer. The Lean Core initiative helped with that, Upgrade Helper, focusing a lot on developer experience. So far, we've grown so much.
Robin Heinze:
There's been a lot of developer experience improvements, fast refresh, React Native doctor, flipper, log box, and then of course we're on the precipice of the new architecture, lots of EAS and Expo improvements. Expo looks completely different.
Mazen Chami:
Expo was a novelty then. It was like, hey, this thing exists. Use it, but just you're not going to use it in production. Just don't worry about it. Use it for a hobby or a demo.
Robin Heinze:
Then, now we have EAS pre-build. I swear everyone is all in on Expo now. React Native itself, it just looks completely different now. Go ahead, Justin.
Justin Huskey:
I think you all are 100% right and I think one of the ways to illustrate that actually is just off of ticket sales. In the first three conferences, what you saw was a lot of individual ticket sales where people were coming to basically see is React Native something our team could actually do? You got a lot of questions about what's the experience like? Is it really stable? How do I adopt this into my team?
This year actually is the opposite where we're getting a lot of group sales. One person on the team is buying tickets for all of their team because they've already adopted it and now they're coming for more of that intermediate, advanced level stuff and not necessarily just coming for an exploration mission anymore. They're coming to actually advance the skills and to improve the app that's already been created.
Robin Heinze:
There have been a number of high profile adoptions since 2019, Shopify, Discord. You have these huge companies that are going-
Mazen Chami:
Tesla.
Robin Heinze:
Going all in on React Native and talking about it and building libraries and being really active and instrumental in the community, and I think it's really helped build React Native as a viable platform for huge enterprise businesses.
Mazen Chami:
Going back, sorry, on Hermes, Hermes was only announced for Android. If you were on iOS, you had to wait essentially.
Robin Heinze:
It was Android at first and it's made the progression from Android only to it's available on iOS to default on Android to finally default on iOS.
Mazen Chami:
That's amazing.
Robin Heinze:
It's been a long four years. We're unfortunately getting really close to running out of time, but before we go, I want to hear the best Chain React stories that you have. I know there's a ton of really epic stories, but from the three years that we've done this, I want to hear the best stories.
Mazen Chami:
Save your best one for last please.
Gant Laborde:
I spent a lot of time in the green room and I could say there's a lot of really cool stories. The green room is the room where the speakers are before they go up on stage. It's really amazing at The Armory. It looks like you're in a little castle. It's beautiful. If you've never seen it, definitely apply to the CFP. You want to go see that green room.
It's also really fun. The conversations that happen there are wonderful and sometimes heart stopping. Sometimes you'll be talking to somebody and there will be a 30 minute talk and they're wrapping up. They're saying, "By the way, I want to thank Chain React," and you're like, "They're 10 minutes in. Did I just hear they're thanking Chain React?"
Robin Heinze:
No.
Gant Laborde:
You're like, "What is happening?" My goodness, we'll will run up there. One year I wrestled somebody in the green room. That was Ken Wheeler and everybody knows just how wild he is. He knew that I wrestled in high school. All of a sudden, the next thing I know I'm wrestling. I didn't know I was going to wrestle that day.
Justin Huskey:
Must be nice to be on the receiving end of that.
Robin Heinze:
You don't wake up preparing for that. You just don't.
Gant Laborde:
No, we had speakers continue back into the audience still wearing their lav mics where I had to chase them down. I was like, "Don't keep wearing your lav mic. That's not going to work."
Robin Heinze:
I hope they didn't go to the bathroom with their mics still on or anything like that.
Gant Laborde:
Maybe, they were just walking off.
Robin Heinze:
I'm sure that's happened at some conference before.
Gant Laborde:
Whoever the sound engineer is is like, "I don't get paid enough." My goodness, one of the other ones that's really fun from stage is we had a hiccup with the video one time and just that was hilarious. I just had to jump out on stage like, "Hey, everybody, it's a tech conference so of course we have technical difficulties." Those are really fun.
Justin Huskey:
Just one time.
Robin Heinze:
Just once?
Justin Huskey:
No, we've had these and this is coming from a place of pain because I personally work on these intro videos and they take hours. I'll spend two weeks on these things and then they're really nice. They're all made in After Effects. It's all this motion graphic stuff of making all the speaker's names look nice. All of this is planned. It's great.
Then, we get it to the conference and nobody in our group has thought about the fact that perhaps playing this off of WiFi is a terrible idea and we should probably keep a local copy of it. What do you mean I can't download a 60 gigabyte file right now? Not only did we do this to ourself once and then have it happen a second day, but we went to Chain React the second year and then did it again.
Gant Laborde:
My goodness.
Justin Huskey:
Where the lights go down and you're like, "Okay, everybody, welcome to Chain React." Lights dim. the projector comes on. You're in the mood. Then, all of a sudden you hear this amazing sound. There's sound effects. There's cars flying by and then, er.
Mazen Chami:
Buffering, buffering.
Justin Huskey:
It just stops buffering, dead silent in the audience.
Gant Laborde:
I think that that's the greatest part of what the vibe of the conference is. No one really mentions that, but us. Everybody still talks about how good the emcee was specifically when we got it away from me and gave it to Kenneth LaFrance who's a professional emcee.
Justin Huskey:
He's back this year.
Gant Laborde:
He's back. We got Kenneth LaFrance again. He's going to be amazing. That's a big part of those kinds of things collectively in a room together with nothing getting streamed right then and there. You've got to be there to experience it and it makes the experience. It's fun.
It's exciting watching people, watching a speaker end and then go off stage and then not having anybody ready. The truth is probably only 5% of people even notice these things that are amazing things for us in those moments because you respond really quickly. What's great about it is most conferences have complete dead air for five minutes between speakers. We're holding ourselves to a different caliber.
Robin Heinze:
We have incredibly high standards for ourselves, which is a double-edged sword because it leads to a really great conference, but it also leads to a lot of being really hard on ourselves.
Mazen Chami:
I think Kenneth LaFrance does a good job of filling that gap in that space because I remember-
Gant Laborde:
He's amazing.
Mazen Chami:
In 2019, there were a couple times when it seemed like there was some we need to get something prepped or whatever. He would just come on stage and I think cracked a couple of jokes or told a story and stuff. That type of stuff is great because then he's very engaging with the crowd. The crowd forgets.
Gant Laborde:
You need a professional emcee, exactly. I've been to too many conferences where they're like, "Will you do this," and they put somebody up there. Having an expert emcee is worth, I would say it's worth every dollar, but truth is we need to pay people like that more. That's fantastic. It brings the experience all together.
Robin Heinze:
There's one more story, which is probably the most often told and infamous Chain React story about a guy named Tai Kwon Drive.
Justin Huskey:
While Gant was back in the green room, I was out in the Infinite Red table, which is in the main lobby. For context, The Armory actually is a historical building, which means their doors are open. Even while we're doing the conference, people can come in, just check it out. Gant one year decides to bring a Bitcoin and not a real Bitcoin. He decides to bring this really nice looking, plastic metal looking Bitcoin. It was really big that year. It had gotten really, really popular. He brings it.
He's like, "Let's put this on the Infinite Red table. It's going to start conversations and we're going to put this right here." He puts it front center. It looks amazing. We get all these people who keep coming up and they're looking at it. They're like, "Oh, wow, that's pretty cool. I've never seen that. Bitcoin seems pretty big." One guy on our second day, he comes in. We've got all of these iPads lined up. We're trying to push the React Native newsletter, things like that. He starts looking around at all of it and then he looks down at the Bitcoin. Then, he goes back to the iPad and he starts filling the thing out.
I'm like, "Okay, maybe he's just, I don't know. He's just checking things out. He's going to sign up for it." He puts in his email. He walks over to the table and he is like, "So what's this conference all about?" We do the whole spiel, "It's about React Native and things like that." He looks down at the Bitcoin. He goes, "Is that a Bitcoin?" "Well, I mean, yeah, it's popular and everything." Then, he just reaches his hand out, grabs it, puts it in his pocket, and then goes flying out the front door as fast as he can.
To this day, I wanted to know because there is a mall not far from here that has one of those that you can withdraw money if you've got Bitcoin. I can picture this guy standing in line thinking he's got $60,000 sitting in his pocket and he is trying to insert this comically large Bitcoin into the coin dispenser and trying to fit it in. No, we went back and I thought, "I saw him put his email in. Let's see what he did." We went back into the logs and he signed up for our newsletter under the email of Tai Kwon Drive at some free email domain. It was Hotmail or something like that, some outdated, doesn't even work anymore email.
Gant Laborde:
My goodness, if you run into Tai Kwon Drive with a Bitcoin, you know where he got it from.
Mazen Chami:
Did you email him back and ask him for it?
Justin Huskey:
It's the gift that keeps on giving, Mazen. Not only did he put in his email, but we forgot to take it out. Two weeks later when the email went out it got bounced back and then it started the whole laugh all over again because everybody's like, "Oh, that's right. I remember that guy. He's the one who stole $60,000 worth of plastic."
Mazen Chami:
We need The Armory to give us the video footage of this.
Justin Huskey:
The video.
Gant Laborde:
My goodness, absolutely.
Justin Huskey:
When you're out in the lobby working the tables you see some interesting things.
Robin Heinze:
You see some stuff.
Gant Laborde:
I love it.
Robin Heinze:
I'm so sad that we are out of time, but we can't go on forever. Otherwise, our editors will hate us.
Gant Laborde:
I know. There's so much more.
Robin Heinze:
Probably they already do.
Gant Laborde:
Just before you close up, I just want to say take a look at the lineup. The speakers we have are awesome. The map that we have of the food restaurants that we went and took pictures at are awesome. The app is amazing and it's open source. You'll be able to check out everything. You'll have all your FOMO. If you want to actually meet some of the hosts of React Native Radio, React Native Newsletter, they'll be there-
Justin Huskey:
They'll be there live.
Gant Laborde:
Hopefully.
Robin Heinze:
We'll be there. There may be some contests for some React Native Radio themed prizes. Definitely, definitely come see us.
Gant Laborde:
I plan on hiding a Bitcoin on Justin somewhere.
Justin Huskey:
Come find me.
Gant Laborde:
If you find Justin, be sure to snatch that Bitcoin. Make yourself a rich person.
Justin Huskey:
Make sure you bring us a Dogecoin.
Robin Heinze:
We'll just get a real life Shiba email.
Gant Laborde:
I actually love that idea.
Robin Heinze:
Please, please come join us at Chain React. Go to ChainReactConf.com to get your tickets. Look for Chain React Conf app in the app stores. May 17th through the 19th, we would really, really love to see you there. If you'd like to nerd out more about React Native in general, come join our Infinite Red Slack community at Community.InfiniteRed. Where can everyone find you all on Twitter? Gant?
Gant Laborde:
I did that again. I pointed at Justin and you said, "Gant."
Justin Huskey:
He pointed at me and then-
Robin Heinze:
I was like, "Who are you pointing at?"
Gant Laborde:
That was me-
Justin Huskey:
That's the coordination you can expect this year.
Robin Heinze:
I'll just-
Gant Laborde:
Kick that off like an intro video right there, that's what we did.
Robin Heinze:
I'll just read them all out. That's okay. You can find Gant on Twitter @GantLaborde. You can find Justin Huskey on Twitter @JustinHuskey. You can find Mazen @MazenChami and me @Robin_Heinze with an E at the end.
Mazen Chami:
You have to put the underscore in there.
Robin Heinze:
React Native Radio-
Gant Laborde:
What's going on there, Robin?
Robin Heinze:
We're not going to talk about it. We're not going to talk about it.
Justin Huskey:
Quick reminder, @MazenChami is taking your complaints about the mobile app if you would like to go ahead and let us know what we got wrong.
Mazen Chami:
I'm doing my count now.
Gant Laborde:
You have to be there to complain about it. That's the rule.
Robin Heinze:
That's true.
Mazen Chami:
Sure, yes.
Robin Heinze:
That's the rule.
Mazen Chami:
I'll take that.
Robin Heinze:
Thank you so much to our guests, Gant and Justin. It was a really great time. As always, thanks to our producer and editor Todd Werth, our assistant editor and episode release coordinator Jed Bartausky, our designer Justin Huskey, and our guest coordinator Derek Greenberg. Thanks to our forever sponsor Infinite Red. Check us out at Infinite.Red/ReactNative. A special thanks to all of you for listening. Please subscribe on all of your, no, please subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform, React Native Radio. I don't have a mom joke today. I'm sorry. You'll have to come to the conference and maybe I'll tell you one in person.
Gant Laborde:
I like that.
Robin Heinze:
Have a great day, you all.
Mazen Chami:
Bye.
Gant Laborde:
Bye.
Robin Heinze:
Bye.
Justin Huskey:
Bye.