In this episode Robin is joined again by Gant Laborde and Justin Huskey! We just finished up a week of fun at Chain React, and today they'll be recapping the conference and all the wonderful goings-on that happened.
In this episode Robin is joined again by Gant Laborde and Justin Huskey! We just finished up a week of fun at Chain React, and today they'll be recapping the conference and all the wonderful goings-on that happened.
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 back to React Native Radio Podcast, brought to you by Async Await Insurance. We've got you covered even if your promises leave you hanging. Thanks so much to our Chain React 2023 contest winner, Jenn Robinson, for that intro, episode 266, Chain React Roundup.
Robin Heinze:
So did anyone do anything fun last week?
Gant Laborde:
Yeah, I think I flew around the entire US, headed to Portland and put on just a little conference about React Native.
Robin Heinze:
Little conference?
Gant Laborde:
Just a little conference.
Justin Huskey:
Just a little conference
Robin Heinze:
No big deal
Gant Laborde:
Little gathering of friends, some happy little trees.
Justin Huskey:
Honestly, I would appreciate it if you all told me what happened because all I remember is leaving my house, I stepped into an Armory and then I woke up a week later.
Gant Laborde:
Everybody wants to...
Robin Heinze:
It does kind of feel like a dream.
Gant Laborde:
Yeah.
Robin Heinze:
Like, did that really happen? Yeah. I kind of existed outside myself for the whole week.
Gant Laborde:
The blur.
Robin Heinze:
Of course. Of course, we're talking about Chain React Comp. Yeah. That's what we're going to be talking about this whole day.
Gant Laborde:
All right, let's do it.
Robin Heinze:
Going to have a little Chain React Roundup, but let me introduce who you're talking to real quick. So of course, I'm Robin. I'm your host for the day. I'm lead software engineer at Infinite Red and I live just west of Portland, Oregon with my husband and my two kids. And I've been specializing in React Native for six years, almost six and a half. And then Jamon and Mazen are out today, sadly. But I'm so happy to be joined by my hospitable co-hosts, Gant Laborde and Justin Huskey.
Gant is Infinite Red Owner and CIO extraordinaire. He's a distinguished speaker and a published author, if you didn't know that. You've probably heard of him if you're in the React Native or the AI communities. And he is a New Orleans, Louisiana native and lives there with his fiance and daughter.
And then we have Justin Huskey, also on the leadership team here at Infinite Red. He's a Starbucks aficionado and devoted fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He is over in my neck of the woods in Vancouver, Washington.
Justin Huskey:
I also can't be on a podcast at the same time with Jamon, apparently,
Robin Heinze:
Apparently not. He just is avoiding you like the plague here. Like "Oh, Justin's on."
Justin Huskey:
We've tried.
Robin Heinze:
Better keep my distance. Before we get started, I must mention that as always, this episode is sponsored by 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. And don't forget to mention that you heard about us through the React Native Radio podcast.
Gant Laborde:
And you can tell what we do from looking at our website for a few seconds, unlike a few people we've looked at today. Like, "Oh yeah, what do they do again? I've been looking at their webpage for five minutes. I still don't know." If you can't tell what we do.
Robin Heinze:
We make it pretty... I'm pretty sure we say React Native like five times just in the first page.
Gant Laborde:
Absolutely.
Justin Huskey:
Yeah, yeah.
Robin Heinze:
Also, we put on a conference about it and we never stop talking about it.
Gant Laborde:
You know what's really funny about that though, even though this is the fourth time we've done the conference, someone still said, "Y'all are great at putting on events. What do you... Do you just put on events? Is that what Infinite Red does?"
Robin Heinze:
Every-
Justin Huskey:
Every year.
Robin Heinze:
Every year.
Gant Laborde:
It just...
Robin Heinze:
See, but so one of our engineers here, Carlin, he framed it in a really nice way though, which is that we're so good at putting on events that people think we do it as our only thing.
Gant Laborde:
I appreciate that.
Robin Heinze:
So I think that's a compliment.
Gant Laborde:
That's the right way to take it. But what was funny is it's in between that, or we slam you in the face. We do coding.
Robin Heinze:
All right, let's get into it. We're going to round up Chain React 2023, recap it, talk about what happened, what went well, funny stories, behind the scenes. Hopefully, most of you listening were there. That would be awesome if you were there. And if you weren't, maybe we'll leave you with some FOMO. So let's talk about expectations for this conference because I mean, going in, it had been three years since the last time we threw a Chain React. So what were we expecting and then did it live up to our expectations or exceed them?
Gant Laborde:
Well, one thing that was really interesting is this was such a rebuilding year. The team is different. Portland is different. The React Native community is different. In so many ways, we kind of threw away the playbook from the previous years and reestablished what's important and what's valuable.
At the beginning of that, we kind of put our key principles from the company forward and said that everybody who's here, everybody who's being a part of this, we want to make sure that they have a welcoming, friendly, and educational environment where they could feel like their personal growth happening.
But at the same time, we want to make sure that no one was just adhering to what we've done in the past. We wanted to make sure quite specifically that you enjoyed yourself, that you felt right going to this, because I think that's really key coming back from a pandemic, we kind of miss each other. Here at the company, we do remote work. But for a lot of people, remote work was a new thing. Conferences were a thing. I don't know how many people have gone to React Native specific conferences. So there was a huge refocus, both in the design, the intro video, and in the feel of the conference to focus on people connection and allowing everybody to exchange information in a more organic and natural way instead of just saying, "React Native's the future." What we're saying is React Native is here and now.
Justin Huskey:
Yeah, that makes sense. And I think too, one of the things I loved about this year is that it was, I think actually Gant, remember you telling me when we were going into it. You're like, "Okay, we're going to see how many people come to this and we're not sure because it is rebuilding. We're starting almost from scratch again in some ways." And you're like, "This could be just 100 of our closest friends hanging out, having a great time." And that's honestly how we kept approaching it as we kept going, even as it kept getting bigger and bigger. So it actually had that vibe. Somebody actually told me, and it was one of the best compliments, is that it felt like a family kind of coming back together, which I absolutely loved and was our main goal, honestly, for much of this planning.
Robin Heinze:
It really did. I loved seeing and talking to folks who have been to every Chain React so far, and were just so excited to come back for 2023. They waited so long. A lot of them had tickets in 2020, and we're finally getting to redeem those and come back to the family.
Gant Laborde:
Well, on the other side of that, it was so great to see people seeing it for the first time and feeling right at home. Because if you just take a look at speakers from Meta and stuff, a lot of these companies, they've been employed there for less than the pandemic. They maybe got hired then.
So while people before the pandemic knew, "Oh, you can send your speakers to Chain React and this is what's going to be like, this is what the feel is," there was just a few of those people at each of those companies saying, "I went to Chain React back in 2019 and this is what you can expect." And everybody was like, okay, sure. But then they show up with their teams and they're happy to say, "Look, remember this is what I told you it'd be like." And then five, six, seven new people from these large companies go, "Okay, I get it now." And it's really a great feeling to show that to somebody for the first time while sort of bringing in new family, bringing in new people to sort of share that experience with.
Robin Heinze:
I mean, there's a reason I picked the word hospitable for the adjective this morning. I think hospitality was one of your top and most important goals for the conference and for everyone, speakers, attendees, vendors, sponsors, everyone to come away feeling like they were really taken care of and thought about. And it feels like you really accomplished that.
Gant Laborde:
Yeah, there's a really funny jokes about programmer thinking. They go to the store and get me bread and if they have orange juice, get me two. And so the person comes back with two breads because they had orange juice.
Robin Heinze:
Two breads.
Gant Laborde:
It's just something like that. Like there's this logical, terrible way of humanity. And so, one of the things we talked about was the idea of service being this binary kind of ideal. And what we don't want is looking at things through that lens. Everything we're looking for was, as I think I said, is technicolor and bringing in this idea that each person that we're meeting is a rich connection. And I mean, I got to say, their multi-track conferences are fantastic. I absolutely love them. They have their own place, but the single track, single technology conference, that's a pressure cooker of networking and connection and happiness, and there's just so much value in going to those kinds of conferences.
Robin Heinze:
What sort of other internal goals did you have going into the planning process and how did those sort of manifest and turn out in the end?
Gant Laborde:
So one of the principles that we had quite specifically is first of all, that everybody there is happy. The second thing of course is that we represented the community extremely well. One of the things you got to be really careful about is when you climb high, you're seen by many. And that can bring on extreme value or ridicule. So one of the things I wanted to make sure that was set for us is that we are representing Infinite Red. We're representing React Native because people are going to come in from competing technologies just to see what's going on there. And we're representing a whole lot more than that.
And then one of the things I kind of put there is when we are doing this, when we have everybody's attention, that's a Super Bowl ad, that's a real strong connective moment. So everybody bring best, bring what you've wanted to do, say the stickers you wanted to share, the stories you wanted to share, the moments.
And I have to say, I'm really a strong believer in if something's right, it's not stressful. It can take all your energy and it can absolutely be... it's not like it's free. You're absolutely, you're passing through this amazing moment, but it shouldn't be stressful. It shouldn't be difficult. And a big part of that comes in, we had some people who were nervous to speak or nervous to interact, and we had the best MC in the world, Mr. Kenneth LaFrance. We had the best venue in all of Portland. I think The Armory is breathtaking and dare I say it with the hubris, I think we had the best team in the world coming together, volunteers and Infinite Red employees coming together to just make this fantastic experience. So I'm a big fan of us, obviously, but all that came together and was corroborated by people's constant walking up to us and saying that they really enjoyed themselves and learned a lot.
Robin Heinze:
You talked about it being our Super Bowl ad, and I really think that's true because IR, we put it on, and then we also are really at the heart of it, both in terms of getting our name and our business out there, but also our team is literally at the heart of the conference, like putting it on. And I think a lot of people are sometimes surprised that we, Infinite Red, are the developers, the designers, are the ones putting in all the work. We're not just sort of contracting an event team and putting our name on the conference. So in terms of behind the scenes, I want to talk a bit about what our team actually does to put this on and everything that went into that week as the Infinite Red team.
Justin Huskey:
Yeah. You're absolutely right. So we actually, as a company, many of our developers and designers, they all are at Chain React that week. So they're working on client work right up until Chain React happens. And then they all come in from out of town and they work on chain react for that entire week. So it's actually really cool because we all wear red shirts when we're there. You will see if you're at the conference, just a whole bunch of... there's usually about 30 people wearing these bright red shirts running around.
Robin Heinze:
So don't wear red to Chain React, if you don't want people to come up to you asking.
Justin Huskey:
It's like wearing a red shirt to Target, in some ways. You end up becoming... You get all sorts of questions.
Robin Heinze:
It really is.
Justin Huskey:
So they all come in from out of town and I really kind of... What I like about this is that there's a few people on our team that we're actually meeting for the first time too. So new team members that have joined Infinite Red, this is the first time I'm meeting them. This is the first time the rest of the team is sometimes meeting them. And it's really nice to be able to connect, and in some ways feels like a reunion for ourselves.
And then when we get to open that up, it's really awesome because you start to, on the first day of the conference and workshops, you start seeing speakers come in, you start seeing attendees who've been to multiple Chain Reacts all coming in, and it feels like this kind of mini reunion that happens in a way.
And it's all possible because our team is on the ground for an entire week. We don't just show up for workshops and for the conference, they show up on Monday, they're ready to go. We're packing and planning things. We're putting together swag bags. We're, I mean doing things like folding and making sure they're in the right size. Robin, you know that because you were in that room. We're waiting 30 minutes for pizza to show up because it's down the street and then there's another 30 minutes and it's running late and we're all tired. And we're-
Robin Heinze:
The pizza was 30 minutes out for a solid two hours.
Justin Huskey:
Gant kept saying, "Don't worry, it's just 30 minutes out."
Gant Laborde:
By the way, I just want... They got an update just a minute ago. We're going to have pizza here in about 30 minutes, everybody, so just wait. I'll see you in about 30 minutes.
Justin Huskey:
So we have all of this planning and stuff that goes into it just to prep. And then I can't say it enough how much I was proud of the team because they would get up every morning way early. They would-
Robin Heinze:
Like way early.
Justin Huskey:
Yeah. Some people were up at-
Robin Heinze:
Call time for us was usually like 6:30.
Justin Huskey:
Yeah, they'd be down there and it's a full day. I mean, if you are in the conference, you're doing check-in and registration, you're answering questions, you're helping people realize where it is they need to go, giving recommendations, and then they're at after parties and everything. And it's going until sometimes I think the latest I heard was like 11, 12.
And if you're a workshop leader, I've heard a few of them were up until 2 or 3 in the morning. So then they get up and they do it all over again. And it can be kind of exhausting for them, but totally worth it in the end. I've heard that from many of them, is that they said it's the most exhausting yet most fulfilling week I've had in a long, long time.
Gant Laborde:
Yeah.
Robin Heinze:
Gant, I keep coming back to what you said a little bit ago about it being like if it's right, it's not stressful. And it might be exhausting and chaotic and a lot of work, but it's not stressful. And that really, really rang true to me because the whole week, I was so tired.
Gant Laborde:
I lost my voice.
Robin Heinze:
It was a lot. It was exhausting, but I was never stressed. It was not stressful exhausting. It was fun exhausting, and really fulfilling exhausting.
Gant Laborde:
You're 100% right. Just to plus one on that. There's a joke, I just flew in and boy, are my arms tired. But it's such a bad joke. But what's funny about it is for what's natural. We have consultants here. We have people who have agency and planning and organization that flapping their wings is natural. It's one of the things, that they're made to fly.
So if you say, "Hey," which by the way, kudos to Robin. She's not going to give herself this kudos. But one of the things that we gave her to do was the Infinite Red presence there at the conference, to plan and organize the booth. What is it going to look like when you walk in and you finally meet people from Infinite Red? Is it going to look like we've got a six-foot table with a default tablecloth on it, a couple of stickers and people say, "Here, take a pen." Or is it going to be this glowing bookcase with gifts, prizes, giveaways, and stickers and barcodes?
Robin Heinze:
I have a story about that book.
Gant Laborde:
Oh, yeah, Robin? I want to hear it. But what's great about it is I didn't come up with any of that. Justin didn't come up with any of that. We said, "Robin, here's some photos and here's some pictures of what conferences do. Now put your spin on it, have at it." And you came up with, was that Photoshop designs that you did? It was beautiful. And then when I saw it in person, it was jaw dropping. So I'm just like, for you, that was your natural state. You were connecting. You were creating something that was fun and approachable by people in this technology. And that's the important part. We're not asking goldfish to climb trees. We're asking the eagles to fly.
Robin Heinze:
Yeah, it was really fun putting that booth together.
Gant Laborde:
Why do you say fun that way? Fun.
Robin Heinze:
There was some incidents getting it all put together. It came together well. But don't ask a bunch of software engineers who don't like to read documentation or instructions to put together IKEA furniture.
Gant Laborde:
I love it.
Robin Heinze:
Especially ones who are really, really strong and have the ability to break IKEA furniture.
Justin Huskey:
You know what's funny about that is I literally was watching this thing come up and I send this message to Gant, "Hey, Gant. It's awesome over here at The Armory, everything's coming together. No hiccups at all. We're doing great." And then two seconds later, I watched the entire team just banging on the top of this thing and then the entire shelf just goes boom, boom, and falls down. All of the shelf caves in on itself literally two seconds after I told Gant not to worry.
Robin Heinze:
There was a trip to Ace Hardware to get some replacement pegs. But then you know what was really beautiful about that is these same engineers who didn't read instructions and caused the shelf to collapse then just came together and figured out how to fix the problem and make it right. And they did. It was amazing. Yeah, that's why I love this team so much, because they just care and they really want to see everything succeed.
Gant Laborde:
Well, one of the things that I like to do when interviewing a programmer is I have to give them something they've never seen before. Because if I ask them a question and they know the answer to it, I learn nothing. I learn nothing about that person, how they react, what they do. It's the worst thing in the world. If I give them a problem and they know the full solution and I could tell they know the full solution, we might as well have done nothing.
My goal is to give them something that they've never seen before and possibly make it difficult for them, make a problem happen inside there and then watch how they react to that problem. That's where I learn. When they swim the moat, you figure out who really cares, you figure out how they swim, you figure out what they can take. And so I say I understand that the world of figuring out hiring has all kinds of opinions, both good and bad. But for me, I have to ask the impossible questions because I need to see how a person deals with that.
So I told someone had a hiccup at the hotel and the hotel staff fixed it and they were very apologetic about it. They were very sad that they made that mistake. And I said, "I'm happy because I saw how you reacted to that mistake." And so I totally get it. It might be fun to beat on the bookshelf, but when you're heading to a hardware store to buy dowels and super glue, and that's awesome.
Robin Heinze:
The whole week was just, time after time, watching this team come together, solve problems, take initiative. Even the people that had never met anybody else in person before, I actually really, I give credit to our remote work culture here at Infinite Red for how well the team was already cohesive, even with the folks that had never met in person because we came together like we'd known each other for forever and just spent the whole week getting stuff done.
Gant Laborde:
That reverberates because the community, a lot of these people were seeing each other for the first time as well. So when you get everybody together and the core of it is synchronized, then all these people come in, their food concerns are taken care of. That was a key thing. Their welcoming was taken care of. They knew exactly where to go, where to be. They felt comfortable on stage. That's just, it comes out, it's a good feeling throughout. And I hope that that continues to reverberate through. I guess when you watch the videos, you're not going to pick up on that. But that's why I always say you've got to be there to really experience it. Of course the stage is-
Robin Heinze:
Exactly. The YouTube videos of the talks will live on forever. But if you attended the conference, you know that the talks are maybe 25, 30% of the value, and so you don't see that. You have to be there.
Gant Laborde:
That's actually something that's really interesting is people, when they first take a look at the schedule, they wonder why we have the breaks the way the breaks are set. They're very confused at first. They're like, "I need a break after this. I need a break after that." But really what happens is the formula is very simple. Give people something to talk about, then give them the opportunity to get together and almost like mastermind, mix, connect and talk about it, then give them more... caffeinate them and give them what they need and bring them back for more talks. Then feed them excellent food and let them be in a good environment. And I got to admit, I know some people who absolutely leave and go to some of the fantastic restaurants right around the venue instead of eating our food, but our food was delicious as well. And then they come right back.
Robin Heinze:
Hey, the fact that we have... there's fantastic places to eat around the venue. That's just as much of a feature as the fantastic food that we provide at the venue.
Gant Laborde:
It is. It is. And it goes back to the idea of effortless. I want people coming back from this feeling like they almost went on a vacation, but they came back smarter and more networked.
Robin Heinze:
See, that's my kind of vacation. I want to sign up for that.
Gant Laborde:
You did.
Robin Heinze:
You think so? Definitely more networked. I don't know about this one. I want to take a second just to talk about... You were talking about how we had breaks and we had parties. So let's talk about the after party for a second.
Gant Laborde:
Oh my goodness.
Robin Heinze:
Because I have never seen a party venue this epic before. So we had our after party at Bank of Expensify, which is the downtown office of Expensify who was our platinum sponsor. And this building, let me tell you, if you were not there, I can't even describe it. How would you explain this building?
Justin Huskey:
I think the best way it's been described to me it's I walked in, I went up... So you walk in and there is a bottom floor, there's stairs leading directly up. Andrew Gable, who's one of our speakers, and he works at Expensify. He was helping with the sponsorship. I walk up to him and thank him for having us over. And he says, "Yeah, there's a bar downstairs. There's food down there. There's another one on the second floor with more food. And there's a kitchen over there as well. Now, look up." And I look up and he is like, "Okay, on the third floor, there's another bar up there, and opposite that is more food." So just kind of walk around and try to figure out where you want to go around here and just have a lot of fun. And I'm looking around and we had already been in that space and I'm looking around and I'm like, this place is bigger than what I thought. And I've already been in here. There's still secret rooms that lead to secret rooms.
Gant Laborde:
That reminds me of a really funny aspect of the whole thing where there's this wonderful purple room on the fourth floor or something like that. You could see it from the ground, but you see just people standing up. They go, "Oh, I want to go up there." If you try to go there and you follow the stairs correctly, you end up on a floating platform ever, just barely out of reach of that.
Robin Heinze:
Oh yeah, I did that. You walk up and then you're like, "This doesn't connect."
Gant Laborde:
No, it doesn't.
Robin Heinze:
This is just stairs. Stairs to a secret place.
Gant Laborde:
And one really key thing that I thought was really valuable was there was plenty of alcohol and non alcohol available everywhere.
Robin Heinze:
Oh, yeah.
Gant Laborde:
So everybody felt comfortable. There was good food options. And that's one of the key things. Lots of tech conferences shove alcohol into people's faces. This way, the way they did it is they made it available for people who wanted it. But there were stations with this delicious guava juice for non-alcohol as well. It's very welcoming for everybody, all cultures and also all walks of life. I remember when I could drink until all hours of the morning, but as you know, I definitely loved the guava juice because I had to be up at 6:30 the next day.
Robin Heinze:
I definitely felt like the after party and all the sort of socializing was very safe socializing. Nothing felt out of control or I didn't want to be there anymore. It was all very-
Gant Laborde:
There's an intense after parties at some of these conferences. And don't get me wrong, some of them are known for having intense after parties and people seek those out specifically for that reason. But this was my vibe. This was a good amount of being taken care of. And Expensify knocked it out of the park, grand slam.
Robin Heinze:
So like I said, Expensify was our platinum sponsor and they were absolutely amazing throughout. I also want to give a quick shout out to our charitable sponsor, though, Hinge Health. They were so gracious and provided the charitable donations that we gave out during our trivia portion. Gant, can you explain a little bit more how we got involved with Hinge Health?
Gant Laborde:
Oh, yeah. Well, they reached in and they had looked at the different sponsorships. And of course, there's lots of ways to sort of be available and in front of developers. You can get the wifi sponsorship or the coffee sponsorship or anything else like that. But one of the things that I found was most amazing is they came in, they're like, "We want to help." So they were looking into diversity, equity, inclusion. They were looking into how they can help communities. And so when they interacted with us, one of the things that we said is like, "Well, we have the trivia show. This would be fantastic if the people were playing for a particular charity." And that, I think, brought an extra element. It wasn't just contrived. There was value specifically in the trivia game that really reflected in change and significant positive impact on the world.
Robin Heinze:
So that's really awesome. Just special shout out to Hinge Health for being awesome. So I want to talk a little bit about how Chain React fits into the React Native community more broadly. I know we're the only React Native conference in the US. We were the first React Native conference period, like ever in the world. Although, React Native EU was hot on our heels, but we were first. What's the importance and the impact of Chain React in the React Native community as a whole?
Gant Laborde:
Well, I think that having a platform... You know, here's the thing. Some developer programs are excellent at announcements and have places for them and have a way to tell people what's coming and what's not. And when Chain React was first created, there was a month, quite a few different React conferences. And I think that there were, some of them are varying size, varying importance and Meta, then Facebook, didn't know which ones to go to and which ones not to go to. And I think that what we've cultivated here is that people are talking to us, people who are significant players in React Native. You've got Amazon, you've got Microsoft, you've got Meta, and they're looking at this now as the mouthpiece for announcements, planning and motivation on how people can get involved in new architecture and changes, how they can test these things out. So to be honest, Google's always been fantastic at announcing things. They're also fantastic at immediately shutting them down afterward.
Robin Heinze:
I'm looking at you, Google+.
Gant Laborde:
But for everybody else, we need a place where these things can kind of happen, where you can have a moment where you can, especially if you're in the US, you're not near Poland for the fantastic conferences like App.js and React Native EU. Those are fantastic places to be, but we need a place where we can cultivate this information, where someone can set a representative from their company and actually get a hold of somebody from Meta, because apparently there's no phone number if you have a problem, by the way. But you can actually go there and talk to the group, talk to the people who are making the decisions and ask your questions.
Robin Heinze:
Literally, while you're waiting in line for lunch, you may be talking to someone from Meta, from Microsoft, from Amazon, from Shopify.
Gant Laborde:
Yeah. And if not, we'll introduce you to them.
Robin Heinze:
Like high bandwidth communication with key community members.
Justin Huskey:
I had a personal just kind of fan experience because I was in line and started... Actually, I was at the table and I started talking to these developers, found out they were from Starbucks, and I could recite that app and use their experience to them like, verbatim, what's going on.
Robin Heinze:
You're like, "I've been to the Reserve down the street at least six times since I've been her."
Justin Huskey:
They introduced themselves and said they're from Starbucks. And my mind immediately goes, "My time has come."
Robin Heinze:
Awesome. So we're kind of getting to the end of how much time we have left, but there's a couple things I want to make sure we hit before we wrap up. Most important, what are the funny stories? Because you've got to have some funny stories.
Gant Laborde:
Well, one stands out, and I apologize to this gentleman, I won't even say his name, but we have something really cool that I think happens at lot of conferences. At conferences, there'll be somebody who puts down a few stickers, and then another person will come down and put a few stickers there. And eventually, there just becomes this sticker table or card table where people just start putting all kinds of random things. So we wrap that up and own it at Chain React. We actually have a table for you to bring your company's swag. It's free of charge. This is your free marketing. You could put down all kinds of cool swag and grab what you want. People can write jobs and stuff like that.
But one of the ways that we sort of tease this table is that we will put little prizes along the table. And I like to put ridiculous prizes on this table. And one of the ridiculous prizes that was sitting there since the very beginning of the conference was toilet golf. That's right.
Robin Heinze:
Very good.
Gant Laborde:
Justin, why don't you tell people a little bit about-
Robin Heinze:
Are you telling me that was not snatched up immediately?
Gant Laborde:
No.
Justin Huskey:
No. My working theory on that is that people were nice enough and they were waiting for someone else to go ahead and take that coveted prize.
Robin Heinze:
High value.
Gant Laborde:
Well, what's funny, what was happening up there is I was up there talking and someone came by and was looking, and I said, "You're looking right at toilet golf." And he is like, "Yeah, that doesn't look like it'll fit in my bag." He's like, "I think my daughter would love this." And so I took it and I put it in his hands and I said, "Congratulations, this has been sitting here all day. I don't know how it's still here, but here is toilet golf," and like magic, Justin shows up behind him.
Justin Huskey:
I show up here. So I see Gant up there handing this thing, like literally forcing this toilet golf onto this guy. He's going home with it. I know it for sure. I can see it. He is not letting him turn around and put it back on the table. So I was actually downstairs, so I immediately run up the stairs. I'm out of breath. I reach out my hand and I'm like, "Sir, I have to shake your hand as the owner of this toilet golf." And unfortunately, or I guess depending on how you look at it, he becomes known a little bit as the toilet golf guy for...
Gant Laborde:
He was a little afraid of that. He was like, "Oh, I'm going to hide this so it doesn't get catch on." Yeah.
Justin Huskey:
He tried to hide it, but-
Robin Heinze:
I don't want to be seen.
Justin Huskey:
... Gant, didn't that get called out in some way at some point?
Gant Laborde:
Yeah. I told Kenneth LaFrance on stage, the fantastic MC-
Robin Heinze:
Oh no.
Gant Laborde:
... that someone finally took the toilet golf from the hot swap table. You can make that announcement. But he announces, "Hey, who here at the audience just took the toilet golf, made him stand up in front of everybody."
Robin Heinze:
Oh my God.
Gant Laborde:
So we have a photo. He tweeted it. He has this fantastic tweet that says "It's not about the journey, it's about the swag you get along the way," and there's a picture of us and him holding this toilet golf. He grabbed one of our stickers and labeled it as Infinite Red Toilet Golf.
Robin Heinze:
Infinite Red Toilet Golf.
Gant Laborde:
Oh yeah.
Robin Heinze:
If that's our legacy from this conference-
Gant Laborde:
I'll take it.
Justin Huskey:
That's a win.
Gant Laborde:
That's fantastic.
Robin Heinze:
Yeah.
Gant Laborde:
It's a win.
Robin Heinze:
I'll take that. Do you have any other funny, like Kenneth LaFrance or backstage stories from Green Room?
Gant Laborde:
He is a bottle of fun. He is fantastic. If you have Kenneth LaFrance, it's a show on stage and it's a show offstage. There was a person who he called in the audience and he said, "What's your name?" It's John. And the next one was like Jacob. And then so he does this John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt joke on stage. It's fantastic. But then somebody went up to him on the side and says, "Hey, is it scripted?" He's like, "No, I didn't place a John and a Jacob in the audience." He's just that good at improv. He's the show in a show.
Robin Heinze:
He's amazing.
Gant Laborde:
Yeah, he is.
Robin Heinze:
Having spent a short but fun amount of time on stage with Kenneth LaFrance, I can say that he is a welcome presence.
Gant Laborde:
Yeah, he's fantastic.
Robin Heinze:
Total pro.
Gant Laborde:
He's available as an MC for other conferences as well. If you look for him on Twitter and you reach out to him, he has MCed MagnoliaJS, which was a sponsor for us. He has MCed for us in Chain React in the past in 2019 as well. And he's done plenty of virtual MCing through the 2020s and things like that. But I know he's looking to go ahead and be like an in-person MC as his entire side gig. He's a math teacher, so this is how he gets out.
Robin Heinze:
He teaches what? High school algebra?
Gant Laborde:
Yeah, Algebra II, I think.
Robin Heinze:
That has a really special place in my heart as someone with a math background. I love high school math teachers. They're usually the most fun.
Gant Laborde:
Yeah, he's a great dude. Absolutely hire him if you have something coming up. Or even just a company get together. He's extremely entertaining and worked on everybody's pronunciations of their names, their backstories. He learned everything.
Robin Heinze:
He did fantastic.
Gant Laborde:
Oh my goodness.
Robin Heinze:
He did fantastic with everyone's names, except for the one that he just had to-
Gant Laborde:
Pointed the screen.
Robin Heinze:
... pointed the screen.
Gant Laborde:
Yeah, he was a-
Robin Heinze:
He's like, "I tried, man. I tried hard."
Gant Laborde:
There was this guy, like Christophe Pure, or something like that. I would've said Pure, but he was trying to get the pronunciation right. And every time he said his last name, the accent on the name being correct, Ken was like, "I give up." It's hilarious.
Robin Heinze:
Such a good time. Well, I think we're just about out of time, but let's talk about next year. I'm sure everyone's kind of wondering what the plans are for next year. What can we tease? Have we even made any plans yet? What can we talk about next year?
Justin Huskey:
So next year, to be honest, we haven't started talking about it too much.
Robin Heinze:
It's like it's asking someone if they're going to have another kid right after they come home with their first kid. You're like, "Give me a minute."
Justin Huskey:
That's like, yeah.
Robin Heinze:
Going to need a second. Okay.
Justin Huskey:
Definitely watch out for next year. We've made amazing connections at The Armory. People love The Armory, so I can obviously assure people that Portland's where it's at again next year. It is something to watch out for. We're coming back, we're going to be in the summer back to the old times like when we were in July. If anybody's been to Chain React in the past, they know July is kind of the Chain React month. It is not usually in May, although it was kind of fun to have it this year in a different time. So we'll be back at that point. We'll be back in Portland and we'll be... Yeah, stay tuned. We'll be announcing more here in a bit, actually.
Robin Heinze:
Follow us on Twitter. There'll be an announcement at some point.
Gant Laborde:
And there were throngs of people asking about how they could be on stage next time, and they were asking about the CFP process and everything like that. Best thing I can say is connect up on the interwebs, as Kenneth LaFrance would say. But quite specifically, get on the Twitter, get our newsletters, get everything like that. Because when the CFP comes out, it fills up pretty fast and it's a wonderful process. But if you miss that window, then I'll see you next year. When you come up to me and say, "How do I speak next year?" The answer is catch the CFP.
Robin Heinze:
Having gone out on stage for the first time, I can say it's not as scary as you think it's going to be. And it's pretty fun.
Gant Laborde:
Yeah. It is. It really is fun to go out on stage. I have to say, when it feels less like a cold room with eyes staring and mouths closed. There's like no primal fear. When you hear the laughs from Ken introducing you and you're on side of stage and everything looks so cool, and then you walk out on this beautiful space, you're just entertaining your friends. You are holding court with what feels like five or six people, and it's a very approachable way to kind of speak in public. Even though you're speaking in front of hundreds of people, it feels like five.
Robin Heinze:
It's a very cozy venue.
Gant Laborde:
That's so crazy how that-
Robin Heinze:
It's very warm. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we've got to wrap up, but thank you so much Gant and Justin for coming on and wrapping up this Chain React season. If you'd like to nerd out more about React Native in general, feel free to check out our Slack community, Community.InfiniteRed, or our Twitter community, RNTwitter.infinite.red, You can also check out Jamon's, Twitch Stream, @RNLive, if he ever decides to stream again. I've been bugging him. I think he's wanting to get back to it. And then where can people find you on Twitter, Gant?
Gant Laborde:
You can find me @GantLaborde. And then also gantlaborde.com, as long as my HTTPS is working. I know I always have to fix that every year. But yeah, you could find me on there. Of course, just reach out to me. You can find me also on the community Slack, community.infinite.red. Message me, and I will appear.
Robin Heinze:
As if by magic.
Gant Laborde:
You might have to message me three times. It's sort of like beetle juice in that way.
Robin Heinze:
And Justin, where can people find you?
Justin Huskey:
You can find me, this is a creative one, my first and last name, JustinHuskey, H-U-S-K-E-Y on Twitter.
Robin Heinze:
Whoa.
Justin Huskey:
Yeah.
Robin Heinze:
Whoa.
Justin Huskey:
And I'm not personally a React Native developer, so you can find all sorts of cringey baseball and Starbucks content on my Twitter account.
Robin Heinze:
And then you can find me at Robin_Heinze on Twitter. And you can find React Native Radio @ReactNativeRDIO. As always, thanks to our producer and editor, Todd Werth, our assistant editor and episode release coordinator, Jed Bartausky, our designer, Justin Huskey, who's in the room, and our guest coordinator, Derek Greenberg. And of course, thanks to our sponsor, Infinite Red. Check us out at Infinite.Red/ReactNative. And special thanks to all of you who are listening and all of you who attend Chain React.
Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. I have a very special mom joke today.
Gant Laborde:
Oh.
Justin Huskey:
Yay.
Robin Heinze:
This mom joke is courtesy of Rahim Rahman, who I met at Chain React last week, who has the designation of having attended every single Chain React since 2017. And he gave me this mom joke, and so I told him I'd give him a little shout-out. Did you hear that Sweden just appointed the IKEA CEO to be their new Prime Minister? Yeah. He should have his cabinet together by the end of the week.
Gant Laborde:
Love it.
Robin Heinze:
So thank you to Rahim for that mom joke, and we will see you all next time.
Gant Laborde:
Bye everybody.
Bye.
Robin Heinze:
Bye.
Justin Huskey:
Bye.