Dont go to React Miami without Listening to This

Episode Description

JavaScript Jam previews React Miami with organizer Michelle Bakels, speakers, and media partners discussing the conference lineup, networking tips, and inclusivity efforts.

Episode Summary

This JavaScript Jam Live episode serves as a React Miami preview, bringing together conference organizer Michelle Bakels, media partners Dev Agrawal, Anthony Campolo, and Scott Steinlage, along with several scheduled speakers and first-time attendees. The conversation opens with Dev introducing Miami Jam, a game-show-style interview series featuring React Miami speakers, before pivoting to a debate about conference accessibility sparked by Dan's critique of paywalled content. Michelle explains that React Miami will offer both a free live stream and post-production recordings of all talks. She then pitches the conference itself, highlighting its integration with the massive Emerge Americas tech conference, unique Miami Beach location, and curated programming that balances core React topics with full-stack and infrastructure content. The group spends significant time sharing conference-going advice, from finding a buddy system to tips for neurodivergent attendees, with Jen offering particularly detailed guidance on managing sensory overwhelm. Several speakers pitch their upcoming talks, including Rizel Scarlett on GitHub Copilot, Henri Helvetica on web performance literacy, Ryan Magoon on building for disabled power users, and Dax Raad on deploying Next.js to AWS. A side discussion about the State of JavaScript survey surfaces tensions between its value as a trend predictor and its limitations as a community census. The episode closes with a discount code giveaway and announcements for upcoming JavaScript Jam collaborations with React Miami.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Introductions and Twitter Space Troubles

The episode kicks off with some technical difficulties getting the Twitter Space live, which becomes a lighthearted moment as the hosts bond over the common frustrations of running live audio events. Anthony Campolo shares a tip about Twitter Spaces sometimes needing a minute or two to properly go live after starting.

Once things settle, the hosts introduce themselves and the show's format. Ishan Anand, Anthony Campolo, and Scott Steinlage from Edgio welcome listeners to JavaScript Jam Live and introduce their collaboration with React Miami. Dev Agrawal joins as a fellow media partner, and Michelle Bakels, one of the React Miami organizers, hops on despite her own connection issues. Scott rebrands the effort as "React Miami Month" and encourages audience participation regardless of skill level.

00:06:06 - Miami Jam Game Show and Conference Access Debate

Dev Agrawal unveils the concept for Miami Jam, a game-show-style interview series he's organizing with Anthony and Scott for the week of React Miami. Rather than traditional speaker interviews, the show will feature trivia questions about React, JavaScript quirks, and other speakers' topics, with audience-driven point scoring and a secret prize for the top-scoring speaker.

The conversation shifts when Dan raises a provocative question about conferences being exclusive or paywalled. Michelle confirms that React Miami will offer a free live stream during the event and release recordings of all talks within about two weeks of the conference. Jen Junod pushes back on the idea that free conferences solve everything, noting that even free events face constant complaints. The group agrees that the real value of in-person attendance is networking, while educational content should be freely available afterward.

00:19:00 - The React Miami Pitch and Emerge Americas Partnership

Ishan asks Dev and Michelle to give their pitch for why React Miami stands out. Michelle describes it as a two-day conference on Miami Beach covering the full React ecosystem, not just front-end UI work but also infrastructure, machine learning, and more. She emphasizes her effort to integrate the conference into the local Miami tech scene so attendees actually experience the city rather than just a convention center.

A key differentiator is the partnership with Emerge Americas, a general tech conference roughly 40 times larger running in parallel at the same convention center. React Miami ticket holders get access to Emerge as well, which features high-profile keynotes and a major startup pitch competition. Michelle also highlights the opening night React documentary screening with director Ida Bechtel and a beach-side after party, painting a picture of a conference that blends technical depth with memorable social experiences.

00:25:30 - Are React Conferences Really About React?

Dan offers an observation that React conferences tend to be less focused on React itself compared to Vue or Svelte conferences, arguing that React's dominance means companies use the brand to attract attendees and then talk about adjacent technologies. Michelle pushes back, noting her deliberate effort to keep React Miami's lineup React-focused, while acknowledging that the modern React developer's scope extends well beyond the UI layer.

Dev adds nuance by suggesting React's massive community has evolved past discussing the library itself and now focuses on what you can build with it, a maturity threshold that smaller ecosystems haven't yet reached. The group also touches on the State of JavaScript survey, with both Dan and Michelle expressing concern that it doesn't represent the broader developer community. Theo Browne jumps in to argue it serves well as a leading indicator of where technology is heading, even if it's not a true census of all developers.

00:33:00 - First-Timer Excitement and Conference Buddy Tips

Alexis, a recent bootcamp graduate attending her first-ever conference thanks to a free ticket from mentor Michael Lando, shares her excitement and nervousness. Her story sparks a rich conversation about maximizing conference experiences, with multiple speakers offering practical advice. Michelle recommends reviewing the talk schedule in advance, networking between sessions, and remembering that most conference attendees are just as eager to meet new people.

Dev outlines two main conference goals: learning about technology by researching speakers and sessions beforehand, or building professional connections by engaging with sponsors and fellow attendees on LinkedIn. Dan introduces his concept of avoiding "the queue," the informal line that forms around well-known speakers in social settings, arguing that the most valuable conversations often happen with people who don't have a crowd around them. Scott proposes a buddy system for first-timers, which Alexis enthusiastically endorses, and Michelle suggests organizing it through the React Miami Discord.

00:40:00 - Neurodivergent Conference Strategies and Inclusivity

Dan asks Jen for tips on navigating conferences as a neurodivergent attendee, opening up one of the episode's most heartfelt segments. Jen shares detailed strategies from her own experience with ADHD, PTSD, and other challenges, including keeping a calming song on repeat, always carrying headphones and snacks, and calling someone outside the conference when overwhelmed. She describes the particular frustration of ADHD-related anger when simple tasks like finding a speaker room become impossible.

Alexis connects deeply with this conversation, sharing her own experience with autism and advocating for the buddy system as more than just a social convenience but a genuine accessibility measure. Jen offers practical icebreaker advice like complimenting someone's shoes or asking how they got into a topic. Ryan Magoon adds that newcomers often underestimate their own value, and that established community members are usually happy to help make connections. The discussion underscores how conference inclusivity goes far beyond ticket pricing.

00:46:00 - Speaker Talk Previews and Lightning Talk Ideas

Several React Miami speakers take turns pitching their upcoming talks. Rizel Scarlett previews her talk on leveling up with GitHub Copilot, focusing on prompt engineering tips and audience engagement. Henri Helvetica describes his alphabetical tour of web performance terminology, this time pulling React-specific data from HTTP Archive and RUM Archive. He also announces plans for a casual group run on the morning of the conference.

Ryan Magoon shares the personal backstory behind his accessibility talk, growing up in a deaf family and having a blind partner, which gives him a unique perspective on building for disabled power users. Dax Raad explains his talk on the surprisingly complex infrastructure needed to deploy Next.js on AWS. Henri also pitches the idea of informal lightning talks during the conference, and Michelle responds enthusiastically, noting that new lounge spaces sponsored by City Furniture could make it feasible. The segment showcases the diversity of topics React Miami will cover.

00:55:30 - Conference Culture, Open Source Events, and Wrap-Up

The conversation turns philosophical as Scott and Michelle discuss what makes React Miami special compared to larger, more corporate conferences. Michelle contrasts her experience at AWS re:Invent, which was logistically flawless but left her feeling disconnected, with smaller conferences where attendee participation creates lasting memories. She credits the community's willingness to volunteer and take ownership of side events.

Scott draws a parallel between React Miami's open, collaborative approach and the open source ethos, noting that letting community members contribute ideas makes the event stronger. The episode wraps with housekeeping: the discount code "JavaScript Jam" for 15% off tickets, which Michelle reveals accidentally also applies to team tickets. Dev re-promotes the upcoming Miami Jam game show, and Scott announces that next week's episode will feature speakers Henri Helvetica and Will Johnson along with a free ticket giveaway. Michelle closes by expressing genuine gratitude for sponsors, speakers, and attendees who make the conference possible.

Transcript

00:00:01 - Anthony Campolo

All right, sorry about the Twitter Space kerfuffle. Scott got the thing working, though. Well done, Scott. I know exactly what was happening. It's happened to me before. Sometimes when you start a Space, it will show as starting on your phone without actually being started where other people can see it and join it. But if you wait one to two minutes, somehow it works itself out and then all of a sudden goes live. So patience was a virtue in that respect. For any other Twitter Space hosts out there, these are the fun things we get to learn as we do this process.

00:00:42 - Ishan Anand

Yeah. Thank you to the audience for rejoining, and for Scott for soldiering on, and Anthony for the lesson. I'm reminded of that old demotivators poster of the Titanic that says, "Maybe your role is to be a lesson for others."

00:01:02 - Scott Steinlage

But.

00:01:02 - Ishan Anand

Welcome back, everyone. Do you know if Scott's gonna join in separately, Anthony?

00:01:09 - Anthony Campolo

Let's go ahead and just start announcing things, introducing ourselves. We'll let him work out what he's gonna do.

00:01:15 - Ishan Anand

Great.

00:01:16 - Scott Steinlage

So.

00:01:16 - Ishan Anand

Hi, everyone. Welcome again to JavaScript Jam Live. JavaScript Jam Live is an open mic, we like to say, where anything JavaScript and web development related is on topic. We love audience participation. We've got something very special for you this week and in the upcoming weeks in collaboration with React Miami. I am Ishan Anand. I'm VP of Product at Edgio, and I'm joined by Anthony and Scott. I'll let them introduce themselves and talk about what we're doing with React Miami.

00:01:54 - Anthony Campolo

Hello, my name is Anthony Campolo. I am a developer advocate at Edgio, and we're going to be joined today by Dev Agrawal, who is also partnering with React Miami to help put together some sweet events and activities and content for you. And we are bringing him up right now. Scott, if you are able to speak, go ahead and introduce yourself. Michelle's here.

00:02:20 - Scott Steinlage

Yo, what up, everybody? So hopefully you can hear me.

00:02:26 - Anthony Campolo

Yes.

00:02:28 - Scott Steinlage

All right, great. Wow, boy, that was fun earlier. I tell you what, it doesn't matter if you know quite a bit about tech or not, there's always something to make you look like a fool. So here we are. Everything's good. Everything's working now. Anyway, great. So glad to be here. React Miami. I don't know why I said week there, but in a hustle to get this up, that's what I put. But really, it's React Miami month, which I'm renaming right now. And I'm super excited because, as Anthony was hinting at, we're talking with Dev today about React Miami and many other things. Also, we're doing our little collab with React Miami as well, and we're just so excited for that. Moving forward, we're going to be having more speakers from React Miami on here speaking about topics that make sense for them. And we're keeping this traditional JavaScript Jam vibe that we have rolling through the whole process. So nothing's going to change as far as what you guys are typically used to hearing. As far as having speakers here and all that, it's going to be a great time.

00:03:37 - Scott Steinlage

So really, there's just more value from us being involved with React Miami, more value for you guys, and some extra goodies that we're going to talk about here a little bit later. We're really excited. So thank you so much. So glad to be here. Just remember, if you're a beginner or an advanced user, whether you've been doing this a little bit or for a very long time as a web developer, we want to hear from everybody. It doesn't matter whether you're a beginner or advanced. So don't be afraid to request to come up and ask questions or comment, make facts, opinions, whatever it is. We want to hear from you. In fact, that also helps increase the value here for everybody listening in, because when you guys get involved, typically some really great conversations happen. So we'd love to hear from as many people as want to come up. All right, with that being said, I am Scott Steinlage, and I am a technical community manager at Edgio, and I'm ready to rock this today.

00:04:40 - Scott Steinlage

Let's get this rolling. Thank you so much. Appreciate you all.

00:04:46 - Anthony Campolo

Awesome. We should have Dev introduce himself and then after that, Michelle, you can introduce yourself and you're one of the organizers of React Miami, so thank you for joining us.

00:04:59 - Dev Agrawal

How's it going, everybody? Thank you very much for having me up here. Thank everyone for showing up and showing interest. My name is Dev, or you can call me Dave. Both work fine. It's great to be here. I am also a media partner for React Miami along with these two great individuals, Anthony and Scott. I'm very excited to show you guys what we have in store for next week, or talk about it a little today. Michelle, do you want to go?

00:05:41 - Anthony Campolo

If you're not currently at your mic or something... Dan, it looks like you hopped up as well. I don't think Dan's gonna be at React Miami.

00:05:48 - Dan

I wish. There's a company offsite for that week, otherwise I would've gone. But yeah, I don't think I deserve to introduce myself because I'm not a media partner at React Miami.

00:06:01 - Anthony Campolo

Okay, well, cool. It looks like Will showed up anyway. That's so funny. Cool. So I guess we can let. Dev, do you want to kind of talk about your game show idea? I thought this was pretty interesting.

00:06:21 - Dev Agrawal

Sure, yeah. So I have managed to rope these two people into hosting a game show with me. This is happening next week. We are calling it Miami Jam, and I'm very excited for this. But it looks like Michelle is back up here as a speaker, so

00:06:39 - Michelle Bakels

I

00:06:39 - Dev Agrawal

think we would like to hear from her first.

00:06:42 - Henri Helvetica

Hi.

00:06:43 - Michelle Bakels

Sorry guys. The connection was like on the fritz and then the microphone button wasn't working in the Twitter Space, so it seems like everything's working.

00:06:52 - Scott Steinlage

Oh, we understand.

00:06:54 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah.

00:06:55 - Dev Agrawal

So that's the norm of using Twitter Spaces every day.

00:07:02 - Michelle Bakels

React Miami. And I'm just kind of crashing the party today. But I'm super excited to have Dev and Anthony and Scott all as media partners for React Miami this year. And I'm also listening in, just interested to see what we're going to do because we kind of just gave them the green light to do whatever they like.

00:07:28 - Anthony Campolo

Yes, we'll see whether you end up regretting it, but I think we'll have some cool stuff in store. So probably get back to your description, Dev.

00:07:41 - Dev Agrawal

Sure. Yeah. So the idea of Miami Jam is to kind of stray away from a typical interview or panel-style show where we just bring on a few speakers and ask them questions. Instead, this show, Miami Jam, which we are hosting, is going to be a little more like a game show, where instead of just straight-up asking questions about their topics or their motivations, we are going to ask trivia-style questions. These can be React-related questions or anything about weird quirks in JavaScript or TypeScript or anything adjacent to React. These could be guessing what library is being used, or this could be a question about some other speaker's topic, which the person the question is directed to has to answer. And then we will use these opportunities to kind of segue into more detailed, more in-depth discussions on what their topics are. So we still get a lot of insight from these speakers about what their topic is, what their motivation is behind giving the talk, or what their experience has been like in this industry and what kind of things they have worked on that's bringing them to React Miami to give this talk.

00:09:08 - Dev Agrawal

It's structured in a style that's more like a game show so that it's more fun, more interactive, and more collaborative. We are trying to get the speakers to share experiences with each other as well, and we are trying to get the audience involved. By the way, I'm sorry if my phone notification is interrupting me. I'll put that on silent. That's the point: trying to make it collaborative, trying to make it engaging. We're also going to have some stuff for the audience. So if you are in the audience there at the show, you will also get to engage with the speakers. Obviously, you'll get to ask your questions, but you might also get to engage in other ways. For example, if we ask a question, or if you ask them a question, you can decide how many points they get for answering that question. And if the question is about another speaker's topic, that speaker can decide how many points they would like the person answering the question to receive. And at the end of the show, we have a secret prize for the speaker that has the highest points.

00:10:15 - Dev Agrawal

It's not anything serious. We are not turning this into a contest. The prize is just there to make sure everyone is having a fun time and engaging with each other. How did I do?

00:10:27 - Anthony Campolo

Yeah, I think it's great. I'd be curious, Michelle, what your thoughts are, if there's any things that you think could kind of spruce it up or if you think it sounds like a good time.

00:10:39 - Michelle Bakels

I think it sounds really good. I think we can also give away, you know, a React Miami ticket or two in the process.

00:10:49 - Scott Steinlage

Yeah. So maybe the audience that's listening in, and then as far as the speakers from the conference, maybe we'll have to figure out exactly what that prize will be. But I think it's going to be awesome. One other thing I do want to add as well, a little teaser here: if you stick around to the end of the show, I'm going to give y'all, if you don't already have it, a ticket to React Miami. So if you're listening to this recording, listen through to the end, because, well, I mean, I guess you can skip to the end if you want. But if you're here live, I got you till the end. No, listen in. We're going to drop a discount code for you all to get a 15% discount off your React Miami ticket. Yeah, that's right. You heard it. Just for y'all, the JavaScript Jam audience here, React Miami has been kind enough to give us a discount code to share with our audience. So stick around to the end.

00:11:50 - Dev Agrawal

Yeah. And the show that we are planning, that I just talked about, this is very much a work in progress. So if you guys have any ideas, any feedback, we would love to listen to those and incorporate those. I see a lot of other content creators. Dan is up here. I see Dom in the listener section. I see Jen, I see Nate, Andrew. There's a bunch of people here. Very interesting. And of course, there are people who, I don't know. Any feedback, any ideas, feel free to throw those our way. And we would love to hear from you.

00:12:25 - Dan

Should we talk, like, conference spicy takes? Like conferences being, like, exclusive or paywalling, or should we do that?

00:12:36 - Dev Agrawal

Dan, you have exhausted your spicy take quota last night.

00:12:39 - Anthony Campolo

Actually, I think if Michelle wants to speak about ways in which React Miami promotes good conference behavior, I bet she would have things to say there, because I know she runs lots of events, has lots of thoughts on it, and I would assume has put great care into things like that.

00:12:56 - Michelle Bakels

So I lost connection for a little bit, so I missed the premise of that. And then I just got to the part about good conference behavior.

00:13:04 - Anthony Campolo

Dan has lots of spicy hot takes about conferences.

00:13:09 - Michelle Bakels

Oh, and why they're bad.

00:13:12 - Ishan Anand

It's.

00:13:12 - Henri Helvetica

It's.

00:13:13 - Dan

No, no, Michelle, it's the same you've

00:13:15 - Michelle Bakels

heard a thousand times. I'm so sorry. I, like, lost connection completely.

00:13:19 - Anthony Campolo

No, no, you're fine. So what is your specific criticism, Dan? And we'll see if React Miami beats your standard.

00:13:25 - Dan

It's not my criticism. First of all, can you hear me, or is this not working?

00:13:29 - Anthony Campolo

I can hear you fine. Yeah.

00:13:30 - Dan

Okay. It's the same criticism you've heard a thousand times. Instead of making content surrounding a conference, you should just make regular free content, instead of having conferences where people pay money and can only pay it if their company pays.

00:13:45 - Anthony Campolo

Well, first off, are these gonna be recorded and available after the fact?

00:13:50 - Michelle Bakels

So they... I don't know if you guys are able to hear Dan, but whenever he comes off mute, I can't hear him. But I can hear you, Anthony.

00:13:57 - Anthony Campolo

Oh, okay, so this. Yeah, this happens. I'll relay the question and then after you answer, you can drop and then come back and that will probably fix it. I'm just curious, is this content going to be available after the fact? Can people watch recordings of the talks?

00:14:13 - Michelle Bakels

Yes, absolutely. There will be recordings available of all the talks. Usually it takes us about two weeks to get through post-production for the recordings.

00:14:22 - Anthony Campolo

Okay, so basically all the content will be freely available to anyone who wants it anywhere in the world. So that kind of addresses what Dan is saying, that it could be this weird thing where people have to pay $1,000 and fly to an island somewhere in the middle of nowhere to watch these 10 priests deliver information from on high. That is not the case.

00:14:42 - Michelle Bakels

No, that's not the case. And there will be a free live stream during the event as well.

00:14:47 - Anthony Campolo

That's awesome. It looks like Jen has her hand up. Michelle. I would recommend leaving the space and then coming back. That usually fixes those issues.

00:14:56 - Jen Junod

Hello, hello, beautiful humans. Hi, I'm Jen. I guess I should say who I am.

00:15:02 - Anthony Campolo

Hey, Jen.

00:15:03 - Jen Junod

I am a DevRel at Aiven, which is a database and data infrastructure company, as well as the host of a livestream called Teach GenTech and the host of a podcast called Shit You Don't Want to Talk About. And the shit I came up here to talk about... okay, that made me giggle. Dan, free conferences, there is no winning. As an emcee for a free conference, you constantly have to say, "Sponsored by blah blah blah, sign up for this, make sure you thank our sponsors." And people still complain. They complain all the time. No matter what you do, they complain. So I see the paywall and definitely not making it accessible for others. But yo, even doing it for free, people don't always like it.

00:16:05 - Anthony Campolo

Yeah, I think that there's different criticisms that could be had with lots of different conference structures. I mean, the main thing is like, are you delivering value to the people who come to your conference? You know, I think that's the main thing. And try and make it as available to as many people as possible. But you know, there's limited resources in the world.

00:16:27 - Dan

Yeah, I think having a free livestream is a great way to do it because that way you're making a statement: the educational content is for everyone. But the networking content, it's not even content.

00:16:38 - Anthony Campolo

The networking part is the networking value. The value you get from networking is what you get for showing up, versus the things people talk about, which you can learn. Yeah, and I agree. And that's what I think is great that React Miami is doing. And most conferences, I think, are starting to realize it's good to record and blast things out because then you have evergreen content. The speakers can share their talks afterward. I would be very wary to do a conference talk that I wouldn't have a recording of afterward.

00:17:06 - Dan

Yeah, I got a huge boost from my talk being recorded last year at React Brussels. And I remember there was like this huge controversy surrounding the, you know, the conference that shall not be named because one of their many mistakes was advertising, you know, video content and then just not doing it at all. So that not only did people outside the conference or people who pay for the conference not have access to it, but the speakers didn't have access to their recordings. Ryan Carneato literally has like a cell phone recording of that talk because they didn't have any recordings,

00:17:39 - Dev Agrawal

By the way, can we just appreciate the fact that we have this Voldemort of tech or web conferences now? The conference that shall not be named forever.

00:17:49 - Dan

I mean, we could name it, but I don't know if we name it. It's a bad omen for React Miami.

00:17:56 - Alexis

Yeah.

00:17:56 - Jen Junod

And this is just pumping us up for React Miami, like, yo, here's all the shit other conferences have done. So now let's just get pumped about this because it's React Miami.

00:18:09 - Dan

I had a glitch when you were first talking. Are you going to React Miami?

00:18:15 - Jen Junod

Not that I'm aware of. But, you know, that could always change.

00:18:18 - Dan

You know, Michelle, I think you should fly Jen out. I think it's. I think it's worth it.

00:18:24 - Anthony Campolo

That'd be tight.

00:18:26 - Ishan Anand

This.

00:18:26 - Anthony Campolo

We have a free ticket apparently. Allegedly.

00:18:31 - Jen Junod

It would be fun, and I would promote it. It would definitely be fun.

00:18:39 - Anthony Campolo

We're going to hop in with something. Ishan.

00:18:41 - Ishan Anand

Yeah, I would actually just like to back up. There's like two things that come to mind here. One is I'd really love to hear, or give Dev and Michelle the opportunity to give the pitch for React Miami, why they think people who aren't familiar with it should attend, how they make it stand out from, say, other conferences, and the care they put into it. And then maybe also hear what they think the mission or job to be done of a conference is, kind of post-COVID.

00:19:12 - Scott Steinlage

And.

00:19:13 - Ishan Anand

And, you know, conferences are clearly back. I think we had this conversation internally last year: dev conferences are back, but what's changed from before COVID? So that's a lot of questions in one statement. But I'll turn it over to Dev and Michelle. I'd love to hear them just give their pitch for React Miami or get that opportunity.

00:19:36 - Dev Agrawal

Yeah, I'll quickly say this as a sneak peek. This is a great question, by the way, Ishan, and I am going to answer this question in much more detail in a livestream this Friday. So, day after tomorrow, I'll let Michelle speak now, and maybe after Michelle I can give a quick summary of my thoughts. But yeah, I'm definitely going to talk about this in a lot more detail on Friday, and I'll possibly also convert that into a YouTube video. So be on the lookout for that. Michelle, would love to hear your thoughts on this.

00:20:10 - Michelle Bakels

Okay, I think my Twitter Space issues are finally sorted out because I can hear everybody now. So let me know if you can't hear me.

00:20:21 - Anthony Campolo

Sound good.

00:20:21 - Michelle Bakels

Okay, great. So, React Miami. React Miami is a two-day conference on Miami Beach where we have back-to-back talks from experts from all around the world, including some of our South Florida locals, about all things React, not just necessarily focused on the UI or the front end, but also infrastructure talks, machine learning talks. We cover a lot of different areas of the React ecosystem because React developers these days are so much more than just React developers. They usually do so much more than just the front end. But aside from that, I am an avid conference attendee myself and I love conferences. So when I had a chance to organize one myself, there were so many things that I love from other conferences that I wanted to bring into our conference. And there were so many things that I thought, oh, maybe this is room for improvement, or we could do something a little bit more there. So one of those things is I really try to integrate our conference into the Miami tech scene, into our community and the city. I've gone to a lot of events around the world where you kind of fly in, land in the city,

00:21:46 - Michelle Bakels

you go to the convention center or the hotel where they're having the conference, and then you fly out and you're like, did I even go to this place? Did I even see this city or know anything that was around me? So I really like to try and have some of our events at different locations from where our actual conference is held so that our attendees can really enjoy Miami Beach. And we also have our conference in partnership with Emerge Americas. So in the convention center at the same time, running in parallel, is a general tech conference that's 40 times bigger than ours called Emerge Americas. And all of the attendees to React Miami also get, included with their ticket, a ticket to Emerge Americas so that they can enjoy that conference as well. And their conference is massive. Their keynotes are some of the most famous people in the world. For example, this year Tom Brady is their keynote. Last year it was Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian. And they have a big startup pitch competition.

00:22:57 - Michelle Bakels

So especially if you're a startup founder or if you're coming on behalf of your business, it's a great way to basically attend multiple conferences in one shot, all while being able to connect with the React dev community, if you like that as well. So that's something that we think is a big differentiator. And then it's just good times. Our opening party is going to be a React documentary viewing at a rooftop cinema with the director of the React documentary, Ida Bechtel, React pioneer Christopher Chedeau, and Sunil Pai all doing a Q and A at the end. And then our after-party is at this really cool hotel that's on the beach, and it's just going to be really fun.

00:23:50 - Dev Agrawal

Yes, I will give a quick, hard vouch for being a part of Emerge. I think one of the most enjoyable things about attending React Miami last year was that we also had access to Emerge, which is like we got to see a lot of startups and small teams coming up with really innovative solutions to things. And yeah, that was a big attractor for React Miami and that's something that I'm definitely looking forward to this year as well.

00:24:21 - Ishan Anand

Yeah, thank you. That's a great answer to the question. I see, Dan, you've got your hand raised, but there was actually a question that came in before you that's on the Jumbotron, or replied to the thread here, which is: what is the policy on co-streaming React Miami, for example a viewing party? If you look at the Space, it's one of the replies that one of the listeners just asked. And then, Dan, we'll go over to you.

00:24:49 - Michelle Bakels

Okay, I have to figure out how to get these replies, but if you want to host a viewing party that is so cool and I fully endorse it, our live stream is free. So if you want people together and watching together, I just think that's the coolest thing in the world.

00:25:10 - Ishan Anand

Awesome. Great answer and thanks for the question. Dan, over to you since you got your hands.

00:25:15 - Dan

All right, you guys ready for another observation about conferences? I know you're not. I'm going to go for it anyway. Vue conferences are about Vue. Svelte conferences, there's two of them, are about Svelte. React conferences are not actually about React. It's mostly hype because they know that companies will look at the React thing and be like, oh, we use React, let's do it. But you go to a React conference and a ton of the talks are not about React. React is evergreen enough that it fades into the background, and people can talk about whatever JavaScript thing they want.

00:25:47 - Jen Junod

I don't know.

00:25:48 - Anthony Campolo

Hasn't really been my observation many React conferences, but there's a lot of them, so,

00:25:54 - Michelle Bakels

yeah, we definitely make sure that those are good.

00:25:59 - Alexis

Yeah.

00:26:00 - Michelle Bakels

Well, I don't know if I've really looked at a lot of the CFPs or talks for the React conferences that have been coming up besides ours, but I will say that we do try to keep it React-focused. We do have a lot of React talks. Every talk that might be a little bit off of a React talk can definitely tie back into one. And I didn't really think about it as a marketing angle. I'm a software developer and I'm a React developer, so when I want to do a developer conference in my area where I live, naturally it's going to be a React conference, because that's my area of focus and that's even the companies that I've been working for.

00:26:43 - Anthony Campolo

And that's, I think, one of the big strengths of React Miami and the conference and you organizing because you are someone in the community, you're not someone showing up trying to use the React community for some ends. So much as you want to create a good conference for the React community. And I think that's great. I think it very much shows.

00:27:06 - Dev Agrawal

Yeah, I have a response to the question that Dan brought up. I'll try to paraphrase the question first. The question is that React conferences are less about React and more about other things when compared to Vue conferences or Svelte conferences, which focus more on the technology that they're talking about and not other things. Right? So my response to that is, I think because of how massively popular and massively used React is, a lot of the community around React is no longer about React the library, or other libraries around React. I think a lot of the community is built around what can you do with React? What are some things that you can build? What are interesting pieces of technology that you can supplement React with? Or what are some use cases that you can solve with React? I think that is the status of React today. As much as I would like to think that Vue and Svelte are in similar boats, I think just because they have a smaller community, maybe their community hasn't reached that threshold point where the majority of the community is talking about what you can do with React and not about how to use React.

00:28:30 - Dev Agrawal

I don't know how much sense that makes, but that is my take on this argument or on this view of why React conferences tend to be less about React and about other things.

00:28:42 - Dan

Yeah, that's what I've experienced too. Basically, what happens is the React conferences are the big conferences and they're about React. And so what you get is Devrel at technology company X wanting to talk about X. And so they make it talk about how to use X with React.

00:29:03 - Anthony Campolo

And if you're someone who knows how to use React, then you also know how to use their thing. So, yeah, it makes sense. This is a thing in the web3 world. If you want to build a smart contract, all the tutorials are how to do it with React. I know there's going to be at least one Web3 talk at React Miami. But to me, that doesn't mean it's a talk that's not about React. To me, that's still about React. It's just not the React meta.

00:29:35 - Scott Steinlage

I'd like to maybe, if possible, bring up someone from the audience. Alexis, I see you there. I believe I saw a tweet with you in it, mentioned in it that you won a ticket to React Miami. Is that right? Yeah. Okay, well, you know, I think if you. If you want to come up here, that'd be awesome. We'd love to have you. And the other thing is, I want to know, like, I think it said that you've never been to a conference before, period. So what are you most excited about? And. Yeah, how's that? What are your emotions right now? Let's hear it.

00:30:17 - Alexis

Okay, well, first of all, hi everyone, I'm Alexis. I am a recent graduate of an apprenticeship, very similar to a boot camp. So yes, this is going to be my first conference. Michael Lando at Focus Otter, he's an amazing person. He reached out to me when I first started my apprenticeship, and he actually offered his mentorship to me because I was very excited to be learning React. So for the past few months, low-key, we kind of were talking about how to get me to this conference because it is a little bit out of budget. And I know earlier you guys were talking about how some people in the community don't have the resources to make it to conferences. And so a lot of us miss out on the side effects that you get, haha, side effects, from going to a conference, such as the great networking opportunities. So yes, I'm very lucky. I'm very grateful that I get to go to this conference. To answer your question, the things I'm most excited about... well, one, it's my first conference, so I'm just excited to get to experience viewing these talks in person.

00:31:43 - Alexis

I do watch a few on YouTube or whatever resource I can find. So that's going to be great, to feel the energy in the room and get to actually be present for a talk and take my own notes as I'm there. But as I said before, I'm mostly excited about getting to meet like-minded React enthusiasts and other developers and just kind of see where I can grow and possibly where my career can take off.

00:32:20 - Scott Steinlage

Awesome.

00:32:21 - Dev Agrawal

That is awesome to hear. Yeah, go ahead.

00:32:23 - Scott Steinlage

Yeah, please go ahead. Dev.

00:32:26 - Dev Agrawal

Yeah, I was just going to say that everything you've said is very relatable because that's pretty much how I felt when I was going to React Miami. Last year I had attended a couple local, I don't want to say local because they were decently sized, conferences in my city, but both were single-day conferences. They were not of the same scale as React Miami. So attending React Miami was definitely a very exciting and very new experience for me. And it definitely resulted in huge career growth for me. So if you're looking forward to that, I think you'll have some pretty nice experiences and some good outcomes.

00:33:13 - Dan

I also went to my first conference last year and it pretty much changed my career. You know, just one conference. I met so many people.

00:33:21 - Anthony Campolo

We had Anthony come up here, he had his hand up a second ago. Did you want to say something?

00:33:28 - Anthony Shew

I was just going to mention, to Dan's point, sorry to be backtracking when I had to raise my hand,

00:33:36 - Anthony Campolo

I had a thought. Yeah, you're all good, go for it. Oh sure.

00:33:39 - Michelle Bakels

Cool.

00:33:40 - Anthony Shew

I had a thought about what Dan was mentioning about the idea of React, and I think that's actually something that I've appreciated in the past about React conferences, React talks, and the way people describe React and use React in the ecosystem around it. And I feel like, generally speaking, that sort of is one of the strong points of React as a framework, understanding React as a part of the other things that you're doing, and understanding the interaction of React with the various other pieces of the ecosystem. So I sort of agree. My first conference that I ever really gave attention to was Next Conf last year, and I got to attend, which was really cool. So I don't have too much conference background, but I can say that, consuming the React content that I have, I've always appreciated React plus this other thing that you need to work with as well. So I'm not sure. I suppose it's just a different way of looking at things. I definitely appreciate the point, though.

00:34:59 - Anthony Campolo

We all agree that that's the case. I think it's just a question of whether that's a pro or a con. Is that what you want out of it, or do you want to learn more about the React ecosystem itself as a thing about itself? And I think you can have both. I think both are valid talks, valid content. There doesn't have to be an it-has-to-be-this-or-that.

00:35:20 - Dan

You know, I didn't say it was a con. I wanted to make an observation that I hadn't heard anyone else make, and I think it's true. I think if you look at the talks at a VueConf or SvelteConf, you get a different impression than if you look at React confs. And I think that's interesting to note. Actually, the one conference that I saw that looked so much like a Vue conference was, I think it was called, React Advanced London. And it wasn't actually advanced. It just got rid of half of those React-plus talks and just talked about React features, and I thought that was really interesting.

00:35:51 - Anthony Campolo

Yes. Yeah. There's just way, way, way more React conferences than the others also. So you're going to get a huge variety.

00:36:00 - Dan

Yeah. And if you look at, like, what, where the React core team goes, you can trace that. Like, Dan Abramov showed up to React Advanced London, but he doesn't show up to, like, random React conferences elsewhere.

00:36:12 - Anthony Campolo

Well, I think that's probably because it's closer to him physically in the world also.

00:36:16 - Scott Steinlage

I mean, we just pull him in on Twitter Spaces. That's all we know how to do.

00:36:20 - Dan

Oh, yeah, we bait him by putting RSCs in the title of all the Twitter Spaces.

00:36:27 - Scott Steinlage

We had him join us at Remix Conference last year when we did a live Space with a bunch of speakers. Actually, it was a good talk.

00:36:37 - Dan

He showed up to the Remix cons.

00:36:39 - Scott Steinlage

He showed up to our space that we did on Remix.

00:36:42 - Dan

Oh, gotcha. Gotcha.

00:36:43 - Scott Steinlage

Okay.

00:36:43 - Ishan Anand

Yep, I did put him on

00:36:48 - Anthony Campolo

the spot to ask him his thoughts

00:36:49 - Ishan Anand

on the framework. I'm trying to remember what his answer was, but he's like, oh, you asked that question.

00:36:55 - Anthony Campolo

He made a very political answer about how React server components were going to come out in two years. That was to just chill out.

00:37:04 - Ishan Anand

But I appreciate that he joined. It was a really great conversation, and it's great that he's just so publicly out there and makes himself available. But this topic makes me wonder, back to our organizer here, as an organizer of the conference, how does this reflect your selection process? Are you trying to balance topics when you're picking for React Miami across React itself versus applying React in production or in a particular job context? Were there topics you wanted to cover that you didn't have applications about, or any tips you might give somebody who's applying for a CFP?

00:37:52 - Dev Agrawal

By the way, just a minor connection. Michelle is the only React Miami organizer up here on the stage. I'm just a media partner, so it's a singular organizer. Go ahead, Michelle. I'm sorry.

00:38:05 - Michelle Bakels

Oh, yeah, no worries. I was doing a Reactiflux community chat yesterday and we had this conversation too. It was funny. I was like, this is my Always Sunny in Philadelphia moment with the crazy chart behind me. Like, how do you pick this box for a conference? So I will say, it is probably the thing that takes the most emotional energy out of me, and the most energy out of me period, for the whole conference. We get a lot of CFPs for the size of our conference. And because, again, I'm a React developer, I've also worked as a first employee in a startup all the way to a Fortune 200 enterprise company. As a React developer, there's a wide range of things that I know React developers are looking for. And since a lot of people are sent by their companies to learn things that can be brought back into the workplace, I'm also very cognizant of the fact that a talk that I pick might not be the coolest thing that people on Twitter are talking about right now, but I know it's something that has a lot of value in enterprise companies and is very much top of mind for them.

00:39:34 - Michelle Bakels

So I do work really hard on curating the topics for the conference to have a range of things, from just straight pure React conversations to things that are maybe exploring the full stack of today's modern React developer experience, and also trying to have the fun things in there too. I think it's always good to have a couple of talks that are a little less serious. We have kind of a comedy skit included in our lineup this year about the trials and tribulations of learning how to pair program together between a senior and a junior developer. So I really tried to have this huge range, but have it be things that people can really find relevant. I had one of our sponsors last year, I think a silver sponsor of ours, and they sent their CEO, who's nontechnical, to the conference as well. He was mostly enjoying Emerge, but he and his CTO were able to attend a couple of React Miami talks.

00:40:58 - Michelle Bakels

And I remember he walked out of Lee Robinson's talk from Vercel. Lee did a talk on making your e-commerce sites better. We crossed paths as he was walking out, and he was like, that was the best talk I've ever seen. That was so beneficial to us in our company, and we want to go bigger on our sponsorship next year. And this year they're a platinum sponsor. So sometimes it'll be like, oh, the e-commerce talk, is that really for the React developers? But it is still so useful to so many people that attend.

00:41:50 - Ishan Anand

Sorry Dan, it looks like you were going to say something. Yeah, go ahead.

00:41:52 - Dan

Yeah, I love that answer. I have this thought to like sometimes your sponsors deliver like a genius talk because they happen to also be good at talks. But then sometimes Shopify sponsors your conference and they do a talk about how they've expanded into you know, fully remote work and how great it is to work at Shopify. And that's the talk. So I wonder how you like vet those ahead of time. Like how do you know whether a sponsor is going to give you like a sponsor plug or a real talk?

00:42:23 - Michelle Bakels

We have a waitlist for our sponsor talks. We only have two sponsor talks that we offer. Everything else is either invitation or CFP. For the sponsor talks, we basically have a waitlist. So anybody that comes to us and is like, we want to buy that slot, we're like, okay, well, we actually have almost a separate CFP for that. So let us know what you want to talk about. And we try to be very careful to make sure that it's not a company pitch. And we say that outright too, that we're happy to work with a company on a sponsored talk, but it can't just be a plug for your company. It has to be something that a developer listening to the talk can take with them at the end of the day and find valuable or beneficial. Just being like, oh, that company is cool is not really what we're looking for.

00:43:28 - Ishan Anand

Was there anything you wanted to, you were looking to have covered that you didn't, or you're inundated with so many things? It's more of the, you know, the hard decisions. But was there like a topic you're like, we'd love to have something covered but we didn't get any submissions on it.

00:43:44 - Michelle Bakels

So the React ecosystem is so broad that it's really hard to kind of like cover well, all of the different facets of the ecosystem, you know, just in a single track conference. So there's always going to be things. One of my, I can't say like regrets, but kind of regrets. Like it's just impossible because like you're so limited by your time and how many talks you can choose. But last year I really wish that I had done more with React Native in the conference lineup. And then this year I was able to add in more React Native talks. But then that means that you kind of like drop topics in other areas as well. So always trying to find a good balance. I think that we're yet to be able to put in a good docs documentation talk, but there are good developer experience talks too that usually can touch on that as well. So there, I don't think we'll ever be able to get it all because the React ecosystem is just like exploded into this far reaching, like universe of things. But yeah, I'm always open to suggestions and requests too.

00:45:03 - Dan

I'm giving you lots of hearts for the plug for Docs talks.

00:45:10 - Michelle Bakels

So you know the State of JavaScript survey, the annual one?

00:45:14 - Dan

Yeah, I don't like it even though everyone else does because it doesn't represent the community. Hot take.

00:45:18 - Michelle Bakels

Oh, okay. It's not that hot because I agree with you, and I'm a pretty mild person. I will say, we had to do our predictions. So I was on the panel for the survey release, and Sasha asked everybody for their predictions. My prediction for next year was that if you don't have good docs, your project is just dead in the water.

00:45:45 - Dan

Yeah, my, my project doesn't have good docs and it's barely staying alive right now. So.

00:45:50 - Anthony Campolo

Plus one, I've said this before, my saying that if you don't have docs, your project does not exist. Functionally does not exist.

00:46:00 - Ishan Anand

Can we double click on the hot take on the JavaScript survey not representing the community? It sounds like there's interesting thought there, either from Dan or Michelle.

00:46:09 - Dan

Well, Michelle was on the thing, so I'll let Michelle deal with that.

00:46:14 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah, I'll say I really appreciate Sasha and him working on this JavaScript survey, and I think it does provide a lot of insight and value. I think Sasha is also the first person to get out in front of it and say this doesn't represent all of JavaScript or everything that's happening. Basically, he describes it as trying to figure out the upcoming trends and where people are pointing for the next year. So I think, again going back to what I said earlier, when I worked in a Fortune 200 company with tens of thousands of people, that was a really important experience for me because it was a really important reminder that most developers are not on Twitter and they're not seeing these surveys. They don't even know that that exists. They're not really using social media or connecting online or involved in any of these spaces. There's just such a vast number of developers that are still out there, ardent PHP devs, Angular devs.

00:47:31 - Michelle Bakels

And so I think that the survey skews a little towards things that are a little bit more trendy or things that you find discussed like on social media. And then I think if you were able to effectively ever somehow survey JavaScript developers as a whole, it would be very, very different.

00:47:53 - Dan

I talked to Sylvia Vargas a lot about this. She's my mentor and she cares a lot about this kind of like inclusivity point in the JavaScript community. And she went and talked to a bunch of community leaders of more diverse communities, whether those are like women-led communities or other kinds of diverse communities. And none of these people were actually given the survey to distribute. So if you run your survey just based on the Twitter algorithm and you don't actually put an effort to distribute it amongst more diverse communities, you're going to get a result that reflects that.

00:48:28 - Ishan Anand

Thank you. Makes sense. I see Theo just came up and then I see there's a couple questions in the Twitter thread. Theo, why don't you go and then we'll go through what's in the thread on the jumbotron.

00:48:42 - Theo Browne

Wouldn't be me if I didn't jump in to push back on the "we're in the Twitter bubble" point a bit. I totally get and understand that we are definitely in a bubble here in the Twitter world. But the overlap of that bubble in conferences, and also the overlap of that bubble with people who adopt new technologies at their jobs and advocate for trying new things in their workplace, there's a 90% overlap in those three bubbles. And I think that when we say things like, well, 80% of devs still use PHP, we're ignoring the fact that 80% of those devs, of that 80%, will never try anything new no matter how hard you try to convince them. And those also aren't the people going to conferences.

00:49:23 - Dan

I think the Twitterverse and the conference pushers and the company pushers all suffer from the same diversity and inclusion problems.

00:49:39 - Ishan Anand

Fair point, Theo. I don't know if you've got a response to that or you agree or

00:49:42 - Anthony Shew

disagree

00:49:45 - Theo Browne

with the diversity point. I think that's an unrelated conversation. It's an important one regardless. But the like, how do we make good technological decisions at our companies? Like the people who are interested in challenging the way things are done and the people who aren't are different people. And I feel like we ignore that point too often.

00:50:02 - Dan

It depends on what the survey is for. Like if the survey is to get a legitimate pulse, like a census, then you probably care a lot more about diversity.

00:50:11 - Theo Browne

If the goal of the poll is to figure out where technology is going, which is my assumption of what all of these polls are, then the people who make the decisions about where things are going are the ones that are valuable. I'm trying to imagine a way in which you can make the JS survey more valuable, and I'm really struggling to. That poll is one of the most important things we have as we build and predict the future of where the web is going. And I'm not saying diversity and inclusivity aren't important. They absolutely are. And it's so essential as we grow the field and make tech more approachable and accessible. I'm simply pushing back on the notion that these things aren't valuable because they don't have a diverse enough set of people or they don't represent the average engineer. I don't think the average engineer has much in terms of sway over what direction tech moves in, just by the nature of the word average.

00:51:05 - Dan

No, I agree with you. My point is that it does not represent the average developer. That is the standalone point. You're right that it represents the company pushers and the tech deciders and the influencers and all that. But I'm saying it's not a census. And you don't read it this way, but I do see a lot of people treating it like a census. And that's not fair. That's not what it does effectively.

00:51:30 - Dev Agrawal

That's fair.

00:51:30 - Theo Browne

I definitely don't think it should be treated as a census. I think that's silly. But I think it should be treated almost like a likely census for four years from now is kind of how I treat it like where things would be for the average person in four years if the current trends continue.

00:51:46 - Ishan Anand

Sounds like threading the needle here is that it's a leading indicator and should come with a caveat that it's not necessarily fully representative. I do want to get us to the questions that people have been asking via the Twitter thread. So thank you, Theo, for jumping in. I think you have to hop to your stream, but the first one that came in a while back was from Bao. It was: what tips for maximizing my experience and value from a conference like React Miami would you recommend? So Michelle, or anybody else who's a regular conference-goer, want to jump in on this one?

00:52:27 - Michelle Bakels

So for tips on maximizing the experience at React Miami, I would say it used to be that you could easily change your title on Twitter to say that you were there, so you could easily find other people who were also attending and interacting with them. But on the React Miami Twitter page, I do try and retweet most people that say they're trying to come, or that they're coming to the conference, or that they're doing something there. So I would say ahead of time you could start connecting with the people that are going to be attending, kind of seeing what kind of satellite events are going on. One of them, Basement Studio, is coming. They're a sponsor, and they're going to be coming early and doing a Next.js workshop in Miami. So those little meetups and side events are good ways to get together ahead of the conference and meet people. Also, our talk schedule is online. So another thing that I always do before conferences is go and pick out the talks that I absolutely have to see, and make sure that I schedule my day around those talks and then try to network in between those talks and just try to find a balance of those things.

00:53:48 - Michelle Bakels

Because there's a good number of people that either leave the conference early because they can't stay the whole time, or they just are not really into the after-parties and stuff. So being able to network actually at the conference is still pretty important. Another thing that's really hard to remember, or really hard to convince yourself of in the moment, but I think helps me, is that people are going to conferences to meet other people. I think if you ever went up and talked to somebody and they were really off-putting, or they didn't want to talk to you and were just kind of rude, I think that's really rare, and I think it speaks more to them than it does to you. So I would say yes, talking to people that you don't know is scary and it can be nerve-racking. But people at conferences want to meet other people. So it's really just a bunch of nervous developers all together, waiting to talk to each other, hoping someone walks up to them. So I hope that always gives me the confidence to go up to somebody, like, oh, if you're at a conference, then you're here to meet people. And then it helps me gain that courage.

00:55:05 - Michelle Bakels

So yeah, and then I would just try and do as many things as possible that are offered, whether they're satellite events or for the conference and try and just schedule in some rest and breaks so that you don't burn out by the end.

00:55:23 - Ishan Anand

That's great, Dev. And then Dan.

00:55:27 - Dev Agrawal

Yeah, thanks. That was a great response, Michelle. Thank you. In my opinion, I think there are two broad goals that you can walk into a conference with. Ideally, you walk into a conference with one of those two. The first is that you want to learn about the technology, which in this case is React. You might walk into React Miami hoping to learn more about React, about these other use cases that people are experimenting with, or other pieces of technology that are supplementing React, or how React is being used by the enterprise, by other companies, to solve their problems. If that is your goal, then my suggestion would be: go through the list of the sessions and the speakers, find some of them that you are the most interested in, and do a little bit of research on what that topic is, on who the speaker is, on what the speaker's interests are, how they present their ideas, what their ideas are. When you're at the conference, make sure you are at that session, maybe even take notes during it. Try to collect your questions. And once that session is over, you can reach out, or you can meet in person, because at an in-person conference you can connect with the speaker and with other people who are also interested in that topic.

00:56:52 - Dev Agrawal

You can discuss with them. And I think this is a pretty good way to build your own knowledge about this technology that the conference is about. The second goal.

00:57:03 - Scott Steinlage

Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, continue.

00:57:05 - Dev Agrawal

Yeah, so the second goal is just to meet people and build connections, and maybe in the future you would tap into that connection to find better opportunities for yourself. And if that's the case, then you would still want to probably look through the speakers list. But then you also might be interested in seeing who the sponsors are, who the sponsor representatives are who might attend the conference, or just in general, other people who are attending that conference. Michelle brought up that it was possible to put in your name on Twitter that you are attending this conference. Not sure if that's possible now. I think if you don't have a blue check mark, it should still be possible. You should be allowed to freely change your name. But you can do that on LinkedIn too. On LinkedIn, you can change your name, you can add that you are attending this conference, so that when you scroll through your feed or when you connect with other people, you can see that they are going to the same conference as you are. And someone else can see that you are also going to that conference.

00:58:08 - Dev Agrawal

You can connect with them on LinkedIn beforehand and then you can try to meet them, you can talk to them. And yeah, there's a lot of different tactics that you can use for networking. I'm going to try to talk about some of those in my livestream on Friday. And one final thing that I wanted to bring up, and I'll let Dan speak after this, is the person who asked that question, Bao. He is a student here at UC with me. He's one of my good friends and he's also attending React Miami. The only reason we even have students attending React Miami from UC this year is because Michelle has offered us a massive student discount. And I don't think it would have been fully possible for us to send as many students as we are able to send to React Miami. I just wanted to give a big shout-out to React Miami. I'm going to write a tweet about this today or tomorrow as well where I talk more about the fact that conference organizers like Michelle are supporting us right now, and maybe more students in the future, and helping them attend these conferences and make these more accessible.

00:59:17 - Dev Agrawal

Dan, you can go ahead now.

00:59:19 - Dan

Also, props to you for building that community at your college that cares about this kind of thing. I might have stayed in school if I had a community like that, where people were caring about web development and building stuff together and traveling together. But alas, I didn't. So, okay. Anyway, some tips. Find a conference buddy. Maybe this is me as an insecure extrovert, which is a fun combo to have. But ahead of the conference, I reached out to some people and I said, do you know anyone who's going? And then I reached out to those people and I was like, do you want to meet up? And, you know, we met up. Also, try to be super kind to everyone you come across. Like, someone asked for a ride, I gave them a ride because I was a local. That kind of thing. One of the mistakes I made was not thinking about the persona I wanted to portray ahead of time. So I ended up making some mistakes where I said the wrong things to the wrong person, so they thought I was like a hard-ass.

01:00:24 - Dan

Solid Stan, which is not actually true about me. If I would have thought about that ahead of time, I would have been more strategic about what I said. So especially if you're trying to build a brand or build a reputation, you want to think about how you want to portray that reputation. And lastly, avoid what I call the queue. What is the queue? The queue is when a famous person is talking to someone and a queue starts to form around that person, waiting for them to be done talking to the famous person. And the idea behind the queue is that when the person talking to the famous person is done, the next person in the queue goes and talks to the famous person. And it just goes on and on and on until it's your turn. Avoid the queue. Why? One, it is actually pretty overwhelming for the famous person. I bet you Theo loves the queue because Theo loves being famous. But a lot of famous people don't actually love being famous. So avoiding the queue is most likely a respectful thing to do.

01:01:24 - Anthony Campolo

But two, or they want to talk to people or they wouldn't be there. I know after I give a commerce talk, I want to talk to people, so that's also a possibility. Like, feel out the vibe.

01:01:36 - Dan

Also, if the queue forms after a talk, I should have made that distinction. I was talking about the hallway track queues. If you give a talk, you are expected to answer questions. That's part of giving a talk. So yes, I agree with that. But when the queue forms in the social environments, don't be that guy. The other premise of the queue is that the famous person is the most valuable person to talk to because they're smart or because they're famous. But I promise you, if you talk to someone without a queue, you will learn something. And instead of waiting in the queue, you can go talk to someone who's also worth talking to and you'll gain something from it. All right, this is a hot take because the queue is very annoying. And one of the reasons I'm most annoyed about the queue is because I was one of those people who waited in the queue and I regret it. So that's my spicy take.

01:02:30 - Anthony Campolo

Like, maybe there's someone I want to talk to and other people also want to talk to them, so I have to wait to talk to that person. I don't think there's a problem with that.

01:02:37 - Dan

You can wait by talking to other people. You don't have to, like, sit there in the queue.

01:02:41 - Anthony Campolo

Okay, I'm not sure I agree with that take, but thanks for sharing.

01:02:46 - Scott Steinlage

Okay, well, thank you. That was awesome, though, because everybody's got their own opinions and we love opinions here. In fact, we love to hear everybody's opinion or fact. So the one other thing too is JavaScript Jam, for example. I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there: we're doing this collaboration to help bring more value to the event and to allow people to connect more with the speakers and really with each other as well. By listening to JavaScript Jam throughout the next several weeks, you'll be able to speak with some of the speakers that are going to be involved at the event and speaking there. And also during the event, we're going to be doing a live session with the speakers as well, like a panel. So that's just one more place that you can connect with these speakers and also with yourselves, because we love audience participation. So feel free to add that to your list of value if you'd like to. And don't forget to give us a share. By the way, if you have gotten any value from anybody up here on stage today, whether they're up here now or if they're down in the audience still, please feel free to click on their picture there and follow them on Twitter, because if you got value from them here, you'll probably get value from them in other places.

01:04:05 - Scott Steinlage

And also remember that too, if you're standing in line for the queue or not, you'll probably be able to connect with that person sometime. It's just maybe not then or there. Right? Maybe the queue is too long anyway, so follow us. We love y'all. Let's continue this awesome conversation. Thank you so much to everybody so far who has participated. Michelle, Dev, Jen, she's up here, yep, absolutely. And Rizel, I see you bouncing in the audience there as well. You want to say things?

01:04:39 - Anthony Campolo

Just messaged me on Discord saying, sorry, I hopped in way late, but you're not late at all. You're early. This. This is going on right now.

01:04:46 - Dan

You missed all my terrible takes. There's no point of being here anymore.

01:04:53 - Scott Steinlage

Sorry. But Rizel, if you want to come up here and speak a little bit about maybe what you're getting excited about for React Miami after Jen here, we'd love to hear from you too. Thanks.

01:05:06 - Michelle Bakels

Yay.

01:05:07 - Jen Junod

Rizel's coming up.

01:05:08 - Dev Agrawal

That's exciting.

01:05:10 - Jen Junod

I loved what everybody was saying about how do you maximize your time at a conference. And I did hear a bit about taking breaks. I love that. And conference buddies, another way that I've explained it to people is I am great at being outgoing and doing stuff if I have someone to go back in orbit to. So if I don't have anybody to orbit to, I get really, really overwhelmed and will leave a conference because I don't know what to do with myself. I get really scared and overwhelmed and I'm like, oh my God, I can't handle everybody talking to me or not talking to me, and are they staring at me? Another way of doing this, if anybody wants a really good way to make this a little less awkward, is wear something super random. So if you wear bright gold overalls, people will just start talking to you. It's a really good way to get around that. One thing that I really, really wanted to pay attention to for this though is, for those with any type of allergies or food allergies and that type of thing, always bring tissues.

01:06:28 - Jen Junod

Even if you don't use tissues, you probably have a backpack, so bring some tissues. Probably some Tylenol. Biggest thing, though, as somebody that is gluten-free, a lot of conferences do their best, but it's not always related to the caterers with gluten-free food or dairy-free food. Bring lots and lots and lots and lots of snacks and water bottles, and hydrate, please and thank you.

01:07:06 - Scott Steinlage

Awesome. Thank you so much for all those tips, Jen. I think we all agree with a lot of things you said there. I've seen a lot of people thumbs up and laughing at some of the things as well. It's really good. Greatly appreciate it, as always. Yeah. Rizel, what's up? Welcome to the stage.

01:07:26 - Rizel Scarlett

Hey.

01:07:26 - Michelle Bakels

Hey.

01:07:27 - Rizel Scarlett

So we're talking about, like conference tips. Is it as a speaker or as an audience member?

01:07:34 - Dev Agrawal

Yeah, why not both?

01:07:36 - Scott Steinlage

Yeah, both is fine. Absolutely.

01:07:37 - Ryan Magoon

Cool.

01:07:38 - Rizel Scarlett

I like that.

01:07:39 - Jen Junod

Okay.

01:07:39 - Rizel Scarlett

For me, I agree with what people said about having a conference buddy. I think, like everyone said, it makes it way less awkward because you have somebody else there to talk with. I say even beforehand, if you see someone on Twitter say that they're going to be at a conference, hit them up and be like, hey, do you want to connect during it? Or go to lunch or something like that. I think that's really nice. And then for me, as a speaker, I'm really introverted. So I'll do my talk and then I'll talk to people afterward, like in the hallway track or whatever, and when people have questions. But I make sure to go back to my room and just re-energize because, if not, I'm gonna look like a zombie for the rest of the conference because I'll be really drained from all the socializing. But that's it for now for me.

01:08:36 - Scott Steinlage

Awesome. Thank you so much, Rizel. Greatly appreciate it.

01:08:39 - Michelle Bakels

I want to add in something. Normally I would be like, I don't want to interject about my thing, but React Miami is in the title of the space. So I don't feel so bad.

01:08:49 - Anthony Campolo

This is your space for your thing.

01:08:52 - Michelle Bakels

So I will say if you do come to React Miami. One of the things that I'm really excited about because of our location, we like, I'm definitely somebody that has to take breaks for sure. Have to step away. Otherwise I get overwhelmed. Like, literally across the street from the entrance of the convention center, we have the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, which is free to enter and absolutely beautiful to get away. Sit by a water fountain and just be surrounded by the most beautiful tropical plants and flowers and it's just so peaceful. So that's definitely a place that I recommend. People kind of like recuperate their energy there. And then we're four blocks, just, you know, a really quick five minute walk away from the beach. So you can either go sit by the ocean, take a deep breath or two, or go to the botanical gardens. Everything that we do at React Miami, we try and make walking distance from the convention center. I'm also a person that sometimes likes to just go back to my room for a little bit when I'm attending a conference. So I know we try and put all of our speakers and organizers, anybody that reaches out to me.

01:10:08 - Michelle Bakels

I'm like, try and book walking distance from the convention center if you can. Because it's nice to just kind of take a break in your own space for a little bit too.

01:10:19 - Scott Steinlage

Yeah, those are all awesome. I mean, really, I like botanical gardens. Like we have a botanical garden here in St. Louis. I'm sure it's not anywhere near as nice as the one there. So I'll be excited. I think if I had time, hopefully would love to check that out for sure. So cool.

01:10:38 - Michelle Bakels

I also want to give a quick shout out really quickly because I'm just so excited. Looking in the audience, I see so many of our speakers for React Miami in the space. Rizel, obviously, thank you so much. Anthony, Dax, Ryan, Andre, and anyone who

01:10:57 - Anthony Campolo

wants to come up and, like, pitch their talk. That's also why we brought Rizel up here, so she could give a short little blurb about what she'll be talking about. Yeah, just anyone in the crowd who's speaking can come up and give a pitch right now.

01:11:09 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah, yeah. So excited for that. Too.

01:11:14 - Dev Agrawal

I just wanted to say one of the best ways to take a break if you're at React Miami might be to take a walk through the Emerge conference. Emerge is massive. It's one of the biggest startup product showcase expos that I've seen. And you don't even have to talk to anyone, just walk through it and see what brilliant and innovative things people are doing with technology. Last year it was pretty much dominated by Web3 and AI. And I'm assuming that this year AI is going to have an even larger presence there. So if you're interested at all in what new technologies people are building, I think the best way to take a break is to take a walk through Emerge. Obviously, you have the beach and the botanical garden, but you also have the opportunity to experience Emerge there too.

01:12:11 - Michelle Bakels

Give.

01:12:12 - Dev Agrawal

Wanted to give a plus one on the conference buddy. I think I found my conference buddy for React Miami. He's in the listeners. He's a thinker. I think he's a junior front end developer. You might know him as Dax.

01:12:25 - Michelle Bakels

Oh my gosh, Dev, I can't defend you. You know, if you're gonna do that, you're poking the bear here. Dan, do you have a question

01:12:40 - Dan

First? I was gonna pitch Rizel's talk. I don't know what she's gonna talk about.

01:12:44 - Anthony Campolo

Should pitch Rizel's talk, but it's gonna be good.

01:12:47 - Rizel Scarlett

Wait, yeah, go ahead, try to pitch my talk. Thank you. But yeah, yeah, just chat.

01:12:54 - Anthony Campolo

Just type in the chat, GPT, please write Rizel's talk in the voice of Dan. Yes, done.

01:12:59 - Dev Agrawal

Yes,

01:13:02 - Anthony Campolo

go ahead.

01:13:03 - Rizel Scarlett

Yeah, come through to my talk, y'all. It's called Level Up with Copilot. It's one of my favorite talks that I do. I kind of show how to use GitHub Copilot to the best of its ability, like different tips to make sure that you get the right code suggestions that you want, and also the different use cases that you can actually use it for. I take it from the perspective of, at first I started using it, and I know I work at GitHub, but at first I was like, I don't know how I'm feeling about it. But afterward I learned how to do prompt engineering better with it. I have a couple blog posts on it, and I'm usually someone who tries to engage with the audience as much as possible. So even if you feel like you walked away and you didn't learn anything, it's definitely going to be fun. But I think you are going to learn something. That's it.

01:13:54 - Michelle Bakels

I'm so excited for your talk, Rizel, because I've been following you on Twitter for so long. And I'll also just preface this by saying I'm the biggest fan of all of our speakers. So I'm so excited to see everybody. I can't overstate how cool I think everybody's talks are. And Rizel, I've been seeing you do this talk and showing off Copilot, and I think, if I don't know what your talk is going to look exactly like this or not, but if there ends up being an "I'm sending this tweet from Copilot and I'm at React Miami," I think I will frame that in my office.

01:14:38 - Rizel Scarlett

That's definitely there.

01:14:41 - Michelle Bakels

Thank you. I will frame that in my office. Thanks.

01:14:45 - Dan

Awesome.

01:14:46 - Anthony Campolo

I just pinned a link to your just recent blog post that went out about prompt engineering, which I have to imagine has some similarities to what you'll be talking about. This is a great topic. I think that there's so much to learn about how to interact with these tools and like, the more people playing with them and communicating how to use them, the better. And I've really enjoyed the stuff you've put out so far.

01:15:09 - Rizel Scarlett

Thank you. I appreciate it.

01:15:13 - Anthony Campolo

Looks like Dan has another thing to say and then Dax can pitch his talk.

01:15:18 - Dan

Guys, this time I finally found something valuable that isn't a spicy observation that has no value. Okay, this one is a question for Jen. So, as a neurodivergent conference goer, I have developed strategies and like coping mechanisms for typical things that conferences can do to me to make me feel overwhelmed or otherwise provoke emotional side effects. Do you, as a much more experienced conference goer, have any, have any tips you can share along those lines? Or if you notice someone who might look like they've got some deer in the headlights or it might look like they're anxious or maybe you have a friend and you know they've got something going on before the conference, do you have any tips there too?

01:16:04 - Jen Junod

Great question. And yes, I do. And before I go into that, I really wanted to put my hand up to tell everybody that Rizel also does like Speaker's Corner and can get tips and tricks if you want to submit CFPs or do your streams or like do talks to you can practice with her. So, like, go follow with her. And thanks, Dan, because you gave me that opportunity too. And to your question, I think that is one of the hardest questions to answer in the fact that as someone that's neurodivergent and for those who may not be aware with it, aware of the term neurodivergent in like a nutshell, my explanation for it is anybody that has a mental. I don't want to say disability or illness. I don't like those challenge. We'll go with that for now. Of like, for myself, I am ADHD. I'm also dyslexic. I have PTSD, bipolar type 2, and depression and anxiety. Like, I just have a ton of random stuff. And to Dan's question, for someone like myself and first, other people that have adhd, it could represent where if you're doing something that should be really easy, you can get.

01:17:33 - Jen Junod

It's been known as a symptom of ADHD of getting like, suddenly extremely angry at this object or thing that shouldn't be working that doesn't make sense. Like, for example, I have done this at a conference where I am trying to find the speaker room, especially when they're all over and maps aren't great and they're going at the same time, so you don't have time to walk between the two things. And I can't find it. And I literally have been where I want to scream, I want to cry. I also want to punch the wall. I'm really not sure which one I'm supposed to do. And a lot of times for myself, it's having people outside of the conference to call. I say it that way because people at the conference are also going to have a lot going on. But if I call my partner, for example, I can be like, hey, I just need you to talk to me for a few minutes. I'm starting to freak out because I can't find where I'm going to need to just talk to me. And that helps me calm down a lot as well as sorry if I got cut off.

01:18:43 - Jen Junod

I got a phone call. Even if I'm in the middle of a conference, just sitting on the ground and just setting my and if I need to also, especially with the overwhelm, that can happen as well of sometimes there's too many noises going on at once. Too many noises, too many colors, too many different people, too many things to look at, too many options, just all

01:19:13 - Anthony Campolo

of the too manys, too many cooks.

01:19:16 - Jen Junod

Yep, there you go. And I always have headphones. No matter what, I always have headphones. I have a backup battery charger, and I have a song that will calm me down, and I will listen to it on repeat, shut my eyes, and just listen to it and be like, the rest of the world, you are bye-bye. A lot of conferences, and I'm not sure if React Miami has this, have what I think they call a quiet room, where you can't talk or do anything in there. It's like a dim room where you can recharge and be around the conference. A lot of times that helps because sometimes when I'm in this let-me-recharge bubble, don't-talk-to-me bubble, people want to check in and see if I'm okay, which they mean well, but that doesn't mean that I need them to come talk to me. And that being said, to my second point, or to Dan's second question, wow, can't say that, what do you do if you see some

01:20:29 - Jen Junod

A deer in headlights? I think it really matters. You gotta read their body language of a lot of it. If I saw someone on the floor, like, you know, in their bubble, I probably won't go and interrupt them yet. As I'm looking around and doing other things, I like to keep an eye on them. I might look like a creeper, I realize, saying this all out loud, but I try to keep an eye on them to see if they're getting any better or worse. Because if they're getting worse and having a bit of a meltdown, which can happen in a conference, especially if you don't know anyone. And I mean, this happens. I've seen it at airports and other big venues when there's a lot going on at once. Just try to keep an eye on them. And if you make eye contact with them, see if it's good to approach or like, if you're having a conversation near them. Because I know eye contact isn't great for everyone. And neither is touch. So don't go touch people. No touchy, touchy. Ask them if you can give them a hug. If you feel like giving someone a hug, always ask.

01:21:32 - Jen Junod

People don't like touch. Not all people don't like touch. I don't like touch. Other than that, sometimes if they're on the floor or doing something and they look like a deer in headlights, I just walk up to them and instead of asking them if they're okay, I just go, dude, this conference is fucking crazy. I'm like, so overwhelmed right now. And a lot of times I'll tell say that instead of asking if they're okay because a lot of times we will just say yes and dismiss it. Where if we get distracted and go, oh, somebody else is feeling like I am, we may open up and talk about it. And always, if you want to be somebody that's alert about all of this, it's really cool that we have an opportunity to talk to a conference organizer. And conference organizers are your friends. The help desk is your friend. And just being aware of where things are is something that really helps my anxiety. But then I can also be like, oh, yo, dude. Organizer person is somebody that knows what they're doing is wearing this type of shirt. Look for someone in the crowd that is wearing this type of shirt.

01:22:51 - Anthony Campolo

If you can't find someone but you see us, we'll all be there anyway.

01:22:55 - Jen Junod

Exactly.

01:22:56 - Anthony Campolo

A bunch of people on this stage. So we're happy to help out. And if you need a buddy, come be buddies at JavaScript Jam.

01:23:01 - Jen Junod

And are you guys going to be wearing JavaScript JavaScript Jam shirts? Because I really hope you are.

01:23:07 - Anthony Campolo

Oh, maybe, maybe not. We'll have some sort of shirt that is very.

01:23:15 - Dan

Well.

01:23:16 - Jen Junod

If I, if I join you, I will wear a JavaScript Jam shirt. Y' all just have to to get it made. But I'm so done.

01:23:21 - Anthony Campolo

All right, cool. We got, we got some more people coming up and I'll be conscious of people's time. So let's pivot to Dax. Dax is a professional short film director and comedy screenwriter who also moonlights as a junior developer. So go ahead and introduce yourself.

01:23:36 - Dax Raad

Oh, man. Hey, everyone. I'm not here to pitch my talk. I only came up here because once again, Dev is talking smack. I'm just sitting here trying to do my work and Dev is just going to start to say some stuff and I got to come here and I got to make things right. So I'm going to announce here in front of everyone. I am going to challenge Dev to a dance off at the after party. I forgot what day it is to settle things. To sell the score. Michelle will be selling tickets so that you guys can all see. These are like, you know, add ons to your main ticket for like, you know, pay per view event. So yeah, I just wanted to come up here and let everyone know about that.

01:24:14 - Dan

Will it be part of the free live stream?

01:24:18 - Dax Raad

We might have to file a DMCA takedown. Request if you live stream it without express authorization.

01:24:23 - Dan

But we can play.

01:24:26 - Dev Agrawal

We'll both live stream it on, on our channels. Don't worry.

01:24:31 - Anthony Campolo

All right, cool. You sure you don't want to give like a one liner for your talk?

01:24:36 - Dax Raad

One liner for my talk?

01:24:37 - Dan

I am the.

01:24:38 - Dax Raad

Well, it's just funny. The joke everyone's been making is how is Dax talking at React Miami when he doesn't even use React?

01:24:43 - Dan

Well, the reason is you only use React.

01:24:49 - Dax Raad

The reason is, as part of the work we do at SST, we help people deploy their front ends to AWS, and that actually takes a surprising amount of work. So I thought it'd be fun to show people that are primarily focused on front-end stuff the type of back-end infrastructure things that you need to put together to actually deploy some of these seemingly simple front-end frameworks like Next.js. So I'll be diving into all the infrastructure that that requires. It's not going to be an exact, this is exactly how Vercel deploys or exactly how Netlify deploys it. It's how you could potentially deploy on AWS and all the little details you

01:25:28 - Ryan Magoon

need to get right.

01:25:28 - Dax Raad

But roughly speaking, it is how, generally, companies deploy Next.js. So a little bit of backend information for this front-end conference.

01:25:39 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah, I'm super, super excited for this talk too. Those talks always go over so well with the audience. I remember last year there was a really data-heavy, focused talk, and people were walking out like, oh, thank God. Because like I was saying earlier in this Space, React developers or front-end developers are not exactly insulated from the rest of the stack or infrastructure. I mean, when I started as a React developer, I think I had a moment where I was able to basically strictly focus on just working on the UI. And that changed so fast, especially when you have frameworks that kind of blend what would have been considered the distinct front end or back end. Now it's just a different world. And I definitely appreciate understanding how websites are deployed and how these companies create this kind of infrastructure. So I'm excited to bring that element to the conference.

01:26:44 - Scott Steinlage

I just got an idea that I'd love to hear anybody's feedback on. Michelle, you being an organizer of events, I just thought, man, from hearing all this stuff about inclusivity and new. New people going to events and just all those feelings and emotions and just action and just stuff that you need to do while you're there. Everything, you know, coming together. And I just, you know, see Alexis in the audience just, like, 100ing a million times to so many different things that are around that, you know, I'm sure that she is just, like, really excited, but also, like, really, okay, what do I need to do next? Who do I need to connect with? Who do I need to, you know, hang out with while I'm there? Because it's like, okay, great. Like, all these people are saying these things, like, you need to have a partner. You need to have a buddy to da, da. But I just got a free ticket, and I don't know anybody, so what do I do? You know? And so I'm thinking, what if we, like, put together somehow some way buddy system where you have a group of folks that do attend regularly and know, you know, several people, and then they could say, hey, I want to be a buddy for somebody.

01:27:57 - Scott Steinlage

And then you have these new people that come and they go and sign up to be on the buddy system, and they get partnered or paired up with more than one person. You know, maybe it could be like a group instead of a buddy. Right? It's like, here's a group of people that you can connect with at the event. And so therefore, if one's busy, then you got another one to hang out with or whatever. Right? So something like that to where it's so inclusive that they just love these events now and they just never, you know, stop coming back. And they make so much. And make networking so much easier, too. I don't know. Something to think about.

01:28:27 - Michelle Bakels

I think that's such a cute idea, and I think that's a really good thing to try and organize in the Discord.

01:28:33 - Jen Junod

I think.

01:28:33 - Michelle Bakels

I think everyone that's attending should. Should try and join the Discord, which is a really big point I probably should have brought up an hour ago.

01:28:42 - Scott Steinlage

There you go.

01:28:42 - Michelle Bakels

That you can talk to the other attendees. So we'll tweet out the link again later today, but definitely join the Discord and start making arrangements and meeting other people for sure.

01:28:54 - Scott Steinlage

Awesome. When you tweet the Discord, we'll throw it out there and get it retweeted as well. Awesome.

01:29:02 - Anthony Campolo

I think we've got Henri next up to talk about whatever he wishes to talk about. He's gonna be another speaker, and we actually have him scheduled for next week for a deep dive on his talk. And then Alexis hops back up, so we'll go to her after. Henri.

01:29:20 - Henri Helvetica

Hey, thanks for having me. I was actually walking the entire time listening, and I'm like, oh man, let me chime in. So, first of all, I'm really looking forward to coming down. I've not been to Miami in a very long time. Old me used to come down for music festivals. So this would be a bit of an interesting return. What am I most excited about? Well, I mean, I would be lying to say I'm not excited about my talk. It's kind of a talk that I developed years ago, sort of overnight. Once it was a lightning talk that I was presenting, but I always wanted to extend it into a more formal length. And it's called R Is for React. It's an interesting talk where

01:30:12 - Scott Steinlage

I

01:30:12 - Henri Helvetica

talk about web performance, which is something that I do quite often and is close to my heart. It's a space that I work in, but I basically go through the entire alphabet and I talk about web performance terminology. Anything that has to do with performance, from attributes to frameworks and whatnot. But I pull out data about each, about the AVIF image format, some of the history around it. But this time what I'm going to do is actually bring up data that has specifically to do with React and maybe surface how much AVIF is being used on React sites. So a lot of it's going to be data-driven between the HTTP Archive. I'm actually going to pull up some data from the RUM Archive, which is something I'm super excited about. It's going to be fun, entertaining, but I'm going to get back to the idea that it's also about literacy because I've been on this web performance literacy campaign that I think is extremely important. Once you really understand or have a grasp of literacy and web performance, things just look different. That's one.

01:31:39 - Henri Helvetica

The other thing I'm really excited about, I want to go on a group run. I think Michelle and I talked about this. I pinged her. I was like, yep, I got this idea. And as some of you know, I'm a bit of a distance runner. In fact, I'm coming down the week after the Boston Marathon, which is basically the Saturday, and I think four days later is React Miami. So I'm going to be spending the weekend in Boston. But yeah, I'm about this sort of devs-who-run thing, promoting a little bit of health, and hopefully we can go on maybe a 25-minute run one of the mornings. I don't know. I got to set that up. I know it's been in discussion, so we'll see what happens there. And beyond that, I'm just looking forward to seeing everyone, some sunshine, some folks. Man, conferences. It doesn't get better.

01:32:36 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah, thanks for mentioning the run. I can't wait for your talk too. I know it's going to be so fun because you're so entertaining. But Will Johnson pinged me on the side earlier in the Space when I was talking about the different things we're going to do at React Miami, and he was like, oh, but the developer health "choose your own adventure" morning. Oh, yeah. So also, the morning of Friday, for any early birds, we're going to have activities that you can join if you like to get active. Last year we did a sunrise yoga, and this year we're expanding on that. So we're still going to offer the sunrise yoga, and now we're also going to have a run that you can join with Henri. And you can also join Will Johnson for beach volleyball. So if you want to play a team sport, if you want to go running, if you want to do yoga in the morning, you have a bunch of different options if you want to do something fun before the conference starts.

01:33:37 - Scott Steinlage

Yep.

01:33:38 - Henri Helvetica

And the one thing I wanted to say, just to remind everyone, is this is not pace-specific. This is not a race. This is not a time trial. You're not going to make or break your Olympic appearance during this run. It's going to be super-duper casual, speaking pace, so that we can all just kind of hang out and have a nice little run in the morning before the day starts.

01:34:09 - Scott Steinlage

How exciting. I'm loving this, man. I can just like, I don't know about you guys, but when you guys were talking about it and the sunrise and all this other stuff, like, man, I could just like smell the fresh air, see the sunrise, the ocean, just like, all right, let's go for a run or let's play some volleyball on the beach or let's do some yoga, right?

01:34:30 - Anthony Campolo

Or some shots.

01:34:33 - Michelle Bakels

There's something for everyone.

01:34:38 - Dax Raad

You guys just stay there and not leave.

01:34:42 - Anthony Campolo

I'm gonna be tempted to. I feel quite confident I will say this.

01:34:48 - Scott Steinlage

If you are not going to React Miami, you are missing out. I mean, just all the wonderful things we've heard today from all the speakers. What they're going to be talking about from Michelle with all the logistics of it all and. And the things that they're offering. I'm just. It's going to be so much fun to be able to, you know, see things around Miami as well. Right. Like my Michelle was saying, like, you know, sometimes you go to these conferences, you get to the hotel or the conference place, and then that's it. Like, did I even see anything that I even do anything? Was I even in Miami? Right. And so I'm really excited for that. It's going to be pretty cool.

01:35:26 - Ryan Magoon

So

01:35:28 - Henri Helvetica

I'm sure this was mentioned already and not to interrupt, but. I know. I think we're. We're watching the film. Is that it? On the.

01:35:36 - Anthony Campolo

Yeah, the React documentary we're watching, I think.

01:35:39 - Scott Steinlage

Right, right.

01:35:40 - Henri Helvetica

And I think the director is going

01:35:41 - Scott Steinlage

to be there, right?

01:35:43 - Anthony Campolo

Yeah, Yep.

01:35:45 - Henri Helvetica

Yeah. And I think that's going to be super interesting. Again, I think the idea of the React documentary was pretty awesome considering this is essentially the 10th year of React, so it's celebrating a decade. The idea of watching the doc with the director there is going to be super interesting as well, in terms of getting some insights from her and how that was shot and organized. I don't know. I think that was a great idea, to have the documentary screened. And again, I think the timing with the decade just lands perfectly.

01:36:22 - Scott Steinlage

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

01:36:24 - Anthony Campolo

Yeah, definitely looking forward to that. Alexis, got your hand up. What's up?

01:36:29 - Alexis

Yeah, so I just kind of wanted to bring it back to how Scott had mentioned me and the perspective of a new conference attendee. And then I also wanted to bring it back to Jen and your conversation on inclusivity. So yeah, it's true. I'm super nervous about attending a conference for the first time, especially going alone. So you hit it right on the nose. I'm like, oh my God, yes, I have a free ticket. Okay, now what? What do I do? Whose talks do I go to? Who do I talk to? Who do I meet up with? Where's my safe place? So I'm definitely resonating with the idea of the buddy system. Scott, it's actually kind of funny, I had the same idea during this talk. It got inspired in my head as well, and I was literally sitting here on my Google Doc scoping out the pitch that I wanted to give to Michelle after the Space. So just giving my two cents as someone who's a newbie, I can definitely get behind and advocate for something like this if we could try to set that up in the Discord, which I didn't even know we had.

01:37:38 - Alexis

So looking forward to that link from you, Michelle. Um, and yeah, I just tweeted it

01:37:44 - Michelle Bakels

from React Miami's page, so on it,

01:37:48 - Alexis

Yes, I'm definitely going to be joining that. So yeah, I think it'd be extremely valuable if we could set up some kind of little community for that, for newbies. Not only for newbies to find a buddy, but for inclusivity reasons. Jen just shared some wonderful points for those who become challenged socially and mentally. This is my first conference, but I tweeted a question as well about how I also struggle with social challenges because I have autism. And she mentioned that it's extremely helpful when you have a buddy, or some sort of anchor, or a rock, somebody that's going to be a rock that you can always escape back to in uncomfortable moments. So I think this buddy system, little community thing, is going to create a very special and very safe space for promoting inclusivity. So that was my little two cents. If I can give perspective or be a little nominee to help set that up if you needed it, I definitely want to. And then I also wanted to hear from the other speakers as well. What advice would you give to a new conference attendee on approaching others?

01:39:11 - Alexis

As someone who, you know, struggles with autism, it's a little bit harder. It takes extra effort for people like me to socialize. So what advice would you give on ways to introduce yourself or maybe conversation topics that you recommend of, you know, someone like me walking up alone and I'm just like, hi. And yeah, so what. What advice would you give to somebody like me? Or maybe some topics that someone like me could provide value for in a conversation?

01:39:54 - Anthony Campolo

Anyone? Feel free to just jump in, unmute, start talking,

01:40:00 - Scott Steinlage

go for it.

01:40:02 - Jen Junod

You said other speakers, so I was kind of waiting in case anybody else wanted to.

01:40:06 - Anthony Campolo

No one took a bite. If anyone has anything to say, feel free to raise your hand. But right now it seems like you've got the mic

01:40:14 - Jen Junod

on this, particularly of how to start conversations. A lot of conversations I start is, yo, dope shoes or pants or shirt or hat or whatever I think they're wearing.

01:40:31 - Anthony Campolo

That is cool.

01:40:31 - Jen Junod

Yeah, I've literally said that before. Dude, I like your face.

01:40:36 - Anthony Campolo

Maybe not say dope face. That might be weird, but that's a good shout. Compliment someone, find something.

01:40:41 - Jen Junod

I mean, I'm a weird person. I am a weird person. But also, if you overhear conversations, which is natural, if you go up to somebody and let's say there's a few people talking, you can say something like, oh, I just heard you were talking about JavaScript Jam. I've been to their Twitter Spaces a few times. What did you learn about, or what are some of your favorites? And bring up something you've experienced similarly, because that will give someone an opportunity to empathize because they've gone through something similar. And then it also gives you the opportunity to ask more questions to get the conversation going. Default questions that I always go to are, oh, how did you find X? So what got you into X? What do you love about X? Because I don't always know what they're talking about. This happens many times. So that's one way to get the conversation going.

01:41:50 - Alexis

That was incredibly insightful and I seriously appreciate that. I asked these questions because for people with social disabilities, it helps hearing other people's perspectives. And literally the exact examples you're giving are things that we internalize and will use as our examples as well. So thank you so much for, for sharing that. Jen.

01:42:17 - Anthony Campolo

Hello?

01:42:19 - Ryan Magoon

Can you hear me?

01:42:20 - Anthony Campolo

Yeah.

01:42:20 - Scott Steinlage

Hey, Ryan. What's up, brother?

01:42:22 - Ryan Magoon

What's up? Super excited. I would say, as somebody

01:42:29 - Theo Browne

been

01:42:29 - Ryan Magoon

going to conferences for a really long time, like back in the .NET community in Raleigh, hung out with some people. Luckily, I met some really cool people like Scott Hanselman early in my career because of the .NET stuff. So I had some pretty good people to think about this with. But I think the biggest logical fallacy when you're first starting out, especially if you're not from a certain background, is, I have no value in this community. Like, if I talk to people, I'm just not that cool, so whatever. I think the important thing is to know that that's straight-up not true. And in fact, the fact that you're not one of these annoying JavaScript people probably makes you more interesting. So basically, just go talk to somebody. And my other piece of advice is, if it's somebody who's established in the community, they're probably going to do a better job of being nice to you and networking you with somebody who they know you'll get along with or y'all have something in common with, and you don't have to talk about tech.

01:43:31 - Ryan Magoon

If anything, a lot of people are really burnt out on talking about tech, so you can really talk about literally anything that's interesting, and it's really about just making relationships with people.

01:43:44 - Scott Steinlage

Yeah, that's huge. That's a great point. Actually, Ryan, you bring up that this is really a lot about authenticity. It's about being real and being you. If you can bring yourself to the event and be yourself at the event and talk to people as yourself, then you should be awesome. Because people love authenticity and they love connecting with others that want to be themselves. So yeah, love it.

01:44:11 - Ryan Magoon

To follow up on that, I would also say the people who are, like, really gregarious are usually good at making the conversation. Like, they can carry the conversation. If you're, like, weaker at that, a lot of times they'll kind of, like, bring you along and, like, you know, if you get quiet or weird, like, don't even worry about it. Like, I don't know people. Yeah, people are pretty good at, like, feeling that vibe and, like, helping you out. I just think. Don't be scared. Yeah.

01:44:38 - Michelle Bakels

I also want to mention here that Ryan is one of our speakers this year at React Miami, and he has a talk that I'm really, really excited about. Obviously, I'm really excited about all of them, but genuinely really excited about this. One of the things about the React Miami conference that I'll say is that I'm learning a lot. So I'll back up and say, I'm born and raised South Floridian. I'm doing a conference where I live. I work a lot in the community and have for the last several years. And when you build community and you work in the community, you learn a lot about how to include people, how to make your events accessible. So one of the things that we're learning in South Florida, through partnerships with especially one organization called Workplace Accessibility Group, is about including people with disabilities in your events by providing accessibility ahead of the ask. So not requiring people to ask for accommodations, but providing the accommodations and then creating a welcoming space for people to arrive and feel comfortable. So Ryan is talking about accessibility, but he's talking about it in, I mean, I feel like your talk

01:46:03 - Michelle Bakels

Ryan is talking about accessibility in a much more direct way than just props on web components and stuff like that. So I want to give you a chance to talk about your talk at React Miami because it's one that I feel really resonates with our local community.

01:46:24 - Jen Junod

Cool.

01:46:24 - Michelle Bakels

Y.

01:46:25 - Scott Steinlage

Let's hear it. I love it.

01:46:27 - Anthony Campolo

Yeah, sure.

01:46:28 - Ryan Magoon

I'm still ironing out the final details of what I want to say, so I'm interviewing some people and stuff. But basically, the original title of the talk is Building for Disabled Power Users. Actually, I don't have a super-strong accessibility background. I have done some stints, like I overhauled accessibility at Etsy a really long time ago, in 2018, but in general, day to day, it comes up in my work, but it's not my main thing. But what is part of my identity is that I grew up in a deaf family. My grandparents were deaf, I have a family full of ASL interpreters, like half my family stuff. And then my partner is blind and she's a lawyer. So basically I've been in the disabled community my whole life. And because I've been raised by people, and I relied on people, where the implications of accessibility directly affected my life and how the world kind of looked to me, a lot of this will be storytelling about what that looks like so that you have

01:47:38 - Ryan Magoon

an empathy perspective where you actually understand a lot better what this looks like day to day for people. Because I feel like developers probably see disability as a monolith, not for any nefarious reasons, just because, like, who do you know that has that life? So sharing some of that, so you see the implications of it, as well as drilling into companies who have really nailed accessibility above and beyond WCAG or whatever, and really wrapped their head around, okay, what would it look like if disabled people were speed-running our app, or getting their job done at the same pace or faster than a typical user? And what does that look like

01:48:28 - Dan

basically

01:48:29 - Ryan Magoon

on both sides, from the user side, and then also as a React developer, what kinds of things can we do day to day to realize those experiences?

01:48:39 - Scott Steinlage

That is so awesome, Ryan. Oh man, I'm excited for that. I love it when you said it's really going to be a lot of storytelling so people can be empathetic and understand these things better. Some of the best speakers are great storytellers, right? That's where it's at. And a lot of these folks that speak here are very good at storytelling. You learn that with time, and that's true to my heart and true to a lot of things I believe. So if you're hearing this and you are a speaker, and if you're hearing this and you aren't a speaker but want to be a speaker, maybe just get really good at storytelling. And I'm really excited and looking forward to Ryan's storytelling that's going to be happening at React Miami. Maybe take a few notes, and not just on what he says about the things he's talking about, but pay attention to how he tells the stories and then draws it in to relate to the things that are going to benefit.

01:49:56 - Ryan Magoon

Yeah, a lot of this is kind of not intuitive. Like, it really is not about how do you talk to your stakeholders and how do you write the code. It is all about how do I cultivate the empathy required to understand the problem space I'm in so that I can intuitively do stuff that makes sense.

01:50:18 - Henri Helvetica

I just want to say, Ryan, that's absolutely awesome. It's funny because when. I mean, at one point I kind of wanted to have to pick and choose what I wanted to dive in. On one side I had web performance, which I eventually picked, but on the other, I actually had accessibility. I mean, I'd been going to the Accessibility Meeting meetup in Toronto, which is world class, by the way, because they run not one, but two conferences on top of the Accessibility meetup. And it taught me a lot. But that being said, that's actually another area that I really like and I've given quite a few talks actually on one particular area of accessibility, which is round images and alt text, and the actual automation of alt text through AI. I nailed it. But the point is that accessibility is super duper important, which is now the reason why I absolutely take my time to write the alt text on all my images on Twitter. I think it's been super duper important to sort of acknowledge that. The other thing I want to ask real quick, Michelle, and you know, you don't have to give me an answer to now.

01:51:35 - Henri Helvetica

This is just an idea I have. I'd love to see the possibility of, I don't know, some kind of like maybe a lightning round a lightning. A session, some lightning talks, maybe at a lunch hour or like an empty room. I don't know. I'm a big fan of lightning talks, and it's an opportunity sometimes to just have even people as attendees just go up for like, five, five minutes and give a talk. I don't know. It's something that's crossed. That's crossed my mind, and I'll put it out there. I'd be more than happy to help put that together. So whatever.

01:52:11 - Michelle Bakels

I'm, like, a big fan of people, like, taking things on and just because, like, I think it's all good people that are, like, coming to React Miami, like, I. I mean, like, everybody that is coming is just, like, phenomenal. So that's why, like, I trust, like, Anthony and stuff, Scott and Dev and everybody who volunteers to do things. Just, like, I don't have to micromanage it. And if that's something that you want to, like, work on and do, I think that's a really good idea. It's something that we were really going back and forth on. When I say we, I mean, like, me and, like, the other side of my brain, because it's kind of my decision. But I will say it's something that I was back and forth on, and I was. It was hard to figure out exactly what it would look like in our space just because it was taking us a long time to figure out what our floor plan was, would we have the room for it? And now we're at the point where I can say that we're gonna have these, like, really cool lounges set up. One of our sponsors is City Furniture, and they went big on the sponsorship this year, and so they have, like, these beautiful work tables, conversations, seating, like, couch lounges kind of a thing.

01:53:22 - Michelle Bakels

We have, like, one big lounge in, you know, the area that we're now calling our lounge. And then we have another, smaller lounge in our sponsor expo area. So those are kind of the spaces that we're working with. And if we want to do, like, five, ten minute lightning talks, I started, like, telling people that, and then it started feeling like a secondary cfp, which is not really what I wanted it to kind of be like. So then I kind of just backpedaled on it, and I was like, let's see how it shakes out. But we have that space, and if people want to do these, like, short talks, you know, I think it's so cool, you know, and it gives us a chance to share a lot of things that aren't, you know, just formal presentations.

01:54:05 - Henri Helvetica

Oh, man. I have. I have a bunch of ideas, so I'll definitely ping you when I land maybe on the Wednesday night, we could sort of chop it up. Doesn't even, we don't even need that much to make it work. So I'll. I'll. Yeah, we'll talk about it when I get there.

01:54:21 - Scott Steinlage

Awesome, man.

01:54:23 - Dev Agrawal

Also, as some, as someone who moonlights as a small time event organizer, I can verify that most of our dialog is with ourselves and not with our co organizers.

01:54:35 - Scott Steinlage

Yes,

01:54:38 - Michelle Bakels

it's so funny because there's so many times we're all like, right, like we're so excited. Like we are so. And it is like from us as the conference. But like sometimes things are just genuinely from me and I'm like, we would love that. And I'm like, Michelle, what do you just. Who are you talking for right now?

01:54:59 - Scott Steinlage

I'm totally there. You know, when I did the event that we had, we had like 30 plus speakers and man, I remember going through that process. Even though it was not in person, it was still, you know, quite the task to put together all that. So I know where you're coming from, Henri. What a great idea, man. You know, that's what I love about these spaces to y'all is when everybody gets in here and we're talking as a, you know, as a cohesive unit, as like this whole group of people who are like minded and wanting really awesome things for each other and as a whole and boom, like these ideas just kind of spring up out of them. So far we've had like two or three amazing things just kind of come out of this. And that's the other beautiful thing. Actually. I want to give huge credit to React Miami, Michelle and the organizers and everybody there is the fact that they were so willing to bring in and work with other people and let them kind of have a little more, you know, free rein to do things like Dev and us and stuff like that and you know, room for ideas and actually implementing and taking action on these things and not just saying, yeah, all right, we're down for whatever.

01:56:05 - Scott Steinlage

But no, really, like that's what's happening here. Some amazing things are happening because of this and it's just going to make the event that much more bigger. You know, like when people feel like they're involved with something and they feel like they're a part of something, that's when things really, really grow. Because people, that's why, I mean, that's why, you know, anything open source potentially, you know, has a lot of potential compared to something that's not open source. Not always but very much so. And so therefore, this is like open source. It's like they're creating an open source event, you know, but it's amazing. You still have to do a pull request though, and they gotta allow it. So.

01:56:46 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah, I. I mean, we just have. I'll just. Like, again, earlier I said that I have gone to a lot of conferences. I've gone to conferences that have really, like, left me feeling so, like, like on such a high. And I feel like those conferences were like, ones where I felt really included in, like, really special things. And I've also left conferences is being like, you know, really excited about what I saw. But then like, in retrospect, it's like, you know, I didn't meet anybody there or whatever. Like, so one of the biggest. The biggest conference I ever went to was AWS re:Invent. And it was phenomenal. Like, everything was taken care of. And they have a million talks and they take over like five hotels. And it's just like the conference of like, what it looks like if you had like a limitless page budget. And I didn't make a single friend. I barely saw the people that I went there with. And everything is super tightly controlled by Amazon, obviously. And so then I go to like, these more like smaller conferences where it's like, oh, do you want to participate in this?

01:57:56 - Michelle Bakels

Do you want to do this? Like, and it feels like so much less overproduced and you leave feeling like so much better and so much, much more excited. Like, I love when people offer to do things and take things on because the people that are coming are. They just want to have a good time. They're very smart, they're very capable. A lot of them are also organizers and have done events. So I. I think we just have like a good group. And I have like a high level of trust. And, you know, I'm always happy to try and help people do things that make our event even more fun.

01:58:33 - Dax Raad

Me and Adam went to re:Invent for the first time this year, and we didn't go to a single talk all five days.

01:58:38 - Scott Steinlage

So you just networked the whole time, huh?

01:58:42 - Anthony Campolo

Well, it's like a hundred thousand talks.

01:58:47 - Dax Raad

We did this really dumb thing where ahead of time we were like, okay, there's like 50,000 talks to pick from. Let's like try to pick some. And we pick all the talks with topics that we're interested in. But that's kind of the opposite we should do because we realized when we got there, like, I don't want to hear about this. I Already know about this, so we just skipped every single one.

01:59:03 - Anthony Campolo

Like, oh, cdk I can learn about.

01:59:09 - Dax Raad

I had a quick question, though. I think this was probably asked before I joined. What's the live streaming setup for the. Is there one. Are people like, What's. What's going on there?

01:59:18 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah. So on my to do list today was to make build the page for the live stream for our website. But it might be on my to do list tomorrow. But we will have a live stream page. We're going to use StreamYard and it's free, so definitely going to have that. And somebody also posted, like, in the Twitter Space, like, comments about, like, oh, can we do, like, viewing parties? That's a hard. Yes, I would love that. Please send me pictures. I would die. Like, that just makes my heart so thing. So, yeah, please take advantage of the live stream. It's free. Like, go for it.

02:00:02 - Scott Steinlage

That's awesome. Maybe something to think about too. Like, I don't know. I just. I love ideas, I love strategy, things like that, just to make things more valuable and fun. But I know you're saying, hey, if you want to do the live stream, do live stream. That's awesome. Do it and, you know, tweet it and all that stuff. But maybe there's something, Michelle, I don't know that can help promote that even further. Like, hey, the people with the most hype and crazy live stream that you post a picture of and tweet it. You know, something, you know, I don't know, maybe.

02:00:35 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah, like, if you organize. If you. I don't know. I'm thinking out loud right now and I'm caught.

02:00:40 - Anthony Campolo

Like, right?

02:00:40 - Michelle Bakels

But yeah, like, yeah, if you. Like, yeah, right. If you host a live stream party and you tweet it, like, yeah, if you get a group together and you tweet a live stream, I. I'm happy to, like, give you a free ticket for next year's conference. I'll just say that, right? I'll just make that decision right now.

02:01:06 - Dax Raad

It's just gonna be.

02:01:09 - Scott Steinlage

You heard it here first, y'. All. If you. If you aren't able to go to React Miami in person, right? Even though, guess what, we're giving you a 15 discount, which I'm gonna go and hand that out right now since it's near the near, like the two plus hours here, I just want to hand this out real quick so that you guys have it. If you haven't gotten a ticket yet to React Miami, this is your way to get a discount on it. Okay? And here it Comes. Are you ready? All right, hold on. I'm going to pull this up right now. Drumroll, please. All right, all you got to do is go to React Miami, go get your ticket and type in. And this is going to be like under the second step under promo code. Not under the step under access code. It'll be under the promo code, which is when you go to the second step to fill it out, just type in JavaScript Jam. J A V A. Actually, I think there might have.

02:02:09 - Anthony Campolo

Never would have guessed that.

02:02:11 - Scott Steinlage

I think there might have been a typo. You're gonna have to see because I'm looking at this email and I think there might have been a typo. It's strip.

02:02:19 - Anthony Campolo

Figure out what it is, tweet it and then we will pin the tweet.

02:02:23 - Scott Steinlage

Actually, maybe Michelle can. Maybe we can just make it just. Just JavaScript S, C R, I P.

02:02:31 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah, let me. Let me to fix this typo. This is like a rush job. This is a rush job. It's JavaScript Jam now. Typo fixed.

02:02:41 - Scott Steinlage

Yay. Thank you. Awesome. So JavaScript Jam. Go there, get your 15 discount. And by the way, next week when we have Henri on here and also Will, I think is going to join us, right?

02:02:56 - Anthony Campolo

Yeah, that's right.

02:02:57 - Scott Steinlage

Yep. Will Johnson will be joining us then, too. He was in the audience briefly for a little bit today. I know he couldn't join us to talk, but looking forward to that as well. Next week, which is on Wednesday at 12 PM Pacific Standard Time, just like we did today, we're going to be giving away a free ticket. Yes, a free ticket. So hang in with us then. As and as well. And we'll. We'll be like, basically I'll explain how it's going to happen next week, but basically you're going to be able to retweet the space and retweet what we got going on and y'all will be entered and then it'll randomly generate the winner from all those who have retweeted the space when we start doing that. All right, let's continue the conversation.

02:03:42 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah, I'm gonna give a. I'm gonna give a little behind the scenes on that job on that JavaScript Jam. I'm. I'm like, I'm not like, you know, like, if you find. If you find like little loopholes or you find additional discounts, like, I'm all for that. So I'll give you guys like a big hint. Like with this JavaScript Jam, clearly there was a typo in it. So when it was being created. It was being Rush created. And normally we do these discounts for single tickets, but I just noticed that when this discount was created, created, it was also. You're also allowed to apply it to the team ticket. So, like, usually that's for, like, if your company is going and you're sending, like, three or more people.

02:04:25 - Scott Steinlage

Right.

02:04:26 - Michelle Bakels

You get a discount on your tickets. Right. Because you're buying in bulk. Normally we don't have these, like, promo discounts for the team tickets, but it looks like when it was created, like, my core, like, I'm not gonna throw anybody on the bus, but I'm gonna apply to the team ticket to. And if you. Exactly. If you find a couple people that want to come and you guys want to, like, get. Get 15% off of the team discount, like, I'm not going to say anything. I don't check, like, if the three tickets come in and it's JavaScript Jam discount, I'm like, all right, we're good. So,

02:05:07 - Scott Steinlage

Yes. That's awesome. So excited for that, man. Yeah. There's no fine print here, y'. All. No need to worry about not using your. Your coupon. You're couping with other discounts. This is good. All right, cool. I'm really excited, man. React Miami is gonna be so good. Like, I'm seriously so pumped up. Hype, hype, get hype, y'.

02:05:37 - Henri Helvetica

All.

02:05:37 - Scott Steinlage

Yeah.

02:05:42 - Michelle Bakels

Oh, sorry, Dev, go ahead. I was gonna say really quickly, Max. Max is a listener in the space. Max is honestly such a cool guy. He's in South Florida and he's helping us out with React Miami this year. He's going to be posting to the React Miami Twitter page throughout the conference from, like, the attendee perspective. So if there's. If you plan on doing anything cool or wearing, like, an awesome outfit and you want to see it posted on React Miami's Twitter. Like, try and be around Max, try and hang around him, and you'll probably end up on our Twitter page.

02:06:26 - Scott Steinlage

The queue.

02:06:29 - Michelle Bakels

Yeah, don't be tied to Cue Around Max. But, yeah. So thank you, Max, again, for being, like, our eyes from the inside of the conference. It's going to be really cool to see what you capture.

02:06:46 - Dev Agrawal

Awesome. I was going to shout out that thing once again. Originally, when we talked about this, we had less people. Now we have more. And we also have more React Miami speakers here. Just once again, I am hosting an interview show with the React Miami speakers this week. Or, sorry, next week. Friday, next week, in collaboration with these two awesome gentlemen here from JavaScript Jam. Scott and Anthony. It's going to be called Miami Jam. If you're a React Miami speaker, look out for an email invite for it tomorrow or later this week. This is going to be more of a game show style interview or a panel. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be pretty interactive and collaborative as I'm trying to make it. And yeah, if you're not a speaker, please make sure you stop by because there's going to be some pretty nice conversations with the speakers about their topics, about their motivations behind it and everything. So be on the lookout for that.

02:07:51 - Scott Steinlage

Yes. And I think Michelle did say something about the attendees and a couple of free tickets maybe, or a free ticket or something, so. Hey, there's that, too. Hey, more value.

02:08:06 - Dev Agrawal

Dax, you're gonna say something?

02:08:08 - Dax Raad

Yeah, Dax, I think I have your email blocked, so just let me know when you send it.

02:08:15 - Scott Steinlage

Oh, de. Hey, man, y'all are. Y' all are just the punches. Oh. All right. Jab, jab. Very good.

02:08:31 - Anthony Campolo

I think we may finally be nearing the end of this Space. This is the longest Space we've ever done.

02:08:35 - Scott Steinlage

Yeah. Give it up for React Miami. The longest Space we've ever done. And yeah, you know what? Give it up for everybody who came up here and said some amazing things on the stage. Let's get some claps, 100 hearts. Yeah. Thank you so much to Michelle for putting all this together. We're really excited for React Miami. Man, this is gonna be so good. All these wonderful speakers, of course, that make React Miami what it is, and all these other conferences too. Without the speakers, we wouldn't have conferences. Yeah. Thank you so much for all these smart people. I'm not one of them, but I'm so glad that they're here.

02:09:21 - Michelle Bakels

I am super thankful. I'm super thankful for you guys, too. Like, it really. The event. The event is made better by the more people that are there and participating. So all the attendees that are coming, like, super thankful for all the speakers as well and all of our sponsors. Like, I genuinely. It's not like a required thing that I have to say. I, like, I genuinely am so thankful for our sponsors and I'm in their DMs. Like, what do you want? Like, what's the. What is. What is your dream goal to take away from this sponsorship? Like, I really am, like, super, super, super thankful for everybody that comes together and makes this happen. It's all about the people.

02:10:03 - Anthony Campolo

Well, thank you for creating the conference and shepherding it into existence. We're super thankful.

02:10:09 - Scott Steinlage

Yes, absolutely. Folks, I'll leave you with this. It's not just about coding. It's not just about the next big thing.

02:10:20 - Anthony Campolo

It's about the friends who made.

02:10:23 - Scott Steinlage

It's about relationships. Yes, exactly. Friends, networking, making real things happen in life. Living life together. That's what we're doing. Yeah, living life together. Love it. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Greatly appreciate it. Be sure to join us next week. We'll have Henri and Will Johnson on, who are speakers at React Miami, and we'll be doing a ticket admission giveaway. And also don't forget our discount code, JavaScript Jam, if you haven't gotten your React Miami tickets yet. With that being said, we love y'all and we'll see you in the next one. Oh, thank y'all so much. We love you and we'll see you in the next one. Peace.

02:11:40 - Rizel Scarlett

It.

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