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28 episodes with callstack
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Is rewriting your native app really the only way to go cross-platform? In this Coffee Talk episode, we explore how React Native Brownfield offers a smarter path forward. Łukasz Chludziński invites Oskar Kwaśniewski and Burak Güner—who work directly on React Native Core and brownfield tooling—to discuss how recent advances in React Native have made brownfield integration far more viable, stable, and scalable. You'll learn: ➡️ Why brownfield isn't what it used to be (goodbye, brittle bridging) ➡️ How `RootViewFactory` and `ReactNativeFactory` APIs simplify setup ➡️ What's new in React Native Brownfield 1.0.0 ➡️ How to keep your architecture clean while integrating React Native ➡️ What this means for modern native stacks like SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose—and future-facing platforms like visionOS Whether you're maintaining a legacy app or building for what's next, this episode gives you a blueprint for hybrid success. Explore React Native Brownfield
Tanner Linsley joins React Universe On Air to unpack the evolution of the TanStack ecosystem—from React Table and React Query to TanStack Router and the newest addition to the family, TanStack Start ✨ What started as internal tooling for Nozzle became a suite of libraries that shaped how developers think about server state, routing, and full-stack React apps. In this episode, Tanner shares the technical decisions behind building framework-agnostic, headless tools—and explains why client-side architecture still matters in a server-first world. You'll also hear why TanStack Start isn't just another full-stack framework, how React Server Components could be treated like server state, and what's coming next for TanStack Router. If you're building React apps at scale or deciding how to modernize your frontend stack, don't skip this one! Check out episode resources on our website
Ever wondered why TypeScript works so well with JavaScript libraries? It's thanks to Definitely Typed, a project that helps developers use these libraries with type safety and autocompletion
Eighteen TV platforms, one codebase—what could possibly go wrong? Tune in to find out how to tackle the technical and UX challenges of building for Android TV, Apple TV, Fire TV, Tizen, and more—all with React Native! In the 49th episode of React Universe On Air, Łukasz Chludziński (https://x.com/lukasz_app) teams up with Michael Khirallah (https://x.com/mkralla11), Senior Director of Engineering at DIRECTV, and Chris Trag (https://x.com/chris_trag), Developer Evangelist at Amazon, to discuss why cross-platform development is not just a time-saver but also a way to deliver a consistent user experience. You know that at Callstack, we're all about performance—and with devices like Samsung's Tizen TVs released in 2017 (running Chromium 47!), performance is a serious concern. That's why we asked our guests to share real-world techniques for optimizing TV apps, from architectural choices to strategies that avoid unnecessary performance hits on newer devices. The complexity of TV app development doesn't stop at coding, though. Our host and guests know it all to well, so they couldn't help but discuss how they balance unit, integration, automation, and manual testing, leveraging tools like AWS Device Farm and custom-built frameworks to ensure stability across all supported platforms. What's in it for you? Tips on automating QA without compromising thoroughness and why manual testing remains crucial for end-user experience. Want to get started with React Native TV app development? Download our guide
Reanimated 4 is here to change the way we build animations in React Native. With CSS-style animations and transitions, animations are now easier to write, more predictable, and work more like they do on the web. In this episode, Ola Desmurs-Linczewska (https://x.com/p_syche_) sits down with Tomasz Zawadzki (https://x.com/tomekzaw_) and Mateusz Łopaciński (https://x.com/MatiPl01) from Software Mansion to discuss what's new in Reanimated 4, why React Native is moving toward web standards, and what these changes mean for developers. We talk about:
Picture this: your teams are innovating independently, deploying updates swiftly, and navigating complex app architectures with ease. Microfrontends make this possible, much like microservices revolutionized backend development. But what about mobile? How can this approach transform your app development strategy? To explore these questions, we're joined by Zack Chapple (https://x.com/Zackary_Chapple ), Co-founder and CEO of Zephyr Cloud, and Jakub Romańczyk (https://x.com/_jbroma ), maintainer of Re.Pack at Callstack. They dive into the evolution of microfrontends, starting with the fundamentals: what they are, why they matter, and how technologies like Module Federation enable them. Zack shares insights on tools like Webpack, Rspack, and Zephyr Cloud, showing how they streamline managing complex frontends. The episode then shifts focus to mobile, where Zack and Jakub break down the Zephyr Cloud and Re.Pack collaboration. Learn how to tackle platform-specific challenges like managing version compatibility, over-the-air updates, and reducing bundle sizes—all while staying app store compliant. Plus, hear about real-world scenarios, like dynamically loading features or ejecting unused code to optimize performance, and get a sneak peek at Re.Pack 5. Check out episode resources on our website
In this episode, we're taking a closer look at two solutions that can redefine how we build universal React Native apps: DOM Components and React Server Components. They promise faster and better development—think low-latency interactions, offline capabilities, and the flexibility to scale effortlessly. If you're looking to future-proof your team's workflow and deliver apps that delight users regardless of the platform, this is a must-listen. To discuss DOM & React Server Components in detail, Łukasz invited Evan Bacon, the creator of Expo Router and Engineering Manager at Expo. Throughout the episode, Evan shares his expertise and journey in creating tools like DOM Components, which enable developers to integrate web code seamlessly into React Native apps, and React Server Components, simplifying server-driven rendering for mobile applications. Check out episode resources on our website
React Native FastIO: Nitro-Powered Performance Boost | React Universe On Air: Coffee Talk #25 by Callstack
In this episode of the React Universe On Air podcast, Ola has invited Krzysztof Magiera, the Director of Engineering at Software Mansion, to talk about Radon IDE and why it can be considered a game-changer for React Native developers. Their conversation revolves around: ➡️ the challenges of the available React Native tooling, ➡️ what made Krzysztof start working on Radon IDE, ➡️ how community feedback contributed to what the tool is today, ➡️ the key features of Radon IDE, and how they improve developer velocity and productivity. Check out episode resources on our website
In this episode, Kuba is joined by Kewin, a member of Callstack's AI team at the R&D Department and the co-creator of Cassandra. Together, they talk about everything you need to know about building a custom AI assistant, from why we chose OpenAI's ChatGPT to the challenges faced and solutions devised to craft a functional and efficient internal chatbot. They also share some interesting insights about the considerations for performance and security, as well as the future of AI in workplace management. Check out episode resources on our website
Crossover episode event with Callstack's React Universe On Air and Expo!Mazen joins a crossover episode with Callstack's Łukasz Chludziński and Expo's Quin Jung to give React Native developers a guide to navigating Microsoft App Center's retirement. The hosts discuss why App Center is sunsetting, key alternatives like Expo EAS and community options, plus tips for smoother enterprise transitions.This episode is brought to you by Infinite Red! Infinite Red is an expert React Native consultancy located in the USA. With nearly a decade of React Native experience and deep roots in the React Native community (hosts of Chain React and the React Native Newsletter, core React Native contributors, creators of Ignite and Reactotron, and much, much more), Infinite Red is the best choice for helping you build and deploy your next React Native app.
Here comes the moment we've all been waiting for: the first episode released under the new name! Callstack's podcast has changed from The React Native Show to React Universe On Air to reflect a broader scope of topics we want to discuss, spanning not only React Native, but also React and beyond. That's why we decided to kick off the refreshed brand with an episode that also sits at the intersection of both React and React Native ecosystems. And what better way to do this than to get together three podcasters:
In this short special, we want to give you a better understanding of the whys and how behind the rebranding of Callstack's podcast. We got Łukasz and Kuba together in the studio to reflect on:
When you build applications, do you ever consider users who may not have access to Google Mobile Services? They may not be your target audience now, but it's good to be aware of what options you have in store for non-GMS devices — which is exactly what we're talking about in this episode! To do so, Łukasz invited two guests:
On the day when React Native 0.74 goes live, we give you an exclusive peek behind the scenes of this release. Tune in to an in-depth discussion on what React Native 0.74 brings to the table, from new features and promising enhancements to deprecated feature removals and changes. To discuss the ins and outs of the latest React Native version, as well as the recent improvements to the release process, Łukasz is joined by two members of the release crew: Hur Ali, who's also a member of the performance optimization team at Callstack, and Alex Hunt, an Engineer at Meta for the React Developer Experience team. Share your feedback on this episode ✨ https://forms.gle/16qp1AAooLhFB5Qi6 Need help with React Native? Get in touch with us
In this Coffee Talk episode, we take a closer look at what your career may look like if you decide to take on the challenging, yet rewarding role of a tech lead or a dev manager. This change is not only about the change in title but the profound shift in mindset, responsibilities, and the art of managing people alongside projects. To discuss this topic, Kuba has invited Adam Trzciński and Jakub Bujko. Both our guests have successfully navigated such a transition at Callstack and so can share their firsthand experiences, the hurdles they overcame, and the lessons learned along the way. Share your feedback on this episode ✨ https://forms.gle/XXoegktQrgBKsaMGA Join the Callstack Team
Long time no see! We haven't published a Coffee Talk since November, and in this one, Kuba comes back with a bang and two very special guests:
In this episode, I talk with Szymon Rybczak, a 17-year-old React Native developer at Callstack. Szymon shares his journey into open source and his experience working with React Native. He discusses the benefits of contributing to open-source projects and provides tips for getting started. Szymon also explains the concept of React Server Components and how they can be used in React Native. He discusses the challenges and potential of this technology. Finally, Szymon talks about the Repack project and the future of universal apps.Learn React Native - https://galaxies.devSzymon RybczakTwitter: https://twitter.com/SzymonRybczakGithub: https://github.com/szymonrybczakTakeaways- Contributing to open-source projects can help developers improve their skills and gain valuable experience.- React Server Components can execute React components on a server, enabling full-stack development and performance optimizations.- Repack is a project that allows for module federation and bundle splitting in React Native, enabling micro frontends.- The future of React Native includes the adoption of React Server Components and the development of universal apps.Links- Brownfield app process: https://www.callstack.com/blog/brownfield-development-with-react-native - RePack: https://www.callstack.com/open-source/re-pack
Nesse episódio trouxemos as notícias e novidades do mundo da programação que nos chamaram atenção dos dias 06/01 a 12/01.
Nesse episódio trouxemos as notícias e novidades do mundo da programação que nos chamaram atenção dos dias 06/01 a 12/01.
In this episode, Łukasz (X @loginlukasza) invites Oskar Kwaśniewski (X @o_kwasniewski) and Michał Pierzchała (X @thymikee) to discuss their experimental journey of bringing React Native to Apple Vision Pro and visionOS. Together, they walk us through the process of bringing React Native to a new platform, with all its ups and downs. Tune in to learn about
We've been talking about building mobile and web apps with React Native for quite a while. How about we touch on yet another space that can be transformed with this technology: TV. To do that, Łukasz (who, by the way, has been a part of a TV project for a while) invited two guests with first-hand experience in React Native TV app development: Yusuf Yildirim (Technical Lead at XITE) and Karol Latusek (Software Engineer collaborating with Callstack). Topics covered
In the next episode of the “React Native at Scale” series, we lean a bit more towards the technology side to show you the impact that React Native and Re.Pack can have on a large fintech organization. To demonstrate that, we've invited two very special guests: Mike Duminy, a Principal Engineer and Domain Architect who works on scaling frontend technology at Klarna, and Jakub Romańczyk, Software Engineer at Callstack and the maintainer of Re.Pack. Together, we explore Klarna's business structure, the decision to use React Native, the benefits and challenges of using Re.Pack, and Klarna's release process. All of that will give you a better insight into how large-scale fintech organizations operate, what they needs are, and why React Native is well-suited to satisfy them. We also discuss the concept of super apps, the importance of optimizing bundle sizes, and the future plans for Module Federation in Klarna's architecture. Tune in now to dig deeper into React Native at scale – and if you're looking to futureproof your app with the technology that belongs to the React & React Native universe, give us a shout
In this episode of The React Native Show Podcast, Jakub (@bionanek) and Thiago (@thiagobrez) take you on a journey through the exciting (although a bit complex) world of Web3 and its intersection with mobile app development. This 45-minute Coffee Talk episode covers the following topics: - journey to fiery Web3 enthusiasm: our hosts discuss what initially sparked their interest and how they became involved in the rapidly evolving Web3 space - favorite crypto projects: Jakub and Thiago dig deeper into their professional experience and Web3 projects that they hold dear - perks of Web3: from NFTs to DeFi and GameFi, we discuss all the things that make Web3 a very exciting and inspiring environment - drawbacks of Web3: we also acknowledge the downsides of the Web3 space, including parts of the community solely chasing monetary gains, scams, and the high barrier of entry - React Native and Web3: our hosts shed more light on how they leverage React Native expertise to build Web3 applications at Callstack - building Web3 apps: to finish off, Thiago walks you through the process and tools for building Web3 applications, such as ethers.js, web3.js, viem, and wagmi. We hope this episode will provide valuable insights into mobile Web3. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts and feedback! Thiago's article about building Web3 apps with React Native :book: https://hubs.li/Q0288c3r0 Check out other episodes of our podcast :headphones: https://hubs.li/Q0288c4C0 Sign up for our newsletter for developers and tech leaders :e-mail: https://hubs.li/Q0288c3M0
Jamon Holmgren is the founder of Infinite Red, a consultancy specializing in React Native. He discusses his journey and insights into technology and leadership and highlights how Infinite Red stands as a testament that businesses can be run ethically while still achieving success. The conversation shifts to leadership styles and the principle of "one-minute praise" from the book "One Minute Manager." Both Jamon and Will agree that acknowledging others' efforts openly can make a significant difference, enhancing leadership skills and building stronger relationships. Will points out how this simple principle has been a game-changer for him in various aspects of life, including his personal relationships. Towards the end, the focus turns to motivation and long-term strategy. Jamon is driven by his enthusiasm for learning and the thrill of tackling diverse challenges in his consultancy work. He also shares his philosophy of keeping the company "10 degrees above the horizon," emphasizing steady, sustainable growth rather than erratic leaps and bounds. Infinite Red (https://infinite.red/) Follow Infinite Red on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/infinitered/), X (https://twitter.com/infinite_red), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwpSzVt7QpLDbCnPXqR97-g), GitHub (https://github.com/infinitered), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/infiniteredinc/), or Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/infinitered_designers/). Follow Jamon Holmgren on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamonholmgren/) or X (https://twitter.com/jamonholmgren). Visit his website at jamon.dev (https://jamon.dev/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. And with me today is Jamon Holmgren, Co-Founder and CTO of Infinite Red, a software consulting agency that specializes in React Native. Jamon, thank you for joining me. JAMON: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. WILL: So, Jamon, what's going on in your life? How's everything going? JAMON: You know, things have been obviously very busy, like, I guess, pretty much everybody. You know, school has started. I have four kids, so that keeps me quite busy, going to various school events, going to volleyball, you know, bringing kids here and there, running the company. I have some side projects I'm doing. I am playing hockey. So, it just seems like every waking hour is filled with something. [laughter] WILL: I totally understand that. I have three kids of my own. So, they're a little bit younger than yours, so mine is 4, 3, and, like, 17 months, so... JAMON: Okay. Yeah, so you're just getting started. And you're doing all of the, like, physical labor associated with being a parent. WILL: Yes, yes, yes. So, I want to start there. Tell me a little bit about your kids. I know their ages are 10 to 18. JAMON: Yeah, so I have a boy, Cedric. He's actually a programmer as well. He's just starting his career. He is the oldest, and then we have three girls. We have a 15-year-old who's a sophomore in high school. And then we have a 12-year-old who's in middle school and a 10-year-old who is in fifth grade in elementary school. And it's a lot. My wife and I both came from very large families, so we're kind of used to it. And it's a lot of fun. A lot of challenges at this age, I mean, teenagers especially, you know, as they kind of all come into that same era, you know, it's more of a challenge. I guess the thing that I think about it is a lot of the skills that I learned as a young kid parent don't really translate super well to being a teenager parent. And I'm having to learn a lot of new skills. And I actually talked to a guy the other day. His kids are, I think, 32 and 28, or something like that. And he said, "Yeah, the learning never stops." [laughs] WILL: So, I'm going to ask you for the secret sauce because I'm still in the temper tantrums and those type of emotions and stuff. So, how is it different in the teenage years from the temper tantrums? JAMON: Well, I think that they can act like adults in a lot of cases, and you start thinking of them as adults, and you start developing a relationship there. But their brains are also not fully developed. And so, they will also do things that are very inexplicable, like, you'll just be like, why? Why would this be a thing? Like, I don't get it. Like, you act like an adult for half the time, and then the other half, you act like a kid. Navigating that, and the fact that they change all the time, and all the other challenges. And they're all different. Like, if we had only had one kid, you know, my boy was pretty easy. He was pretty straightforward. It would have been like, well, shoot, being a parent is pretty easy. Like, I don't know what everybody else is complaining about. Like, he never did tantrums. He was just a really quiet, you know, like, well-behaved kid and kind of went through life like that. But then, obviously, developing a relationship with him is more of the challenge because he's quieter, where with my girls, it's easier to develop the relationship, but then you [laughs] deal with a lot more volatility as well. So, they're all different. Every kid's different. It's hard to really apply that directly. I would say that the thing that I've learned the most in the last few years is just kind of continuing to be, like, even through some of the tougher times, continuing to be there, continuing to develop that relationship. A lot of times, it feels like you're not getting anywhere, but you are. It is actually happening. You just don't see it until later. WILL: I'm writing that down. That's great advice [laughter]. You mentioned hockey. Tell me about it. I've never played hockey. I grew up in the South, so we didn't have that. So, tell me about it. And you're a goalie also, correct? JAMON: Yeah, I play goalie. I didn't discover hockey...I played basketball in high school. I played four years of high school basketball. I even played a little bit at college. And I didn't really discover hockey until I moved to Southwest Washington, about an hour away from where I grew up in the coast of Oregon. When I got there, a lot of my friends that I made were playing hockey. And one friend, in particular, he was a goalie, and he had grown up in Upper Michigan. So, you know, like, he grew up playing hockey. He was a very good skater and things like that. But there was one weekend I was coming to watch him play just rec hockey. And he's like, "You know what? I can't make it. Would you want to jump in and, like, be my sub?" And it was just a pick-up game. So, it wasn't like there was anything on the line. And I was like, "All right, I'll give it a try." You know, put on the gear. He showed me what to do to put on the gear. He kind of gave me some tips. Like, in the living room where we were, he was, like, showing me how to play. We were, like, I would say, 19, I think. Nineteen years old, something like that. Anyway, I show up, and I put on the gear, and I go out there. And I actually had a decent game, considering I barely knew how to skate and barely knew how to do anything. But I'm kind of big; I'm six foot four, almost six foot five. And having all that gear and everything, I filled up a lot of the net. And it wasn't a very high-level game, so I did pretty well. And after that, the team was like, "Well, we'd love to have you back." And then my friend really was not interested in continuing, so he was like, "You can have it, like, just roll with it." I kept playing for about three years, and then, I don't know, I took over a decade off. The team dissolved. It wasn't even a league team. It was just, you know, pick-up hockey. And then a friend called me and was like, "Hey, I'm starting up a game. It's going to be Finnish Americans," because I'm half-Finnish myself. "So, it's going to be all Finnish Americans. We're going to call it the [Foreign language]," which is the Finnish boys in sort of Finnish. It's not exactly supposed to be like that in Finnish. Anybody listening who's Finnish is going to be like, "Yeah, that's bad Finnish." But it kind of means Finnish boys or Finland boys. And we put together the team, and I've been playing for the last three-plus years. It's been kind of, like, a rec league team. We've won the championship four times, which was really fun. This year, I'm actually playing in two leagues. I'm playing in rec league, and I'm also playing the next league up, so a little bit faster, better skaters, better shooters, things like that. And I just love it. It's so much fun. WILL: Wow, that's amazing that you started later and that you're still playing it. Because when I look at hockey, I'm like, that's really hard. I don't know if I could do that. I can skate. I can't stop. JAMON: [laughs] WILL: Like, I can get a lot of speed [laughs]. But it's just something about turning sideways and thinking I'm going to fly over the skates. JAMON: [laughs] WILL: And yeah, it's a whole thing [laughs]. Is goalie harder than playing any of the other positions? JAMON: I would say it's different. Like, I don't have to be as good of a skater, you know, things like hockey stops are still not supernatural for me. I don't skate backwards super-fast. You know, I'm not a fast skater in general. But the difference is, of course, you have to be reading the flow of the game. You have to know the body language of the players that are coming at you. You have to kind of see what's happening. At the end of the day, lots of things can happen, so you try to put yourself in the best position. It's a lot of, like, positional, like, where are you in the net? What does your position look like? And then, once they shoot, how do you react? Are you dropping down, or are you staying up? Are you using your glove? Are you using your blocker? Are you just trying to block with your body using your stick? Then, once the puck hits you, then what do you do? How do you control the rebound? Are you trying to cover it up and ice the puck so they do a face-off? Are you trying to kick it out to one of your skaters? And then, once that happens, you have a little bit of a rest, hopefully, while they're down on the other side. But you're continually alert and watching to see what's going to develop because it could be a breakaway. And then it's just you and the skater and trying to anticipate what they're doing and try to make it so that they have to make a play. Like, just be big, be in position. Don't get out of position. Don't make a mistake. And I've had really great games where I've, you know, had 45 shots on me, and I've only let one in or something like that. And I've had some bad games too. I know there's one game in a championship where they only had six shots on me. But we ended up losing because I let in two, so that was not a fun game. I only had six opportunities, and I failed on two of them. But that happens, and so you just have to be mentally tough. WILL: Wow, that's amazing. The limited knowledge of hockey...I'm going to assume here, so I hope it's right. With you being 6'4, 6'5, I'm guessing that the five-hole, if I'm correct, was probably your toughest position to defend. JAMON: You know, you would think so. And just for the audience, the five-hole is, like, between your legs, you know, the puck going between your legs underneath. But I play a style...a little bit older style of goalie because that's what I watched. You know, in, like, the early 2000s, I watched Patrick Roy of the Colorado Avalanche, one of the greatest goalies of all time, and he played what's called a butterfly style. So, as the play develops, you're standing, but then you go down fairly early, and you're protecting the bottom. You have your stick in front of you protecting the five-hole, and you have your legs, you know, spread out. So, I used my height really more for blocking as I'm down rather than standing because when I'm standing, I'm above the net. It's better for me to get down. And I think that that's worked out pretty well. You know, Patrick Roy was a pretty big goalie as well. Most modern goalies play a more hybrid style. But, you know, we could get into all that. I'm a big kind of hockey nerd in this way. But that's what I do. I play butterfly, so most of the time, people don't beat me five-hole; when they do, it's usually they're picking a corner. WILL: Wow. Now that you've painted the picture, I can see how that's smart because you do have the goal, I mean, the gloves plus the stick and then your height. Yeah, I can see how...that's smart. That's very smart [laughs]. JAMON: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's kind of the goal. And also, because I wasn't a great skater, it sort of played into it as well, playing down on the ice where I was just more comfortable that way. It's worked out. I've had a pretty decent record over my career here [laughs]. WILL: That's awesome. Well, let's transition a little bit into consultant agencies. You've been doing it for 18 years. Tell me about that. How did you get started? JAMON: Well, when I started, I was working in construction. I was working for a home builder. And, you know, everybody I knew pretty much worked in construction, including my dad, who owned a business. And I went on my own. I had always dreamed of owning my own business, but I didn't start really thinking about websites. I was coding. I loved coding, and I was coding since I was 12. So, when I got to 23 years old, I thought, I'll start a business, and I'll do home design because that's what I was doing for the builder was, I was drawing homes. I was designing homes and remodels and things like that. And so, I started it doing that. But I also needed a little bit extra work. I didn't have enough work. Like, I had people, you know, sending me work, you know, home design and whatnot, but I didn't have quite enough. So, I would also build websites on the side, PHP and HTML, MySQL, and JavaScript. And I just sort of continued to do that. But in 2008, there was the housing crisis, and all of the design work for homes just dried up. There wasn't much there. In fact, it actually really dried up in 2007 because things kind of started a little early for designers. And so, I was like; I got to do something to stay busy. I've got a wife. I've got a young kid (Actually, at that point, I had two kids.), and I need to make sure that I'm staying busy. And so, I really ramped up trying to find work, you know, as a programmer, as a web developer. And there were plenty of companies at that time that were really trying to drum up business. So, they were putting money into their websites trying to get new projects, and they were all construction companies. And so, that's how I started. And I started doing more things like internal web apps for managing orders and managing sales leads, and that sort of thing. And that led me into web apps and eventually to Ruby on Rails, which became sort of my bread and butter for a while. As I was doing Ruby on Rails, you know, obviously, the iPhone was out, but the iPad came out. And I was more of an Android guy at that point. But I bought an iPad because it looked really cool, and my dad had one. When I started playing around with it, I'm like, I need to build apps for this. This is super cool. So, I took some Stanford courses online, which you could do back in those days, iTunes U, and learned how to use Objective-C. This was previous to Automatic Reference Counting and stuff. So, you had to manage your own memory, and this was a lot of manual work; very different environment than JavaScript, and PHP, and Ruby. But I actually enjoyed it quite a bit and then eventually transitioned into React Native later. But really, getting over to mobile and that sort of thing was...once I found mobile, I really didn't want to do web anymore. Mobile is what I really enjoy doing. WILL: Wow, I love that. If I'm following you correctly, you said in 2007, that's kind of when everything dried up. So, you were almost forced to find something different, correct? JAMON: Yeah, that's right. I mean, I kind of sat around feeling sorry for myself for a while. And then I was like, well, it's my business. I got to figure out what to do. It's not anybody else's fault. Like, you know, it doesn't matter that this is forces out of my control. I do have control. I have the ability to go in there and figure out, okay, what do I do next? Well, I know how to program, and it seems like people want me to program. So, let's lean into that. WILL: Wow. I love that. Because it's funny, that's how I got started in programming. I lost my job. And I was working at Buckle, the clothing store. If you know me, that is not me at all, like, at all [laughter]. I love gym shorts and athletic clothes. Like, fashion is not my thing. It's just not. So [laughs], I got into programming because I was just struggling. And it was a very pivotal moment in my life. And I'm thankful that I lost my job. Losing your job is just hard, and I think it makes you rethink things. JAMON: Yeah, absolutely. It was a growth moment for me as well, one of many. But that was definitely a point that I look back on and say, I mean because I can actually point at almost the day when it all dried up. It was, like, April 2007. And my uncle had been sending me a lot of work, you know, he had extra work. He didn't have barely enough for himself anymore at that point. And I finished up my last project, and he's like, "I don't have anything else." And I had some other clients as well and called them up, and they were like, "No, we don't have anything. Like, nobody is buying right now." And it just kept going like that. And it was weird because 2005, 2006, most of 2007, it felt like things were really rolling, but it just dried up all at once. And so, I was really lucky that I did end up getting a bunch of web work to do in 2008. I was still doing home design till probably late 2008, 2009. But then I eventually just hung that up and was like, okay, this is over. I'm definitely focusing on programming. WILL: Wow, how was the initial traction when you moved into ramping up the web development? JAMON: It was really good because it didn't take much to keep me busy. And I ended up getting some big contracts from, like, a cabinet manufacturer was a big one. I did some other things as well. And I ended up hiring my first employees in 2009. So, really, less than two years later, I was starting to hire employees. And I just hired, like, junior developers who had barely learned to code and taught them to code. So, I hired probably, over the years, next few years, like, ten programmers, many of whom are actually still with me today, and I taught them to code back in the day. And as time went on, they became senior and really high-level programmers who are now leading projects for big companies that you've heard of. But they started with me building, you know, PHP and MySQL and whatnot for small, like, regional construction companies. And we learned together. So, it was definitely a progression you can go look back and see. WILL: Yeah, I saw a tweet that you tweeted, and I loved it because I totally understand. JAMON: [laughs] WILL: And so, I'm glad you mentioned the junior devs and stuff. The tweet that I'm talking about was, "I got into this industry to code; ended up becoming a founder because I was the only person who would hire me." JAMON: [laughs] WILL: I want to ask you about that. [laughter] JAMON: Yeah, it's really that I grew up in a small logging town, like, very tiny logging town in Northwest Oregon. I didn't know...I knew one programmer, and the guy was, like, an incredible genius. And I just thought that that was the only way that you could professionally be a programmer was to be an incredible genius. I was coding, but I was, like, coding games, you know, in QBasic. And so, for me, every time I looked around, it was just, like, construction, or logging or, you know, blue collar, like, working at a mill. Like, these were the things that I saw around me. And so, that was the path I went. And I didn't really think of using this passion that I had for coding to turn it into, like, actual money. And when I did start thinking about it, I was like, I don't know anybody who does software. Like, even when I moved to Southwest Washington, I was closer to Portland. But I thought you had to have a CS degree, and I didn't have a CS degree. So, I was like, okay, well, I'll start my own business then, and that will be the thing that kind of leads me into tech. And that's what ended up happening. And it's kind of funny because I did go to, you know, one semester of community college for basketball and for...until I got cut. And then I studied some things there. But I never finished for the community college. What's kind of cool, though, is today, I'm actually on their, like, tech advisory committee. Like, they actually have me advising their professors on the current state of tech, which is kind of cool. WILL: Wow, that is really cool. It is interesting because I remember when I first started out and that feeling of probably over 300 applications just trying to get a job. And it was just hard. And my first job, to be honest, I think it was because of networking is why I got the job. If I didn't know the person that introduced me to the company, I probably wouldn't have gotten the job, if I'm being honest. But I am very sympathetic for junior devs anytime. If a junior dev asks me a question, I will take time, help them out. Because I remember...it's very hard as a junior dev trying to get that first job. So, when you said that, I was like, yeah, I can see your heart towards junior devs. JAMON: Absolutely. That's where I started. You know, the first developers that I hired were all juniors. We don't hire juniors anymore because of the style of business that we are. But I miss that. I miss that to some degree. We really can't. And we've looked at it from just about every angle. But I did my time [laughs]. I spent a lot of hours teaching junior developers when I could have done it quicker myself. WILL: Definitely. Like, you end up losing some money when you do a junior dev and you're hiring for the future. So, like, in a consultant agency, I totally understand that, yeah. JAMON: Yeah, absolutely. MID-ROLL AD: Now that you have funding, it's time to design, build, and ship the most impactful MVP that wows customers now and can scale in the future. thoughtbot Liftoff brings you the most reliable cross-functional team of product experts to mitigate risk and set you up for long-term success. As your trusted, experienced technical partner, we'll help launch your new product and guide you into a future-forward business that takes advantage of today's new technologies and agile best practices. Make the right decisions for tomorrow today. Get in touch at thoughtbot.com/liftoff. WILL: So, I want to ask you about the transition from ClearSight Studio to Infinite Red. How did that happen? JAMON: ClearSight was my first company. And it sort of evolved from being a, you know, a home design/website company to just a website and web app company, and then mobile apps. And, at a certain time, we had, I think, around 12 employees, something like that. I had a design department. We were building websites and whatnot. And I was really interested in iOS development. That was really my passion. And so I actually ended up working on some open source with iOS developers across the globe and then got invited to a conference down in San Francisco in 2014. And I went and gave a talk there. It was my first tech conference that I'd ever been to, much less given a talk, and I was the first talk [laughs]. So, that was kind of an interesting little anecdote there. And as I did it, I got to know some other developers. I had one in particular, Todd Werth, who I really hit it off with, and we ended up chatting a lot after the conference. And it felt like he and I had a very similar outlook. And he had an iOS agency. That's all they did. Well, 2015 rolls around, and I had had some rough times toward the end of 2014 in terms of the business, and I was kind of complaining to Todd. He had had some issues as well, and we started commiserating. And he's like, you know, he just started joking. I still have this conversation in Slack way back if I go look. And he's like, "Well, maybe we should just merge our businesses together," because it felt like we had maybe complementary skills. And we had a similar outlook on what we wanted from our businesses. And so, we ended up eventually solidifying that. I flew down there, talked to him and his business partner, Ken, at the time. We ended up making that happen later that year. So, just a few days ago, October 1st was our eighth anniversary running the companies, running the new company, the merged company, which is Infinite Red. So, that was kind of how that all came together. Eventually, Ken left, and we had a new business partner who was our top employee buy-in; that's Gant Laborde. And so, there are still three owners. We have three directors and then the rest of the team. We're about 30 people altogether, and we focus entirely on React Native. WILL: Wow, congratulations on eight years. That's a lot. That's amazing. JAMON: Yeah, thank you. I was just thinking the other day that I ran ClearSight for ten years. Infinite Red is getting close to how long I ran my first business. And, like, my youngest is, like I said, 10. So she was only two years old when I merged the company. She does not remember my old company, which is weird to me. [laughter] WILL: Wow. So, can you walk me through your decision to go here with React Native and specialize in that? Because it sounds like right around the time when React Native was created, and people started using it in production. JAMON: That's right. The iOS technology that we had sort of bonded over at that conference was called RubyMotion. But in 2015, the founder ended up going to work for Microsoft for a while and then went back to Apple. He had been from Apple before. So, it was sort of going down. And we were looking for a different technology, both of our companies were, and then, of course, the merged company. React Native looked interesting, but it didn't have an Android version yet. But then, in September of 2015, Android came out, so it was iOS and Android. So, we were able to take a look at that one month before we ended up solidifying the actual merger. So, basically, day one, October 1st, 2015, we were, like, we are now doing React Native for mobile, but we kept doing web. We kept doing Ruby on Rails. We did some Elixir. We did some Elm. We did some...I think we had some old Ember stuff going on. We had all kinds of things going on. But over time, we got more and more traction with React Native because that's really where our interest was. And so, we ended up saying, okay, well, this is where we really want to be. It took us a few years. It took us probably five years, six years, something like that, to really develop the confidence to say, "Hey, this is all we want to do," because it's a risk. Like, you put yourself on one technology. We had that before with the other technology that went down. But we had the confidence that we knew we could step off of a sinking ship onto another one if we needed to. So, we said, "You know what? Let's do this." And I got to give my co-founder, Todd, a lot of credit because he was the first one to say, "Let's go all React Native. Anywhere that React Native is, React Native is on a lot of different platforms. You can do tvOS. You can do Mac. You can do Windows. You can do web with React Native web, all kinds of things. So, let's just focus on React Native. Our team will just focus on that. We will only hire React Native developers. All of our marketing is going to be around React Native. Let's just focus on that." And it ended up being a great call. We did that. We made that happen. And for probably the last, I would say, three, four years, something like that, that's all we've been doing. WILL: So, what's your opinion on, I guess, the argument that's being held right now with native iOS and Android, even the Flutter, and I think Ionic is the other one that I've heard of, versus React Native? What's your pitch on React Native over those? JAMON: There's definitely reasons to use any of those. But I wrote this article a while back. It was specifically about Flutter, but I think it applies to a lot of the other competitors as well. The title of the article was provocatively titled, "Flutter Is Better Than React Native in All the Ways That Don't Matter." And the idea behind this is that, yes, Flutter gets a lot of things very right. A lot of their developer experience is actually better than React Native; some is worse, but, you know, some is better. But really, when it comes down to it, the things that matter are more business level. React Native is good enough. It's like native views. So, you have the native performance. With Hermes, you have really good performance in JavaScript. So, you know that you can get really high-level JavaScript performance. You can ship JavaScript, which really helps because then you can bring in JavaScript developers, and specifically React developers. So, a lot of companies already use React. It's a no-brainer to then use React Native if you're already using React Web. It doesn't really make sense to go to Flutter. It makes maybe some sense to write it in native, but then you have to write it twice. And you have three teams. You have a web team. You have an iOS team, and you have an Android team. And you also have three codebases, and one's always lagging behind. That's always what's happening. Marketing is like, "Okay, when can we announce this?" "Well, iOS isn't done," or "Android is not done," or "Web is not done." Where if you can combine all of those things and combine just the culture of your team, then it becomes more tight-knit because everybody's working on all aspects at one time. You can take a feature, and you can build it in web, and you can build it in iOS, and you can build it Android with all the same skills. Now, there are some deeper parts of React Native. It goes really deep. But in terms of just being productive out of the gate, a React developer can be productive in week one, and that's, I think, a huge deal. So, it really comes down to is the performance and developer experience good enough? And the answer is absolutely yes. And then, secondly, like, what's the business case for React Native? Well, you can have the same developers doing iOS, Android, and web, and even if you don't, you can share techniques. You can be like, "Hey, here's this cool JavaScript thing," and the Kotlin developers aren't just like, "Ugh, you know, JavaScript." Or you can be like, "Hey, here's our TypeScript configuration across the whole codebase." You can even have a monorepo with everything in it. It just makes a lot of sense that way. And especially now with Expo, it makes it even more that way because Expo removes a lot of the barriers for web developers that they would have coming into native. So, with that in mind, I still see React Native dominating the apps that are at the top of the App Store. One of the Expo developers, Evan Bacon, has put out a bunch of tweets about, you know, like, 24 out of the top 100 food and drink apps are written in React Native, as opposed to 8 in all the other options combined other than native, you know. So, it gives a good sense that React Native is still growing and continuing to. It has a lot of steam behind it. WILL: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I'm a big React Native fan, and I do a lot of React Native work here. So, yes, totally agree with you. And one of the most frustrating things that I've come across is, I'm a big researcher, and so I'll research things, and I'm like, oh, there's an app for this. And I'm a big Android fan, so when I go to them, it's like, oh yes, I can use this app. And then it's like, no, I can't. It's only for iOS. Okay, like, you lost me as a customer. JAMON: [laughs] WILL: I was willing to pay whatever on this because I've been looking for it. So yeah, I like how you said that. JAMON: Yeah. It treats all of the platforms as first-class citizens. WILL: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Totally agree. How does your company handle the backend? Do y'all do any of the backend, or how is that handled at Infinite Red? JAMON: We used to do that, like I mentioned. But a few years ago...we had a very, very small back-end team by then. Most of the time, and now pretty much 100% of the time, when someone comes to us, they already have a back-end team, so we work directly with them. A lot of our developers were back-end developers, and so they understand the backend really well, but they're obviously React Native specialists now. So, you know, I came from that. I did PHP. I did Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Elixir, Node, all kinds of back-end technology. So, I understand it really well as well. But yeah, we lean on our clients for that. We might partner with an agency like you folks over there at thoughtbot and have them do the backend, or just have the client, you know, come up with their own solution. WILL: Yeah, I love that, yeah. And we've done that with numerous agencies, so yeah, that's awesome. What does success look like for Infinite Red now versus, you know, six months or five years from now? Do y'all have any goals in mind that you're trying to hit? JAMON: In the Infinite Red leadership, we are currently reading John Maxwell's 21 indisputable Laws of Leadership, which is a good book. And we had this really great conversation at our first book club meeting in leadership, which John Maxwell defines success in a very different way than we do. You know, he measured it as, like, McDonald's, or Starbucks, or something like that, like, giant, becoming huge, becoming big, making tons of money. And it was sort of just implicit in the book that that was the case. We had this great talk internally. Why didn't this resonate with us? And that's because we don't really measure success that way. So, I love that question, Will, because measuring success is you really have to start there. Like, you have to start there and say, "What do we want from this?" So, ultimately, we want to build cool things with our friends. I'm a coding nerd. I want to code. I want to be in the code. That's why we're an agency. Like, if we were a product company, if we were building, I don't know, podcasting software or something, we'd have to become experts in podcasting rather than experts in React Native, or experts in TypeScript, or whatever we want to do. So, we really love code. We want to build that. We want to have an amazing family-first environment. We want to treat everybody super well. We want to have really low turnover, which we've been able to achieve. Hardly anybody leaves Infinite Red. Maybe every other year, we might lose one person. And even with those people, they tend to come back [laughs], which is a great sign. They go out and find out that, yeah, actually, Infinite Red is pretty awesome, and they come back. So, we really look for that. We really focus on that. We want that to happen. And it's really less about making the most money we can. Obviously, everybody wants to be well paid. And so, we're going to try to make sure we have a successful business in that way and that we want to be around for a long time. But, really, measuring success is less about business success and it's more about life success. It's really more about family success, being with my four kids, being there for them when they need me to be. That's why we're remote, you know, as another example. So, everything really hinges off of that. It's around happiness. It's around fulfillment. It's not around financial success. WILL: I'm a huge John Maxwell fan, by the way. JAMON: [laughs] There you go. WILL: So, yes, I love it. And I love how you explained, you know, because one of my questions I was going to ask you is about the core values, but I'm going to switch it up a little bit. So, I'm just going to say, in my opinion, I feel like there's almost leadership talk void at times, especially in the tech space. Like, we don't talk about leadership a lot. But it plays a huge part in what we do day to day. Like, you named a couple of core values and principles that you're following because of the leadership. So, for you, why is the leadership so important and I guess you can say have a seat at the table at Infinite Red? JAMON: I'm a strong believer, and I've become more of a strong believer over time, that it all starts at the top. If you don't have buy-in from your top leadership, it does not really matter what happens otherwise because they will continually undermine, and they have the power to continually undermine that. So, these core values have to apply to the top leaders. They have to be held accountable to that. And these leaders also need to be developed. So, we have three owners. We have three directors. And the three directors who are underneath us were not directors when we hired them; you know, they started out as developers. They started out as designers. They started out as project managers. But they became Director of Operations, Director of Engineering, Director of Communications. And we developed them. We poured a lot of time into them, and we continue to do that. In fact, even reading this book with them and going through that exercise is continuing to invest in them. Not that we as owners don't have growth to do; we also do. And so, we learn from them, and we learn from our team. So, you have to start there. And on that same vein, we do have some core values. We call them our foundation and our pillars. We have three foundational things, and we have four pillars. So, the three foundations are: one, we control our own destiny. We are not going to be beholden to some other company. We're not going to ride someone else's coattails. We're not going to be in a situation where someone else can kill us. And it can be easily done that way where we're in a position where, you know, we're too reliant on one whale client or something like that. We just won't do it. The second foundational thing is that we have...it's a word bonitas, which means kindness, friendliness, benevolence, blamelessness. And it's basically just being a good person to everybody and doing the right thing. And the third one is having a significant positive impact. That's why we do so much media. That's why we try to have an impact outside. And we're only 30 people, but people think we're way bigger because of how we kind of present ourselves in the world. And then our pillars all support those things, so high personal support. We support each other. We have high expectations, but we also support each other not just at work but also as a whole person. Long-term viewpoint, we think way beyond this year. We think about what is Infinite Red going to be when I retire? You know, I'm 41; that's a ways out, hopefully. But what's that going to look like? The next one is collaborative creativity. Creativity by yourself is just a solo thing. We're a team, so it has to be collaborative. We have to do it together. All our creative work, whether it's our conference, Chain React, or our work, it's all collaborative, and we love being creative. And the last thing is being pioneers, pioneering spirit. We like to be pioneers in technology. We put out a lot of open source. And we try to bring that pioneering spirit everywhere we go. And then, there's a lot of different things that kind of come out of that. For example, we have this internal saying, which is, "Don't do hard things alone." So, you have a hard thing coming up? And it could be hard in various ways. It could be a technically challenging thing. It could just be hard because of the mood you're in that day. But don't do it alone. Ask someone to help you, you know, jump in with you, pair with you. Do it together. And we love that. That's part of the high personal support and the bonitas. So, all these things come out of the foundation and pillars that we have. WILL: Wow, I love all those. I want to pick one of them out and ask you a question around it. So, you're talking about having an impact. I'm loving this conversation just talking to you. It's just been amazing. So, for you, what do you want the impact on the world to be from your perspective? JAMON: That's a hard question to answer, and it tends to be something that I think about a lot. I'm more of an opportunistic person. I react more than I plan ahead, that sort of thing. But with that said, I think that we have had significant positive impact through a lot of different ways. So, on Twitter, for example, I try to present a...and this is authentically who I am. But I try to present a positive force out there, someone who's excited and enthusiastic about the technology, who supports other people, even who you might consider competitors, for example. I just retweeted recently a Callstack thing. I mean, you might consider them a competitor. They're another React Native agency. But I love Callstack. They're great people. And I retweeted one of their really amazing resources, which is the ultimate guide to React Native performance, which, by the way, is really good. And if you do React Native, you should check it out. So, I think what goes around comes around, and I really want to have that positive impact out there. I want to give talks that inspire people. You know, I'm a nerd, and I'm going to nerd out about stuff. And I feel like that has an impact all of its own. So, that's kind of my personal side of it. And then Infinite Red is a showcase that you can run a company the right way. You can treat people the right way. And the company can be successful along our own metrics of success. WILL: So, one of my biggest principles that I've learned in life that's changed my leadership 100,000% is from this book called One Minute Manager. And I think it's called one-minute praise. And, essentially, the background behind it is, if you think something, just tell the person because so many times...and I get in my head, and I think amazing things about people, but I never say it. JAMON: [laughs] WILL: So, I want to just tell you, like, you said, the impact that you're making. You are doing that. Like, one of the reasons why I invited you on the show was because of your impact that I see that you're having on Twitter and LinkedIn and just everything that you're doing at Infinite Red. So, keep going. I want you to know that you are making a difference. I see you, and it's making a big difference in my life. JAMON: I love that, and it makes me feel great. And I appreciate you sharing that one-minute praise there. It is something that sometimes you put it out there, and you don't really know what the impact is, you know, it's sort of hidden in maybe the likes, or the replies, or whatever. As an example, I just reached out to my friend Aaron Francis last night, and I told him, "Hey, I love your videos." I don't even do the tech that he does. But I watch his videos on YouTube because I just love the vibe that he has. And I told him that. I was like, "You're doing a great job. You're being a very good advocate for your company." And I agree with you; I think that just taking the moment to reach out and say, "Hey, I think you're doing good work," it encourages people to do more of it. So, I appreciate it a lot, Will. That's really nice of you to say. WILL: Yeah, definitely. If you can go back, what is some advice that you would give yourself? We could do both at the beginning when you did ClearSight and whenever you merged and did Infinite Red. Was there any advice that you're like, wow, I learned these lessons, and they were game changers for me? JAMON: [laughs] Boy, this could be a whole nother podcast, to be honest. There are so many different things that I've kind of learned over the years. I feel like, you know, there's value in, you know, there was actually...I forget exactly where I heard this, but it was about Cloudflare, the company. And a long time ago, as they were sort of launching, one of the people that worked on the...I think it was their founder, actually. One of their investors told him, "Hey, running a company is sort of like flying an airplane. You want to make sure that it's well-maintained at all times. And then, when you're flying, you keep the wheel steady and the nose 10 degrees above the horizon so you continue to rise. And you don't need to shoot for the moon. We're not a rocket here. Just continue to execute well, make sure that it's well maintained, make sure that you're continually rising." And Cloudflare is a good example of this, and I think that Infinite Red is as well. Every year, we try to do something where we're continuing to keep that nose 10% above the horizon. That doesn't always mean growing. Like, we don't hire all that often. We don't grow in terms of headcount, but we grow in other ways. And you can see that looking back over the years. Every year, there was something that we continued to, you know, improve, keeping that nose 10 degrees above the horizon. And so, that's a big one. And you can just go do all the little things really well and continue to think long term and where are you headed. And if you do the right things long enough, good things happen. WILL: I love that because, especially when I'm working out, I try to shoot for the moon. JAMON: [laughs] WILL: I go all out. So, that was some amazing advice. I don't even remember who told me, but when I first started programming, I tried to shoot for the moon. And, oh, I crashed and burned so many times [laughs] because it's just something you can't just master it, and just like, I got it, da da da. And I love that advice. That's amazing advice. So, that's perfect. JAMON: Yeah, it really stuck with me, and I have so many more lessons. I have actually kept a notebook of profound things that I've heard over the years, and I actually really enjoy that minute praising you said. And I'm going to look up the quote after this, and I'm going to put it in my notebook. [laughter] WILL: Yeah, yeah. It's been a game-changer because I'm a very straightforward person. And so, a lot of times, like, I don't mind addressing an issue just head-on. But what I found is I'm just always doing that. And I never had equity in the bank at times. This is when I was a very young leader. I didn't have equity. And so, it was just hard to tell people, "Hey, can we tweak this? Can we do that?" And then I had to sit back and say, okay, what can I change to be a better leader? And it's like, I can connect better. And I see so many things. Like, I'm very observant, I think. To be honest, it's helped me in every area, even with my spouse, with my kids, with friends. It's just saying, "Hey, I see what you did. I see that you made breakfast." Or "My kids, I see that you made this beautiful mud pie for me. And it's amazing. So, thank you. Thank you." And so, yeah, it's been a game changer for me. JAMON: Yeah, one of my friends, his goal was...and he's a leader. And he said that his goal with everyone on one was to give them one thing to change and highlight one thing they did well like you said, equity in the bank. He was talking about when he was a leader of, like, a call bank. And he said, "No matter how bad the call was, I wouldn't give them more than two things to improve because there was no way that they could take ten critiques and improve. They would just be defeated." And then, he would review and see if they could improve one more thing, avoided negative language, things like that. So, that's a really interesting concept. WILL: Yeah, definitely, definitely. So, I have one other question for you. What motivates you? What's your wind in your sails? What keeps you going? Because I know running a consultant agency is not easy. What keeps you going? JAMON: For me, motivation tends to be enthusiasm for learning, really more than anything, like going into something new and, like, exploring. I see it more as exploring even than learning. With a consultancy, there's always so many different...it's never the same, you know, there's always some other challenge. And that's one of the reasons I've loved being, you know, a consultancy owner for so many years. You're never dealing with just the same stuff over and over. So, I would say it's really about the exploration that happens, and just loving code, and talking shop, and being around great people. To me, that continues to motivate me. WILL: I love that. Do you have anything that you would like to promote — personally, Infinite Red, anything? JAMON: Well, Infinite Red, of course. If you're looking for React Native, we are all senior-level React Native developers. We've been working together for a long time. So, big companies, the biggest ones you can think of, many of them have hired us to, you know, be the experts with their team. We usually put 2 or 3 people on a project, and then the client will come in with 2 to 10 people or whatever they have on their side. And we work with them side by side, teaching them as well as delivering code. So, that's really our bread and butter. We also put on the biggest and, I think, only U.S.-based React Native conference, and it's called Chain React. It's in Portland. Next year, it's going to be in July. So, go check it out: chainreactconf.com. We'd love to see you all there. I'd love to see you there, Will. And network with all these different React Native developers. There's people from Meta, and Microsoft, Amazon, all over the world, really. And they're some of the best React Native programmers you're going to ever meet, and some great talks, and great food, and a great city. WILL: Yeah, I would love to be there. Let me ask you this: how is Portland in July? JAMON: Portland is amazing in July. Sometimes, it can get hot, but for the most part, it's just beautiful. It'll be like 85 degrees, not really any humidity, nice, little breeze. It's just a beautiful weather pattern around Julyish. That's why we chose that time of year. So, definitely, if you're going to be coming to Oregon, Portland, you know, West Coast, July is a great time to come. It's not going to be super, super hot, usually. Sometimes, I mean, we get over 100 sometimes, but no worries, you know, there's AC as well. But for the most part, it's beautiful. WILL: You sold me already. JAMON: [laughs] WILL: So, I live in South Florida, so...[laughs] JAMON: Yeah, it's going to be different in South Florida in July. [laughter] WILL: Awesome. Well, this has been an amazing chat, and just great getting to know you and learning more about Infinite Red. Thank you for being a part of the podcast. JAMON: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me, Will. It was a lot of fun, and you're a great host. I appreciate it. WILL: I appreciate it. JAMON: You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @will23larry. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guest: Jamon Holmgren.
Well, it's the time you've all been waiting for! This epic crossover episode was recorded on location at the React Native EU Conference. Jamon joins Callstack's React Native Show for a special episode that you wont want to miss! This episode brought to you by Infinite Red! Infinite Red is a premier React Native design and development agency located in the USA. With five years of React Native experience and deep roots in the React Native community (hosts of Chain React and the React Native Newsletter), Infinite Red is the best choice for your next React Native app.Episode Noteshttps://www.react-native.eu/ Check out CallStack's Youtube for videos of the conference talks.Callstack!Connect With Us!React Native Radio: @ReactNativeRdioJamon - @jamonholmgrenCallstack - @callstackio
In this special crossover episode of The React Native Show Podcast, we join forces with React Native Radio to bring you a lively discussion on all things React Native. Following two intense days of React Native EU 2023, Łukasz Chludziński (@loginlukasza) from Callstack and Jamon Holmgren (@jamonholmgren) from Infinite Red got together to delve into the gossip and current events surrounding React Native, providing valuable insights from their experiences working with clients and contributing to the community. Here's what you can expect from this information-packed episode: ➡️ Core Contributor Summit 2023: Insights into how the people and businesses contributing to React Native are shaping the ecosystem. ➡️ New Debugger: Explore the transition from Flipper to the new debugger and how it benefits the developer experience. ➡️ React Native 1.0: Learn about the journey towards a stable, shared architecture and potential productization. ➡️ Evolution of Expo: Discover the latest features and perspectives on Expo from a tech & business standpoint. ➡️ Static Hermes: Delve into the limitations and opportunities of static Hermes. ➡️ New Architecture: Uncover the transition to an interop layer and compatibility in React Native. Tune in now to stay up-to-date with the latest happenings and get all the juicy details! Check out other episodes of our podcast
Want the full lowdown on the React Native EU 2023? We've got you covered! In this episode Jamon and Mark Rickert dive into the talks, and highlights of the conference. This episode brought to you by Infinite Red! Infinite Red is a premier React Native design and development agency located in the USA. With five years of React Native experience and deep roots in the React Native community (hosts of Chain React and the React Native Newsletter), Infinite Red is the best choice for your next React Native app.Episode Noteshttps://www.react-native.eu/ Marks talk at Chain ReactCheck out CallStack's Youtube for videos of the conference talks. Callstack!Connect With Us!React Native Radio: @ReactNativeRdioJamon - @jamonholmgrenMark - @markrickert
In this episode, we take a closer look at how React Native fits into the enterprise picture from the perspective of derisking large-scale projects. We do that by discussing the vast experience of our guest, Matt Hargett, a 25-year veteran in Product and Technology Leadership who's have taken an active role in reducing the ongoing operating costs and delivery times of some of the largest tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Roblox, PlayStation, and BlueJeans Network, just to name a few. Matt and Łukasz discuss things like: ➡ setting performance optimization goals in large organizations, where you need to juggle multiple priorities, from feature development to user experience and performance ➡ strategies and processes for maximizing the chances of performance optimization success and derisking projects for SMEs and enterprises ➡ opportunities and challenges of bringing in React Native into large-scale projects for performance optimization ➡ best practices for adding new capabilities or technology to an enterprise project with training from consultancies like Callstack ➡ making purposeful, sustainable, and future-proof tech stack choices – and how open source technologies fit into that ➡ the possibilities and effects of bringing React Native into other languages Tune in now to dig deeper into React Native at scale – and if you're looking to futureproof your app with the technology that belongs to the React & React Native universe, give us a shout
The conference season is in full swing. Many of you at the React Native community have been to Kraków and Portland and are heading to Amsterdam, Paris, or Wrocław soon. Knowing that it's impossible to attend all these events, we've prepared a recap of two conferences we've recently attended: App.js and Chain React. In this episode of The React Native Shows's Coffee Talk, Łukasz is joined by Kuba and Szymon who share their impressions of these conferences and dig deeper into the talks that caught their attention. Here are the links and other stuff mentioned in the episode:
Welcome to the latest episode of Callstack's Coffee Talks, where we bring you fresh updates and insights from the world of React Native. This episode was recorded during Callstack's internal learning and development day, which allowed Łukasz Chludziński (https://hubs.li/Q01MYW0r0) to talk to a bunch of exciting guests: - Michał Pierzchała (https://hubs.li/Q01MYXzM0) - Aleksandra Pytko-Włodarczyk (https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandra-pytko/) - Łukasz Walczak (https://hubs.li/Q01MYY7V0) - Rafał Zakrzewski (https://hubs.li/Q01MYYrV0) As the content of this episode revolves around Open Source, we begin by explaining how Callstack pays it forward to the community with involvement in OSS projects. Then, we move on to the first topic: RFC for the proposal for natively supporting Expo Config Plugins by React Native core. This proposal has been released as part of our R&D program. The discussion around it is getting heated, so you should check it out
What is profiling? That is the first question Lukasz Chludzinski (https://twitter.com/loginlukasza) asks his guest – Jakub Binda, React Native Expert, and Eduardo Graciano (https://twitter.com/teddydroid07), software engineer at Callstack. And it only gets better from there. Since Jakub knows the ins and outs of profiling and Edu co-authored the section on profiling in our Ultimate Guide to React Native Optimization (which you can download here:https://www.callstack.com/campaigns/download-the-ultimate-guide-to-react-native-optimization?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=profiling_podcast), the conversation is full of best practices and useful tactics to make your app more performant. What's waiting for you inside? - The definition and use cases of profiling - Metrics you need to track when profiling your app - Tools you'll find useful, both for Android and iOS. But our experts don't end their conversation there. In the last part of the podcast, Edu, Łukasz, and Jakub discuss how to profile and app. Is there a best order of tasks for app profiling? Where should you start? Tune in to discover all you need to know about profiling. Discover how we can help your company: https://www.callstack.com/services?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=profiling_podcast_description Check out other episodes of our podcast: https://www.callstack.com/podcast-react-native-show?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=profiling_podcast_description Follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with upcoming episodes: https://twitter.com/callstackio Enjoy!
The Coffee Talk episode is a treat. Łukasz Chludziński (https://twitter.com/loginlukasza) invited Michał Pierzchała, Head of Technology at Callstack (https://twitter.com/thymikee), and Jonny Burger, Creative Hacker at Remotion (https://twitter.com/JNYBGR) to talk about NPM Kiosk and open source monetization. As both Michał and Jonny experimented with gated access to libraries. Michał's last open-source project, Reassure (which he developed with Maciej Jastrzębski https://twitter.com/mdj_dev), had Beta access when it was released last June. The goal was to gather some feedback from early adopters. Michał and Maciej opted for a private registry to grant Beta access to their library. Jonny, the creator of Remotion, wanted to experiment with selling specific components. As Jonny couldn't find any tool that would solve all his problems and be easy for the buyer, he decided to hack his project – NPM Kiosk. What are the drawbacks and benefits of each option? What would they've done differently? How do you handle payment options? Tune in to find answers to these and other questions! Discover how we can help your company: https://www.callstack.com/services?utm_campaign=RN_Performance&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=coffee_talk_7_description_link Check out other episodes of our podcast: https://www.callstack.com/podcast-react-native-show?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=coffee_talk_7_description_link Download the Ultimate Guide to React Native Optimization https://www.callstack.com/campaigns/download-the-ultimate-guide-to-react-native-optimization?utm_campaign=RN_Performance&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=coffee_talk_7_description_link Follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with upcoming episodes: https://twitter.com/callstackio Enjoy!
Sixth episode of Coffee Talk is all about experts take on the latest Next.js Conf. Our host, Łukasz Chludziński (https://twitter.com/loginlukasza) invited two guests – Michał Pierzchała (https://twitter.com/thymikee), Head of Technology at Callstack, and Zack Jackson (https://twitter.com/ScriptedAlchemy), Principal Engineer at lululemon and maintainer of Webpack. Our guests look into the tech announcements presented during the conference, for example: Next.js 13 layouts, React Server Components with Streaming, Component-based Data Fetching & Caching, Turbopack: the Rust-based Webpack successor, and more! Join our experts to discover their take on the latest tech announcement from the Next.js Conf! Need help with your React Native project? Give us a shout! https://www.callstack.com/contact-us?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=coffee_talk_6_first_promo Check what we can do for you: https://www.callstack.com/services?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=coffee_talk_6_first_promo Callstack is looking for Senior React Native developers! Read more about the role and apply here: https://www.callstack.com/senior-react-native-developer?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=coffee_talk_6_first_promo Follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with upcoming episodes: https://twitter.com/callstackio Enjoy!
It's been a while since we've done a “We React to News”! In this episode, we react to Shopify's FlashList, Callstack's Reassure, and more.This episode brought to you by Infinite Red! Infinite Red is a premier React Native design and development agency located in the USA. With five years of React Native experience and deep roots in the React Native community (hosts of Chain React and the React Native Newsletter), Infinite Red is the best choice for your next React Native app.Helpful Links:FlashListFlashList integration with ReanimatedCallstack ReassureReact-native-keyboard-controllerRN Parallax Travel Card By Lucas Lima Zephyrreact-native-owlRob Walker RN LiveReact Native Perspective Correction Image View By Leon KimConnect With Us!React Native Radio - @ReactNativeRdioJamon - @jamonholmgrenMazen - @mazenchamiRobin - @robin_heinze
In the fourth episode of Coffee Talk, Michał Pierzchała (https://www.callstack.com/team/michal-pierzchala) and Abi Thiao discuss the latest events from the React Native community, including, React Native v5 RC, bundled Hermes, the new version of React, and the App.js Conference 2022. During the App.js Conf, Michał had a chance to unveil Reassure (https://www.callstack.com/open-source/reassure) – Callstack's latest library for performance regression testing. But that's not the only presentation worth watching! Michał and Abi provide a selection of the most interesting talks: - Keynote by Charlie Cheever - Animations should be fun by Catalin Miron - React Native Everywhere by Taz Singh - Bringing the React Native Architecture to the OSS Community by Nicola Corti - How does an Indonesian superapp like Traveloka deal with React Native - V8 talk from Kudo - Controlling hardware in a week with Expo and EAS by Derek Stavis - Magda Jaśkowska's live coding session. You can find the live stream from both days of the conference here: Day 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te7bwfNsRKg Day 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbj33eEultw Enjoy the Coffee Talk, and don't forget to subscribe to our channel for the latest news on React and React Native.
In the 13th episode of The React Native Show, Łukasz Chludziński (https://www.callstack.com/team/lukasz-chludzinski) and his guest, Michał Chudziak (https://www.callstack.com/team/mike-chudziak), explore the topic of migrating from different technologies (native and React web) to React Native. Our experts discuss: - why is it worthwhile to invest your time, effort, and money to migrate from native and web solutions to React Native, - how to plan the migration process and which approach should you pick, - what is the brownfield approach and how does Callstack use brownfield, and - how to migrate from React (web) to React Native. You will find the answers to these questions and much more inside the latest episode of the React Native Show! If you have any other questions about the migration process, check out our blog post: Migrating React and Native Apps To React Native – Everything You Need To Know (https://www.callstack.com/blog/migration-to-react-native). The comprehensive guide, prepared by one of our experts, Michał Pierzchała, covers every topic related to migration from React web app to React Native.
In the 12th episode of The React Native Show podcast, which is 100% focused on mobile payments, we join forces with Stripe (https://twitter.com/StripeDev) - one of the biggest online payment infrastructure providers in the world and great experts in this area. This time, our host Łukasz Chludziński (twitter.com/loginlukasza) and his guests: Charlie Cruzan (https://github.com/cruzach) a software engineer from Stripe, and Jakub Kłobus (https://twitter.com/souhepend), a software engineer from Callstack and a Stripe developer community expert for React Native talk about the history of mobile payments, its different types, use cases, etc. What will you find in this episode? History of mobile payments with Pizza Hut and Sting in the background. What mobile payments now - types of transactions, mobile payment methods, security issues and implementation details. What are mobile payments providers and how do they work? Stripe React Native library - what, why, and how? This and much more you can hear in the 12th episode. Check it out and expand your knowledge about mobile payments! Also, be sure to check out The Stripe React Native Migration Guide - a comprehensive guide on how to move from the tipsi-stripe library to the new one - tipsi-react-native. The guide has been prepared by one of our guests today - Jakub Kłobus, a software engineer at Callstack and a Stripe developer community expert for React Native. How To Migrate From Tipsi Stripe To The Stripe React Native SDK? Migration Guide https://www.callstack.com/blog/how-to-migrate-from-tipsi-stripe-to-stripe-react-native-sdk Need help with your React Native project? Give us a shout! https://www.callstack.com/contact-us?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=mobile_payments Check what we can do for you: https://www.callstack.com/services?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=mobile_payments Callstack is looking for Senior React Native developers! Read more about the role and apply here: https://www.callstack.com/senior-react-native-developer?utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=mobile_payments
In the 11th episode of The React Native Show Łukasz Chludziński (https://twitter.com/loginlukasza) and his guest, Ola Desmurs-Linczewska (https://twitter.com/p_syche_), talk about the most important releases and libraries that happened in the React Native ecosystem in 2021 as well as the trends and predictions for the future. The picks are based on Callstack experts' responses to the following questions: - What was the most groundbreaking moment for React Native in 2021? - Which React Native library was the most useful last year? - What are you looking forward to seeing in 2022 React Native wise? Ola and Łukasz's comments are the main course of the episode! What else are they cooking in this edition? Aside from speaking about the highlights of React Native 2021, Ola and Łukasz share their thoughts on New Architecture and its potential impact on React Native in 2022. They also discuss the fact that more and more companies are adopting React Native! This and much more you can hear in our latest episode. Check it out to learn more about the current and future trends in React Native! This year already looks pretty exciting in the React Native space
Poznaj pięć pytań z Reacta, na które warto znać odpowiedź, przed podejściem do rozmowy technicznej podczas rekrutacji na React Developera. Repozytorium z 300+ pytaniami z Reacta: https://github.com/sudheerj/reactjs-interview-questions Jak uczyć się programowania z Anki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouCkE8GvU7g Patronem tego odcinka jest Callstack, czyli zespół ekspertów React i React Native, poszukujący obecnie React Native Developerów na poziomie Mid oraz Senior: https://callstack.com/react-native-developer https://callstack.com/senior-react-native-developer
Witam w sto czterdziestym drugim odcinku podcastu „Porozmawiajmy o IT”. Tematem dzisiejszej rozmowy jest skills gap czyli sytuacja rynku pracy w IT.Dziś moim gościem jest Tomasz Czechowski – Head of Business Development w Codecool – międzynarodowej firmie kształcącej i dostarczającej specjalistów IT. Zarządza działem sprzedaży i jest odpowiedzialny za relacje z Partnerami oraz kształtowanie nowych możliwości biznesowych. Certyfikowany analityk biznesowy i project manager, prywatnie student programu Executive MBA, szczęśliwy partner i ojciec. Pasjonat sztuk walki, wciąż łudzący się, że wróci do formy kolarskiej, którą prezentował jeszcze przed narodzinami pierwszego dziecka, choć może być to trudne bo obecnie spodziewa się kolejnej pociechy
The 10th episode of The React Native Show Podcast is fully dedicated to the questions that were asked during the React Native EU 2021 conference. We gathered four great React Native experts in one room to answer these questions (in Callstack's headquarters to be exact) and just let them go with the flow. During the Q&A panel, our panelists: Łukasz Chludziński (https://twitter.com/loginlukasza)as the host, Wojciech Kwiatek (https://twitter.com/WojciechKwiatek) - CTO at Channels, JavaScript developer, mentor, and trainer. Mike Grabowski (https://twitter.com/grabbou) - CTO & Co-founder at Callstack. Satya Sahoo (https://twitter.com/satya164) - React and React Native developer at Callstack and one of the engineers that work on React Navigation library. Paweł Trysła aka. Zamotany (https://twitter.com/_zamotany) - Software engineer at Callstack and the lead engineer at Re.Pack Open Source library (formerly Haul). answer a number of questions related to the conference revealing their favorite talks, the present and future of React Native, Open Source libraries, and many more! Don't forget to push the Subscribe button and share this video on your social media. More episodes are coming soon! #ReactNative #news #trendingtopics #ReactJS #Programming #Developer #JavaScript Want to read more about the topics covered? Check this out: Implementing Code Splitting in React Native with Re.Pack https://hubs.li/H0_Qtjb0 Why Use React Native for Windows? https://hubs.li/H0_Qtjm0 More episodes of The React Native Show: https://hubs.li/H0_Qtjt0 Need help with your React Native project? Give us a shout! https://hubs.li/H0_Qtml0 Check what we can do for you: https://hubs.li/H0_QtnK0 Callstack is looking for React Native developers! https://hubs.li/H0_QtpV0
⭐PREMIERA: Każdy przedsiębiorca ma swoją historię. Tomasz Karwatka pierwsze doświadczenia z biznesem nabywał na bazarku, sprzedając pomidory z rodzinnej szklarni. Miał wtedy 8 lat. Kolejne lata jego życia to praca w korporacji i decyzja o zostaniu przedsiębiorcą. Od tamtego czasu wiele się zmieniło. Tomek współtworzył między innymi takie firmy jak Divante, Vue Storefront czy Callstack. Obecnie prowadzi eCommerce Startup Studio Catch The Tornado. To, co pozostało niezmienne to potrzeba budowania kolejnych interesujących projektów. Zapraszamy na rozmowę z seryjnym budowniczym biznesów, który wyznacza sobie nowe cele i osiąga kolejne sukcesy. Porozmawiamy o jego współpracy z bratem, wyzwaniach, sukcesji i ambicjach na przyszłość.
This time our podcast episode focuses on everything newsworthy in the React Native world! Check the episode to be updated with the latest industry news! The host, Łukasz Chludziński (https://twitter.com/loginlukasza), and his guests, Jan Jaworski (https://twitter.com/jaworek3211) and Satyajit Sahoo (https://twitter.com/satya164), discuss trending topics such as - React Native 0.65 update - React Native Windows update - New React Native Architecture - React Navigation v.6 - Re.Pack - Community news - React Native EU Don't forget to push the Subscribe button and share this video on your social media. More episodes are coming soon! #ReactNative #news #trendingtopics #ReactJS #Programming #Developer #JavaScript Want to read more about the topics covered? Check this out: Why Is It Important to Always Run The Latest Version of React Native? https://callstack.com/blog/always-run... Why Use React Native for Windows? https://callstack.com/blog/why-use-re... Custom Screen Transitions in React Navigation https://callstack.com/blog/custom-scr... Implementing Code Splitting in React Native with Re.Pack https://callstack.com/blog/implementi... More episodes of The React Native Show: https://callstack.com/podcast-react-n... Need help with your React Native project? Give us a shout! https://callstack.com/contact-us/?utm... Check what we can do for you: https://callstack.com/services/?utm_c... Callstack is looking for Senior React Native developers! Read more about the role and apply here: https://callstack.com/senior-react-na... Follow us on Twitter (@callstackio) to stay tuned!
The eighth episode of The React Native Show is all about React Native for Windows. Mike Grabowski (https://twitter.com/grabbou) and his guest, Bartosz Klonowski (github.com/BartoszKlonowski), dive into desktop app development with React Native. If you're wondering why we should think about React Native Windows in terms of desktop development, this episode is definitely for you! All in all, this podcast episode covers the following topics: - Most popular frameworks and languages used in desktop application development - React Native Windows vs. Electron - React Native Windows development workflow - Getting started with React Native for Windows - Migrating from a native desktop application to React Native Windows. Want to read about React Native development on Windows? Check our article series: 1. Why Use React Native for Windows? https://callstack.com/blog/why-use-react-native-for-windows/?utm_campaign=RN_Windows&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=podcast 2. Business Benefits of React Native Windows Coming soon! Be the first to know when it's live: https://callstack.com/blog/?utm_campaign=RN_Windows&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=podcast#newsletter 3. How to Build a Desktop App with React Native for Windows Coming soon! Be the first to know when it's live: https://callstack.com/blog/?utm_campaign=RN_Windows&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=podcast#newsletter More episodes of The React Native Show: https://callstack.com/podcast-react-native-show?utm_campaign=RN_Windows&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=podcast Need help with your React Native project? Give us a shout! https://callstack.com/contact-us/?utm_campaign=RN_Windows&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=podcast Check what we can do for you: https://callstack.com/services/?utm_campaign=RN_Windows&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=podcast Callstack is looking for Senior React Native developers! Read more about the role and apply here: https://callstack.com/senior-react-native-developer?utm_campaign=RN_Windows&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=podcast Follow us on Twitter (@callstackio) to stay tuned!
The 7th episode of The React Native Show is 100% focused on Re.Pack (https://github.com/callstack/repack) - an Open Source, Webpack-based toolkit to build React Native apps with the full support of the Webpack ecosystem. This time Mike Grabowski's (https://twitter.com/grabbou) guest is Paweł Trysła aka. Zamotany (https://twitter.com/_zamotany), a software engineer at Callstack (https://twitter.com/callstackio) and the lead engineer at Re.Pack. Join them as they give insights into the brand new toolkit! In the first part, our experts introduce Re.Pack talking about its origins, explaining how it works and why Re.Pack replaced its predecessor - Haul. They address the following topics: What is Re.Pack and how does it work? What do we need a bundler for, in the context of React Native development? What is the biggest selling point of Re.Pack that will make developers use it over Metro, the default bundler? What was the reason for building Re.Pack and replacing Haul with it? Later on, Mike and Paweł talk about use cases and benefits of using Re.Pack answering the following questions: Which Webpack 5 features can developers use with the help of Re.Pack? What types of apps benefit most from using Re.Pack? And what are these benefits? Beside performance optimization, what are the other perks of using the toolkit? At the end, Paweł explains how to get started with Re.Pack, reveals the current status of the toolkit and the plans for the near future. Read more about Re.Pack and code splitting: https://callstack.com/blog/code-splitting-in-react-native-applications/?utm_campaign=Re_Pack&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=Code_splitting_art Check out more episodes of The React Native Show https://callstack.com/podcast-react-native-show?utm_campaign=Re_Pack&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=podcast_subpage More episodes are coming soon! #Webpack #ReactNative #ReactJS #JavaScript #CodeSplitting #softwaredevelopment #programming #Callstack #TheReactNativeShow Callstack is looking for Senior React Native developers! Read about the details and apply here: https://callstack.com/senior-react-native-developer?utm_campaign=Senior_RN&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=podcast_description_link
In this episode of The React Native Show podcast our host, Mike Grabowski, and his guests: Satya Sahoo and Mateusz Kosoń, software engineers at Callstack, are talking about the React Navigation library. During the conversation, they cover a wide range of topics related to the React Navigation library, including: - What is React Navigation library and what's its biggest selling point? - What was the idea behind creating the React Navigation library? - How did it happen that React Navigation became a “recommended” library in the community? - What's coming up with the React Navigation v5? - What issues does React Navigation v5 solve? - What do our guests appreciate most about React Navigation v5? Also, our guests gave us some sneak peaks at what's coming up with the upcoming React Navigation v6.0! Sit back, relax and enjoy The React Native Show! Don't forget to push the Subscribe button and share this video on your social media. More episodes are coming soon! Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2uZe6AkZOM&t=1s
In this week’s episode of React Native Radion the panel interviews Michal Chudzial about React Native Brownfield, his brownfield library. Michal is lead engineer at Callstack. He works with brownfield apps, integrating React Native into Native apps. The panel asks Michal about integrating with Native apps for both iOS and Android. Michal talks through an example fo how to add a tab in a new screen using React Native in a Native app. He explains how easy it is to use React Native Brownfield, walking listeners through the steps of integrating React Native into their apps. Michal explains what you get with this library and how it is customizable for each app. The panel wonders how it handles running React Native in multiple places within a Native app. Michal explains how his library helps with that and answers the panel's concerns about how this affects performance. Performance may be affected if the app is really heavy but otherwise performance should be unaffected by running React Native in multiple places inside an app. Josh Justice shares what about the React Native Brownfield excites him, especially the opportunity it provides to handle abstractions. This will make the app performant by default while addressing the 80% use case. The panel discusses how the React Native Brownfield helps to bridge the gap between React Native and Native, web and mobile development. The panel asks Michal about the inner workings of Callstack, wondering about what developers are working with. Michal explains that most projects require JavaScript or Native. New developers to Callstack start by covering React Native and the tools used there. After that, they teach them the platform they would prefer, Android or iOS. While they have a few that work with both platforms most developers work with React Native and one platform. Considering this, the panel is quite impressed with the level of training and care Callstack gives to its employees. Moving back to brownfield apps, the panel asks Michal when should people consider integrating and using React Native Brownfield. Michal explains that if you have a mixed team with both web and mobile developers or two separate apps for Android and iOS then it is a good idea to try a brownfield app. He tells the panel that even though it is a time investment, it is worth trying because of the possible benefits. Those benefits are that you end up with a good product, a unified code vase, and skilled developers. The best approach to navigation in a brownfield application is the next thing the panel considers. Michal shares his first experience with navigation in a brownfield app using React Native Navigation. He explains why he chooses React Navigation and how it works with React Native Brownfield. Michal explains the benefits of gradual integration. With a gradual approach, AB testing can be done, allowing time to do what is right for the application. The panel considers integrating both ways Native to React Native as well as React Native to Native. Michal shares his experience doing it both ways and explains that Native to React Native can be tricky but is doable with the right application. The panel considers when it would be better to do a complete rewrite of an application instead of writing a brownfield application. Michal and Josh share experiences when they had to recommend a complete rewrite. The panel briefly discusses testing in a brownfield application. Michal shares features he is hoping to add to React Native Brownfield, build scripts that will help make it a better developer experience. He is also hoping to create a react native brownfield navigator with React Navigation. The panel asks Michal about maintaining React Native Brownfield. Michal explains that he works on it when he can. He is hoping to pass it off to a few interested people and then help when he can. He invites listeners who would like to contribute to contact him. Panelists Josh Justice Charles Max Wood Guest Michal Chudziak Sponsors Sustain Our Software Adventures in Blockchain G2i CacheFly Links The iPhreaks Show RNR 130: Performance that Matters with Ram N Chain React 2019 - Ram Narasimhan - Performance in React Native https://callstack.com/ https://github.com/callstack/react-native-brownfield React Native Navigation WeAreVoice case study https://twitter.com/michalchudziak https://www.facebook.com/ReactNativeRadio/ https://twitter.com/R_N_Radio Picks Josh Justice: Jimmy Johns The Nature of Software Development Charles Max Wood: Nikon D5600 DSLR SM58S by Shure Michal Chudziak: https://overmindjs.org
In this week’s episode of React Native Radion the panel interviews Michal Chudzial about React Native Brownfield, his brownfield library. Michal is lead engineer at Callstack. He works with brownfield apps, integrating React Native into Native apps. The panel asks Michal about integrating with Native apps for both iOS and Android. Michal talks through an example fo how to add a tab in a new screen using React Native in a Native app. He explains how easy it is to use React Native Brownfield, walking listeners through the steps of integrating React Native into their apps. Michal explains what you get with this library and how it is customizable for each app. The panel wonders how it handles running React Native in multiple places within a Native app. Michal explains how his library helps with that and answers the panel's concerns about how this affects performance. Performance may be affected if the app is really heavy but otherwise performance should be unaffected by running React Native in multiple places inside an app. Josh Justice shares what about the React Native Brownfield excites him, especially the opportunity it provides to handle abstractions. This will make the app performant by default while addressing the 80% use case. The panel discusses how the React Native Brownfield helps to bridge the gap between React Native and Native, web and mobile development. The panel asks Michal about the inner workings of Callstack, wondering about what developers are working with. Michal explains that most projects require JavaScript or Native. New developers to Callstack start by covering React Native and the tools used there. After that, they teach them the platform they would prefer, Android or iOS. While they have a few that work with both platforms most developers work with React Native and one platform. Considering this, the panel is quite impressed with the level of training and care Callstack gives to its employees. Moving back to brownfield apps, the panel asks Michal when should people consider integrating and using React Native Brownfield. Michal explains that if you have a mixed team with both web and mobile developers or two separate apps for Android and iOS then it is a good idea to try a brownfield app. He tells the panel that even though it is a time investment, it is worth trying because of the possible benefits. Those benefits are that you end up with a good product, a unified code vase, and skilled developers. The best approach to navigation in a brownfield application is the next thing the panel considers. Michal shares his first experience with navigation in a brownfield app using React Native Navigation. He explains why he chooses React Navigation and how it works with React Native Brownfield. Michal explains the benefits of gradual integration. With a gradual approach, AB testing can be done, allowing time to do what is right for the application. The panel considers integrating both ways Native to React Native as well as React Native to Native. Michal shares his experience doing it both ways and explains that Native to React Native can be tricky but is doable with the right application. The panel considers when it would be better to do a complete rewrite of an application instead of writing a brownfield application. Michal and Josh share experiences when they had to recommend a complete rewrite. The panel briefly discusses testing in a brownfield application. Michal shares features he is hoping to add to React Native Brownfield, build scripts that will help make it a better developer experience. He is also hoping to create a react native brownfield navigator with React Navigation. The panel asks Michal about maintaining React Native Brownfield. Michal explains that he works on it when he can. He is hoping to pass it off to a few interested people and then help when he can. He invites listeners who would like to contribute to contact him. Panelists Josh Justice Charles Max Wood Guest Michal Chudziak Sponsors Sustain Our Software Adventures in Blockchain G2i CacheFly Links The iPhreaks Show RNR 130: Performance that Matters with Ram N Chain React 2019 - Ram Narasimhan - Performance in React Native https://callstack.com/ https://github.com/callstack/react-native-brownfield React Native Navigation WeAreVoice case study https://twitter.com/michalchudziak https://www.facebook.com/ReactNativeRadio/ https://twitter.com/R_N_Radio Picks Josh Justice: Jimmy Johns The Nature of Software Development Charles Max Wood: Nikon D5600 DSLR SM58S by Shure Michal Chudziak: https://overmindjs.org
The current status of React Native + Reasonml, and a hint at the future. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/reason-town/support
In this episode, the founders of Infinite Red—Jamon Holmgren, Ken Miller, and Todd Werth—are talking about Chain React, Infinite Red’s React Native tech conference this July 11-13th in Portland, OR. Hear the story of how the conference came about, how Infinite Red's remote team worked together to create an in-person event, the value of hiring people with diverse interests and backgrounds, and all of the things that go into making the best conference possible. Show Links Chain React 2018 Derek's Food Report Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: In 2017, Infinite Red started Chain React, a conference devoted to React Native. So the question that I have for the three of you to start is: why start a conference and what was the need that you saw? JAMON HOLMGREN: This is Jamon and I was on Twitter and I was looking for a React Native conference because we had been doing React Native for about a year at that point. And I was thinking, well, it'd be really nice to see if some of our team could attend a conference and potentially maybe share some of the things that we had learned along the way. So I actually put out a tweet saying, "is there a React Native conference around? I'm not seeing one." And got no responses, which partially had to do with my very small Twitter audience at the time and partially just because there wasn't one. Now, it turns out there was one over in Europe, React Native EU, put on by our friends over at Callstack. TODD WERTH: But that was after. JAMON: I believe it was after that. KEN: We didn't learn about that until after. TODD: Not at that time. JAMON: Right. I was just kinda chewing on that. Wow, I didn't get any response to that. I would normally get two or three options if I were to put out something like that. And I woke up one morning, I'm like, you know what, maybe we should do a conference? And what is funny is independently two or three people contacted me after that, that same week saying, "Do you think we should do a React Native conference?" Just independently and it just seemed like that all kind of came together all at once. TODD: And this is Todd, Todd Werth, by the way. Some background here. We've never done a conference at all. We've of course all attended conferences. We're familiar with that. Although Shawni Danner, who ran the conference had never attended a conference, which was funny, but anyways, so Jamon came up with the idea, talked to some other people in our company, they liked the idea and then pretty quickly we decided and then we started building the conference. KEN MILLER: At what point in there did Gant ... Because Gant, who is our social butterfly... TODD: Gant Laborde. KEN: ...so he asked around various people to see whether they would speak. And I don't remember if that was before we decided or after. I feel like that was before. We were kind of mulling the idea around and he was like, "hey, we're thinking about doing this conference. Would you want to speak?" And when a bunch of people were like, yeah, hell yeah. We were like, okay, sounds like the stars are aligning, and it was very much a feeling of the stars aligning to be honest. JAMON: It really was. KEN: This signal is kind of like once we started putting the idea out, it just gathered momentum from a bunch of different places and we're like, okay, and then once you commit, the momentum increases. TODD: And as far as I know, it was the first React Native conference in the world. JAMON: As far as the first one that was held, I think Callstack announced their conference before we announced ours. But yeah it was right in that same time. TODD: Correct, they announced, but theirs came after ours actually. JAMON: Yeah, theirs was in September, ours was in July of 2017. CHRIS: So when you're putting on a new venture, like a conference that you have no experience in and you start seeing the stars align and you start seeing this momentum form: how do you really go from zero to one? KEN: I don't want to say it wasn't hard because a lot of work went into it, but it wasn't super difficult. At the end of the day, the hard part about making a conference is making a good conference. You get a venue, you get speakers, you get food, you get swag. I mean, I don't mean to oversimplify it, but if you've planned a wedding, you can plan a conference, right? It's probably not even as hard as a wedding because it's not quite as emotionally wrought, but where we put the most effort into well how do we make it a good conference? And we sort of came up with a list of things, some of which I think turned out to be true. Like getting good speakers, making sure that there's at least a certain amount of diversity. I think we always want more, but there needs to be at least enough that people can kind of go, look, hey, there's someone like me there. I was big on having good food. I think that wasn't as important as I thought it was. It's important to me, but the things that people cared about it, we're actually different than what we thought. So there was definitely things that we learned from the process, but the process of getting it organized—and a lot of credit goes to Shawni for being an amazing organizer of things—but the process of getting it made, while stressful and hectic at points, went off pretty smoothly overall. TODD: Yeah. So that's all true. One thing we did do though is as a leadership team, is we decided to put a decent amount of resources into it. I think a lot of people are like, this is a little side project and it was a side project for us. But we're 26 people, so we can put a little more wood behind the arrow of a side project like this if we decide to. And we'd probably put a little too much resources in to it, to be honest. And we'll talk about this later, but the results were well worth it. JAMON: Yeah. One of the things you have to remember is back in 2016 when we were first starting to do this, we had been doing React Native for a year. We weren't necessarily quite as well known back then, we were still fairly new player in the space. We had done some things in other technical realms that we were more known for, but React Native we were still a relative newcomer. So for us this was, it was a bigger, maybe bigger deal than just necessarily putting on a conference for the revenue or something along those lines. We wanted to be connected. We want it to be in that space. And so we did put it, as Todd said, we put a lot of resources behind it. We put a lot of thought into it. As a founder team, we put a lot into it. TODD: And it was probably a half of Shawni's main job, which is a significant amount. JAMON: Absolutely. And another person I'll point out here that who was instrumental was Gant Laborde. He's typically the most active in the conference circuit from Infinite Red and he's been to a lot of conferences as both speaker and attendee and he had a really good sense, good instincts about what worked well at those conferences and what didn't. And early on I read an article about how you should really treat your speakers well and I brought it up to Gant and he absolutely agreed with that. The speakers are so key to a great conference and so we spent a lot of time, energy, and money, making sure that the speakers felt comfortable, that they had a good spot, that they were well supported all the way up to the conference and that was definitely time well spent. It was a good investment. All of the speakers that we've talked to felt like they had a fantastic experience. Some said that it was the best conference that they had ever spoke at, which was, a lot of them were very accomplished speakers so for a first time conference, we felt that was very good. TODD: That's a good example of making decisions that produce good quality products, whether they're a conference, software, whatever. A lot of people read those articles. The article says the most important thing is treating your speakers right. They read it, they think about it, they talk about it, they don't actually do it. We accept that we knew nothing about throwing a conference, so we took Everyone-on-the-Internet's advice like that very seriously and we asked our team and then we put resources behind that and we went way out of our way for the speakers. I've spoke at conferences and it is true. Some are very well organized and you feel very comfortable and it makes for a great presentation and some are not. So I definitely think the number one lesson we learned, spoiler alert, was treat your speakers well. CHRIS: Todd, I have a question for you in terms of a follow-up. When you are reading these articles and they say what to do, what is the difference between just reading them and not acting on them and choosing to act on them? Was there just a moment where you're like, okay, we're actually going to do that? TODD: We make make decisions fairly quickly. We do make decisions as a quorum of elders. All the leaders make decisions together. We have no king here at Infinite Red. So we do make decisions pretty quickly, especially if one person doesn't have a passionate opposite position. So when Jamon brought that up and then Gant and some other people, Darin Wilson, for example, other people who spoke at a lot of conferences, agreed with it. We decided almost instantly. Well, I mean there's a lot of things that get in your way. The first one is admitting you don't know anything about something you actually don't know anything about. And so listening is tough for people and especially tough for companies. The second thing is hubris. I've never done a conference. It doesn't stop me from doing the best one I can do and I'm not gonna listen to anyone and you know that happens. And the third one is making the right decision fairly quickly, listening to your team, and then actually putting no one in charge of that, giving no one actual time to work on it, and putting no money into it. This is basically Congress's full time job doing that. (laughter) So we try to avoid that. I mean, I'm not just, it sounds like I'm just cheerleading the leadership team, which is kind of self-serving as I'm on it. But it's not just us, it's just the whole team. When we say we decided, Jamon read this article, a bunch of people have talked to agree with this concept of treating speakers well. We're gonna treat speakers well. The team doesn't roll their eyes and go, "sure." The whole company culturally said we're going to do this and they're going to do it. And truthfully, the leadership, we helped the decision-making but we didn't do much of the actual work for the conference. KEN: I think there's conferences where their idea of treating speakers well is to just throw money at them. And that was not ... I mean, I don't think that's the feedback we got from speakers. I mean everybody likes money. I mean don't get me wrong, but it's about making their experience smooth because no amount of money will stop the nerves or the feeling of not being appreciated. TODD: If you make it easy for people to shine, that's what they remember. People remember the way they feel about things way more than they remember what was said or the logic to it. CHRIS: So when you're doing something that's outside normal business parameters or normal business operations, how does something like putting on a conference cause distractions or disruptions and how have you worked through it as founders and how have you seen the team work through it as well? JAMON: That's a great question and I think one of the early pain points was just in process because ... we're a consultancy and so we have a certain process that's set up for clients. And in this case we didn't have a client. We had an internal project, we had an internal champion, Shawni, but it's still a very different feel. Shawni wasn't handing us all of the requirements and saying go build this thing. We had to do it as a group, so we had to develop processes around that and that was something that was very interesting that took time to develop and in fact, we're still kind of working through some of those things, but I feel like we've learned a lot and there's a lot more shared understanding around how we make those decisions and things like that. So I think process was a pretty big adjustment for us. Another thing that comes to mind with that is allocating actual team time as a consultancy. If anytime that you're spending on that, you're obviously not billing and you're not making revenue for the company. Obviously the hope is that the conference pays for itself by the revenue that comes in for it, but we still had to put a lot of time in on speculation that this was going to work. That's a very different thing than: give us a deposit and we'll start working and we'll send you bills. Again, internal allocation of resources was another adjustment that we had to make and also planning for the future and making sure that we had the revenue, the cash flow to make that happen. And Ken was really good at kind of identifying what we could sustain and what we couldn't as a company. KEN: Part of the initial "should we do this" consideration was like okay, how many people would we need to do to break even? And we were prepared to be happy with break even and that turned out to be a smaller number than we thought. That made it something that we could grapple with and be like okay, if we can get 150 people into a room where, we think we can do that even if we have to go and individually invite 300 people in order to get that hit rate or whatever. And so it ended up being a lot more than that and that was awesome. But it gave us this margin of psychological safety when we went into it. It's kind of like, okay, yeah, we can do this, and we know at what point were losing money, what point where we're making money, at what point we can up the experienced because we've got enough margin to do that. TODD: That's super important. What Ken just mentioned is any time we have an idea we go to Ken and say the main thing is what's our worst case scenario goal to make this viable? That helps us make a decision whether or not it's even a good thing to even try. Because obviously if it was 2000 people we'd be like probably not going to do that. You can tell me Ken, but I don't think it's super accurate. You do it for a couple of hours and come back and tell us what. Is that correct? KEN: I can't predict the future. I don't actually know exactly what's going to happen, but if you can give it enough margin to be like, yeah, I think we'd be safe at this point, then you can usually get to a model like that pretty quickly. TODD: I'm a little confused, to be honest. When we hired Ken, Jamon, he said he could predict the future. JAMON: Yeah, this is a little concerning. TODD: The weird part is Ken was here before Jamon and our companies merged, but doesn't matter. It's time travel. So anything's possible. Just watch Star Trek. Knowing kind of the base goal gets us all a point to reach to. And then going back to Chris's question, how to get from 0 to 1, which is actually a very difficult problem. If you're an engineer, it's very difficult problem, if you're building a company and is just a very difficult problem period. But having a goal and then determining at least the first step direction and then you can see if it's kind of leading towards that goal is very helpful for taking that first step. I do want to mention something else, as well. We did put a lot of resources. We have a tendency sometimes to put too much resources because we're designers and because we're software engineers, we like to build things and so we put a lot of resources into our app that was used for three days. We had beautiful design done and that kind of stuff. Not to skip ahead, but we're re-doing the conference this year. We thought, well, we could just reuse a lot of our designs and stuff and just change it to 2018. We didn't do that. (laughter) We decided to redesign the whole thing again because we just simply can't help ourselves. JAMON: Yeah. And going back to the concept of if it's only 150 people, I think that was our initial number. It rose a little bit later because we had some additional expenses, but if we only had to sell 150 tickets we could literally go and individually pitch people and say, "Hey, come to our conference," and try to sell them tickets. And we kind of actually did that in some ways. We went to our community, our Infinite Red Community Slack team, which is community.infinite.red and if you're listening to this podcast you should definitely join it. And we went through and kind of just said, hey, have you heard about our conference? Is that something you'd want to look at? Individual direct messages, individually crafted. We weren't trying to like spam everybody, but it was just more, let's get the word out there and the response from that because we had built a lot of goodwill with the community up to that point by helping them a lot of times with React Native problems and by releasing open source and doing all the things that we do in that community channel that a lot of people don't realize. We had built a lot of goodwill and so the response was amazing and we were able to, in my opinion, just through the community Slack efforts that we were doing, probably sell that minimum number of tickets. We had obviously sold a lot more than that, but that was more additional beyond that. So it was definitely a factor. Well we at least know that we can go sort of virtually door to door and say, hey we have this conference. Hey, do you want to come? CHRIS: What's interesting is like you're painting this picture that everything worked out perfectly. There were no hiccups in the process at all, and so what popped up as you're going through that was like, oh my gosh, didn't anticipate that one, or was it all just perfect? TODD: Everything's perfect here at Infinite Red, Chris, any other questions? (laughter) KEN: It really was pretty smooth. We were a little surprised by that. Some of the feedback that we got, we definitely overdid it on the food in some ways. That what people want from food is like fast and convenient and not terrible and we went for good but somewhat inconvenient and nobody wanted that, really. I mean they were like the food is good, but this was a pain in the neck and that was a pain in the neck, so that was something that we screwed up. That was partly my biases to be honest. I take responsibility for that one, but in the run up, in the planning, there wasn't a ton that really went wrong. Right? We didn't get major speakers bowing out. The things that we've heard of going wrong at conferences. To some extent we may have just been lucky, but there wasn't a lot of disasters along the way. There were things that we didn't do as well as we could have done, but we didn't get major disasters. JAMON: Yeah. And obviously this is from our perspective, Chris. And Shawni and Gant and some of the others that were more deeply involved in the process may have other perspectives and I think that—no promises, but maybe this isn't the only podcast we do here at Infinite Red and if there is another one, then maybe the team can share some of those more kind of operational things that happen—but certainly from our perspective, it went super smoothly. There was an energy to it and things did kind of align. I do think we probably got lucky. We probably got lucky in a lot of ways and the timing was right and the mood was right. Everything seemed to come along pretty well. KEN: And Shawni worked really hard. I'm really trying not to swear so that Chris doesn't have to edit me as much this time, but Shawni worked really, really hard at the end of it. So a lot of it was that, to be honest. TODD: Yeah. I want to do a quick couple of shout outs. Shawni worked really hard. Gant was our emcee, he's amazing in front of audience. Frank Von Hoven, which is one of our intermediate developers, he has a background in stage, which we had no idea and he ran the stage like a clock and he took care of all the backstage stuff, getting the speakers set up. It was amazing. That was just serendipity. You don't just happen to have that person. So I do want to shout out. There's more people we can shout out later, but yeah. JAMON: And I do want to give a shout out also to the Armory - The Portland Center Stage. It's a great venue and they did an amazing job. They made our lives a lot easier. There were a lot of things where we could just kind of pay them to do it and they did a great job. That was definitely a good find. Actually, Jason Brown who lives in Portland, a developer who I have been connected with for awhile, he was the one that recommended the Armory and it was a great choice. TODD: There were some things that went wrong. The food was good, the situation and how it was served and stuff was a little bit problematic and stuff. And we learned from that. So that was a problem. KEN: That was not our caterer's fault by the way. That was how we set it up and- TODD: It was a little bit our caterer's fault (laughter), but I won't go into that. Another thing is we really tried to take the time to do a proper code of conduct and we are really going to enforce it and we took a lot of time and I think we did a pretty good job. We gave numbers out to text, if there's anything people to approach, if there's any problems. The snafu was we forgot to actually put a link on our website to it. So, that's just a really minor little thing. Another problem of course is resource allocation when you have a bunch of client work. So we had our internal people, who aren't designers or developers working on it and that's just carving off a section of time for them, but we also needed our designers and developers to do work, which means they wouldn't be doing client work. And so sometimes there was resource allocation issues where someone was really busy with a client project and so that's very challenging for a company like ours with the people you have to bring off the field. And then the last thing I would love to talk with everyone is we did have a little debate and issues around do we have our whole team there. We're 26 people. It's basically going to be a week. Do we have our whole team attend? Do we make our whole team attend? Do we ask them, do we have volunteers? What do we do? So that was one of the most challenging things in my opinion. JAMON: Especially since we're a remote team and some people are going to have to fly from Florida or Toronto or all over and so it wasn't just a matter of hey, you're here in Portland, can you make the drive down to Portland? But yeah, that was an interesting thing and I think that it speaks to how much we really cared about the experience of the attendees and the speakers that we did bring most of our team. There were a few that couldn't make it, but most of our team did go and we had roles for them. That's actually something we're going to I think we're going to do better this year where we're going to actually provide some training for our team. Some expectations around how they'll work and stuff, but they wore a specific T-shirt so people could identify them. They weren't just necessarily venue people or volunteers or something. They were actual Infinite Red employees and I actually feel pretty strongly about that representation because this is representing us to the broader technical community in a very strong way. And going back really quickly to the code of conduct. Prior to our conference, there was an incident I think at Facebook's conference, I forget what it's called, and one of our speakers was affected by it and- TODD: Was it F8? JAMON: Yeah, F8 I think. And so I kind of put a stake in the ground on Twitter saying, hey, this is not going to happen at Chain React. We're not gonna allow this sort of thing. It's gonna be a very strong stake in the ground. And so in my opening remarks I said, we have a code of conduct. You need to read it. You need to abide by it. This is not negotiable and I'm six foot four and I will find you. (laughter) TODD: And it's even more challenging because you have to guess the URL. (laughter) JAMON: And by the way, quick shout out to React Native. We were able to deploy a very quick update to our app to get that URL on there and have it working. TODD: Yeah, I think it was the app it wasn't on. Not our website. JAMON: And we're able to get that deployed in a hot fix. That was very cool. So we did stress that we made that very much a centerpiece and we were very, very happy that there were no incidents that were reported or anything like that, which was nice. TODD: I do think assigning roles during the conference for our own team was something we didn't do as well as we could and we're going to work on it this year for sure. Some of our team was much more interested in working it. I mean they've worked it, but they weren't as jazzed about talking to people and that kind of thing. For me personally, it was great because my role was photographer. This project was a project I didn't personally work on internally. Jamon and Ken did, but I didn't. I was working on other projects at that time and so I wasn't really involved. I was the photographer and it was kind of funny because people saw me for the conference as a photographer, you have to constantly get in front of people, look at them with a camera, crawl under the stage to get a good shot and that kind of stuff. I'm just an amateur photographer by the way, but I have good equipment and whatnot. So everyone saw me and sometimes people will talk to me like, Oh you're the photographer for Infinite Red. I'm like, yes, I am. (laughter) JAMON: This is our CEO crawling under the stage to get a photo. TODD: Yes, but what's very cool, I would go, well, what do you think of the conference? And they would tell me the truth because I'm just the photographer. And that was actually kind of cool. CHRIS: That is pretty cool. And now that you've blown your cover, it's not gonna happen this year. TODD: Oh no one's listening to this, Chris. (laughter) CHRIS: Jamon you touched on the fact that Infinite Red is a 100 percent remote company putting on an in-person event. What kind of challenges went into making this event happen as a remote company? JAMON: We cheated a little bit in that we held it in Portland, which is where half our team is. But I will point out that our primary champion of the project lived in ... Did she live in San Diego at the time or was it Reno? KEN: She moved from Reno to San Diego while planning it. JAMON: So this is happening. She wasn't there to look at the venue. We sent some people in-person to the venue from the local area. And then we also flew Derek up. So this was I think it was actually Todd's idea. Did you come up with this idea, Todd? TODD: Did it work out well then? (laughter) Then yes I did. JAMON: I think it actually did. TODD: Then of course it was my idea. JAMON: Talk about Derek's experience there. TODD: This is an example of putting proper resources. Derek Greenberg is one of our senior engineers, which from a business standpoint means one of our most expensive engineers, but he's a super foodie, kind of like Ken. KEN: He's way beyond me. TODD: He is beyond you. And Derek is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful chef. I've been at his house multiple times and him and his lovely family hosted me and served me ridiculously good food. So he was the obvious person to choose what food we had. Now, the question is there's a lot less expensive people. That's horrible to say, but true. And Derek does not live in Portland. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area. So anyways, well we sent him up for, I think a day or two, and he went around and tasted all the food. And then typical Derek-style, he gave us an extremely detailed information about it. And that's how we decided on the food. KEN: Amazing, he had the entire company hanging on his every word as he lovingly described this experience. It was actually pretty amazing. JAMON: I'm going to see if I can dig up the description and we can link to it in the show notes because I kind of want people to see this. TODD: If you listened to our previous podcast, we talked about this a little bit. This is one our core tenants of Infinite Red is find where people shine best and don't judge them for things they do poorly. Judging a dog by how well it climbs a tree is not an appropriate judgment for a dog. KEN: Carve the hole to the fit the peg. TODD: Yes. Now none of us are the dog in this scenario. Well, just to be clear. But anyways, having Derek do that, finding out that Frank has stage experience, of course he's going to be there being the stage manager and that kind of stuff. We have such a cool creative team that have so many different personal hobbies. We really had a grab bag of awesome resources. It's really amazing. JAMON: Even Derek with his incredible attention to detail, one of the things he brought up in one of the meetings was that he was very concerned that we make sure that there isn't garbage around during the conferences, very clean. That we make sure that we keep the garbages emptied and stuff like that. So we made sure, I think with the venue staff, that that was going to happen. So just little touches like that I think go a long way and the team really stepped up to it. They took ownership really of the conference in a way that was maybe a little surprising even. KEN: This is yet another benefit of hiring a team with with what we call nontraditional backgrounds, is that you end up with this much more interesting diversity of life experience and talents and skills, and it enables you to do things that you weren't originally planning your company to do. It's awesome. Honestly, it creates this opportunity for serendipity that is harder if you're full of Stanford CS grads. JAMON: Nothing against Stanford CS grads of course. KEN: Nothing against Stanford CS grads. They're awesome, right? But any monoculture is going to have that issue. JAMON: Like Frank's background, I think Frank was in sort of a corporate America. He has an MBA and his background, he's done a lot of, like Todd mentioned earlier in the podcast, he's done a lot of stage work and performances and things like that. And he actually started coding fairly late. Well he had, he had been coding when he was a teenager and stuff, but he wasn't coding professionally until much later in life. So a lot of times you look at someone who maybe switches careers like that and they're kind of behind in some ways in the technical realm. But what is amazing about that is that they bring all of these other outside experiences and skills to our industry. We kind of need that. KEN: That brings up a really interesting sidebar about career changers, who I think sometimes have a hard time breaking into tech because everybody wanted a cheap person straight out of college or not even college. I think we found that the career changers, the later quote unquote juniors, although it'll take them a little while to ramp up, but once they ramp up, they can accelerate. Once they hit third year, they can pull ahead of a regular junior junior because of all those other experiences that come to play. JAMON: Didn't Robin, one of our software developers, didn't she work for a paper company, like a Dunder Mifflin-style paper company? (laughter) KEN: She had a math degree and she worked as an analyst I think for a paper company for a couple years before taking a coding class and people love to rag on the coding classes. But to be honest, if you're good and you just need to learn to code, they're great. It's a very efficient way of doing that. TODD: This is totally off topic, but we'd look in nontraditional areas and we find sometimes overlooked people who are truly awesome and frankly, I'm glad other companies are blind to this. JAMON: Well, this is a reflection of certainly Todd and my background. Ken came from a little more of a traditional path in that way. TODD: Just a whee bit more? JAMON: I'm Jamon Holmgren and I did not go to Harvard. I worked in construction. I have a thousand hours on heavy equipment like dozers and excavators and stuff. Most people probably don't know that. I spent a lot of my career packing boards in construction sites before I started working in technology and so I was certainly a career changer and I think Todd, you had that experience as well? TODD: Yeah, a little bit different. I started professionally programming at 25, I think. So I did not go to school for it. KEN: Well, it helps that my own father was a career changer. He was physicist, meteorologist, like an academic meteorologist, and just kind of found his way into programming. A, I have some sympathy for that track, but B, honestly my experience with elite institutions also showed me that there's plenty of people at elite institutions who are not that good. It's actually no particular guarantee. It's not, as a gating factor, it's not all that. And when you take into account how much competition there is for those elite people, it just makes sense to look harder. TODD: Just to clarify, we really don't discriminate against elite people. We just don't stack the weight on that side of the scale. CHRIS: Ken, I have a quick question? You said your Dad was an academic meteorologist. Did he have a stage name for like all meteorologists? Like Jackson Hale, or something like that? KEN: He wasn't a weatherman. He just had, he just had a degree in meteorology. TODD: Jackson Hale. That's comedy gold right there. CHRIS: Bringing it back to Chain React a little bit. So was the conference worth it in terms of the investment that you put in and if so, what will you do differently this year? TODD: I don't know financially if the ROI was worth it. Ken can talk to that because we're a consultancy that does a lot of development in React Native, even if we lost money on it and Ken can talk to that, it would still be worth it as long as we didn't lose too much just for the marketing, the goodwill and the branding part of it. I feel we ended up selling out, for example, we never told the end of the story. JAMON: We actually did not sell out. I think we got close though and we certainly almost doubled our prediction, so that was a really good thing. This year we probably will sell out. TODD: We made every speaker wear a bunch of logos. That's how I think we sold out. (laughter) KEN: They all look like NASCAR drivers. JAMON: That's actually a good idea. I'll send that to Shawni. KEN: Financially, it worked out fine. I don't think we ever are going to treat it as a massive profit center. I think the more money we're able to make, most of that we want to pour back in. We do have to account for our own opportunity costs as well as direct outlays, but I think we're fairly confident that we can run it that way. But I would say it was a success, sort of all the way across the board. We're not doing that much different. Like I said, we've tweaked the food. We've dropped a couple of things that no one seemed to care about. So like the social, nobody wants to stick around for the social. They just want to go out and interact socially with the people that they've met or the people that came with or whatever. And so we just gonna let them do that and not waste money on that. But I can't think of anything really big that we're doing differently. Can you guys? TODD: I want to make one quick comment about the social. The cool thing about the Armory in Portland is it's smack dab on a street where you can literally go across the street to good restaurants. You can go down two blocks to good restaurants. So in that scenario, at some conferences I've been to, they're kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So you definitely want some social events. But in this case everyone wants to go out. KEN: Yeah. For those of you who know Portland, it's in Pearl District. For those of you who don't know Portland, it's one of the best sort of visitor friendly walkable neighborhoods in the country, not just in Portland. I mean it's a really, really great neighborhood and that helped. And so our little catered thing probably was not as exciting as the other opportunities out there. TODD: Now we did have a sponsor, Squarespace, who threw a before party. And that was actually a lot of fun. So that's the caveat on that. We're just talking after, I think the first day we had a social immediately after the conference. JAMON: I think bringing it back to the financial side of things, I would actually, from what I looked at, I would actually consider it a financial loss. Maybe if you just look at hard expenditures, we were probably in the black, but we also spent a ton of time and if you look at opportunity cost, we probably lost money on it. That again, like what Todd said, it wasn't necessarily the focus of what we were trying to do as far as making a profit center. And I think there's a little bit of a perception maybe in the tech industry that the conferences make tons of money. I don't think that's the case. If you think so maybe you should make a conference and see what you think. But at the same time, part of that was due to our refusal to kind of let anything be substandard, we kind of overdid it in a lot of ways. I think that this year we will probably sell more tickets. We have some things figured out already. We've sorta refined what we're doing. We might actually do okay on this year, but we're also giving more concessions to the speakers and things like that to try to make it easier for them. So there's a little bit of a mitigating factor there too. TODD: Yeah. Even if it didn't make an actual profit, that's not super relevant to me. I think the return on investment is many fold. CHRIS: Looking into the future, how does Chain React and starting your own tech conference, create a model or framework for maybe future ideas or big ideas that you might want to accomplish? TODD: One thing it did, because we're a consultancy, because we do client work, we have that process down pat. We've redone that process over the years many times and keep on refining it. Internal projects for us is challenging. We don't do that very often, so this is our very first big internal project, so purely as a training or a learning device for our team it was awesome for them. KEN: The first big project that isn't an open source project. JAMON: We actually regularly point to Chain React lessons and experiences when we're talking about other internal projects. It's actually been really good as a reference point. Do you remember this with Chain React? You remember that with Chain React? And it kind of gives a reference point for other internal projects. It exposed certain aspects of our team that we hadn't really considered before. Because it was such a different thing. I know that we as founders had a meeting after Chain React and talked about some of the lessons learned from that and I don't think we'll necessarily go through every last little detail of that, but it was very kind of eye opening to us about the way that we had structured Infinite Red. The title of this podcast is Building Infinite Red and I think that Chain React was a key forcing mechanism within Infinite Red to expose some things that we hadn't been exposed to before. If we just did consulting work, you tend to get some blind spots. So Chain React was amazing for that. It was really, really good for that because it was so different from what we had done otherwise. TODD: Worse case scenario, the team had a lot of fun doing it. JAMON: I think my favorite memory from Chain React was when it was done. (laughter) KEN: I think that's Shawni's favorite memory. JAMON: Thanks a lot, Ken. KEN: Sorry. JAMON: When Chain React was over, I think half the team went to a nearby restaurant and we were all exhausted. We had been up for two days just working from pre-dawn to dusk and there was kind of this feeling of let's just go get some food to eat and let's collapse into bed. We went to a restaurant and we sat in this booth and there were probably, I don't know, nine of us, 10 of us, something like that. And some spontaneous kind of reflective conversations started happening that were just amazing. One of our developers said, this is nothing I expected signing up at Infinite Red. This was an incredible experience to be involved in this. TODD: Was that Kevin? JAMON: Kevin was was certainly on those same vein, but the person who actually pointed this out was Frank and I remember that very clearly. His wife was able to come and help us with the conference. It was really great. TODD: Camille was awesome. JAMON: She was great. And then also my son Cedric, who at the time was 12 years old. He of course was on summer break from school and and he helped out. He had a t-shirt on. He was able to- TODD: Cedric was awesome for a 12 year old. It was amazing. JAMON: Yeah, he's a good kid. And he helped out. He was great. He would talk to people, he would give them directions. If someone needed someone to run and get something. He was very on top of things and he was there at that table as well and kind of just kind of absorbing the vibe. It's one of my favorite moments at Infinite Red. It was kind of a result of all of the work that we had done and what we had accomplished at that point. TODD: Correct. And Robin Heinze's father came and did some volunteering and we had a lot of people come and want to help. It was really, really fun in that regard. One thing I would like to bring up is the Armory is a very cool intimate setting. I'm not using that as a nice way to say small. It's actually not that small and it has a big theater, but it only holds about 500 people, which is about what we sold. So we're redoing in the Armory this year and so we have a cap on how many people can show up because it only holds 500 people. We actually had a big discussion after the first Chain React on whether or not we wanted to get a bigger venue because we could probably sell more tickets. We decided against that because we sent out a survey to all the attendees. We sent a survey to the speakers and we got some feedback. Everyone loved the intimacy of the Armory. And the Armory, just real quick, it has a bottom floor where we had vendor booths set up. It's like an atrium. There's a big hole cutout of the top floor, so the top floor is like a donut. There is a staircase in the middle of the bottom floor that circles around and goes up to the top floor. So we had the whole bottom floor. We had a whole top floor. Up to the top floor, there was chairs, there was the coffee station, an alternative food station when we were serving lunch. And there were some vendors out there as well. Even if you were on the second floor, you're always in this room where all the action's going on. You could look down and see people. So although it's large enough to hold 500 people, which is a fairly large area, you can't put 500 people in a very small area. Fire marshals am I right? Because of the structure of it now and then you left that room and went into the theater, which is more like a traditional theater, like a movie theater, but it was course has the stage and stuff because it's for presentations, but when you weren't in the theater you were always within earshot and always within line of sight to everyone in the conference and so although it was 500 people, it felt like there was 20 people there and I personally got to talk to at least half the people. Anyways, long story short, it was a big decision to say no. We want the feel of the conference to be the same, so we're going to cap on how many people we can attend, which does affect finances and that kind of stuff. Obviously when you scale higher, all of the little expenses get smaller and it's always better financially to be bigger than smaller.
Mike Grabowski of Callstack as well as Lee Johson & Dave Sibiski of G2i join us to talk about how to get your foot in the door and excel in the current job marketplace as a React or React Native developer.
Mike Grabowski of Callstack as well as Lee Johson & Dave Sibiski of G2i join us to talk about how to get your foot in the door and excel in the current job marketplace as a React or React Native developer.
We are joined by Spencer Carli of Handlebar Labs and Mike Grabowski of Callstack join us to discuss the last year in React Native and what to expect in the future.
We are joined by Spencer Carli of Handlebar Labs and Mike Grabowski of Callstack join us to discuss the last year in React Native and what to expect in the future.
Michael Chudziak and Mike Grabowski of Callstack join us to discuss building Universal React applications, applications that can run in multiple environments with a single code base.
Michael Chudziak and Mike Grabowski of Callstack join us to discuss building Universal React applications, applications that can run in multiple environments with a single code base.
Mike Grabowski joins us again to talk about Haul as well as what's new and going on in the React Native ecosystem.
Mike Grabowski joins us again to talk about Haul as well as what's new and going on in the React Native ecosystem.
We are joined by Mike Grabowski of Callstck.io to discuss RNPM, consulting, the React Native Facebook sdk, and more.
We are joined by Mike Grabowski of Callstck.io to discuss RNPM, consulting, the React Native Facebook sdk, and more.
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