Recap: React Finland 2021

The third edition of React Finland took place between August 30th and September 3rd of 2021. For the first time, the conference occurred online instead of happening in Helsinki like in past years.

The talks followed a vodcast format, with a host and speakers present for a live Q&A section. All the talks and speakers were divided into separate thematic sessions, driven by a host.

The Venue

Besides the typical YouTube streaming, there was also the possibility of following the conference through Twitch. Not only that: The attendees had the opportunity of creating a virtual representation of themselves and visiting a medieval fantasy venue.

Using a platform called WorkAdventure, the developers attending the conference were able to visit the sponsors' virtual booths and talk to other attendees utilizing a microphone and a camera.

If you go to the official React Finland YouTube channel, you will be able to watch the recordings of all the sessions. Let's highlight some of the talks.

Day 1: Monday, August 30th

The first day was the opening day. During the session, we had various talks about different topics, including game development using React, an introduction to SolidJS UI Library, the future of XState, and a clear overview about JSX for Designers.

Day 2: Tuesday, August 31st

On the second day, there were two workshops: One about Server-side rendering in React and the other one about creating a project using Next.js and Drupal.

Besides the workshops, there was a session about Architecture. During that session, we enjoyed talks related to Micro Frontends, React Hooks, and Web Components.

Day 3: Wednesday, September 1st

The third day was pretty busy, with five sessions about very different topics.

The first session of the day was about Inclusivity. It was not strictly related to React, but very interesting. We had the possibility of listening to Nasim Selmani, Jasmin Assulin, and Emmi Marjetta talking about racism, inclusion, and strategies to avoid bias in the tech environment.

After that, we had three talks about Styling: CSS-in-JavaScript, CSS-in-TypeScript, and Stylex, different approaches to define styles in our applications.

The third session of the day was about Content Management. During this session, our Developer Relations Engineer Facundo Giuliani presented a talk about Headless CMS, the differences with a Monolithic CMS, and how to take advantage of the Headless approach in our applications. The talk focused on Storyblok and how to connect it to a React application.

The fourth session of the day focused on state machines and state management, where at the end of the day, we had three talks related to GraphQL.

Day 4: Thursday, September 2nd

On Thursday, after a busy day, we enjoyed twelve talks divided into four thematic sessions: Techniques, Frameworks, Documentation, and Accessibility.

During the Frameworks session, we were able to watch talks about building React applications using Aleph.js, Server-side rendering, and Static Site Generation in Next.js, and a brief introduction to Nuxt.

Rachel Nabors, a member of React's core team, presented an exciting talk about how the React and React Native official documentation is maintained and how developers can contribute to improving it.

Day 5: Friday, September 3rd

The last day of the conference brought talks about React Native, Testing, Scaling, and other Techniques.

During the Scaling session, we had some interesting talks related to design systems and how to work with components.

Besides the technical talks, we enjoyed three talks related to the future of the work. The speakers discussed development positions, remote work, and what recruiters look for when hiring developers during these talks. After the talks, Juho Vepsäläinen, the main organizer of React Finland, talked about the learnings and conclusions from the 2021 edition of the conference and discussed with the other speakers about the future of conferences and events.

Conclusion

React Finland was a great online conference with many interesting talks, that not only focused on React or just purely in development, but also explored new fields in technology and development. Let's see what the organizers have for us next year and see if we can enjoy these various topics with an in-person (or hybrid) event.