React Conf 2024 Recap
May 20, 2024 by Ricky Hanlon.
Last week we hosted React Conf 2024, a two-day conference in Henderson, Nevada where over TODO attendees gathered to discuss the latest in UI engineering. This was our first in-person conference since 2019, and we were thrilled to be able to bring the community together again.
At React Conf 2024, we announced the React 19 RC, the React Native New Architecture Beta, an experimental release of the React Compiler, and much more. The entire day 1 and day 2 streams are available online.
In this post, we’ll summarize the talks and announcements from the event.
Day 1
To kick off day 1, Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth shared a welcome message followed by an introduction by Seth Webster and our MC Ashley Narcisse.
In the day 1 keynote, Joe Savona shared our goals and vision for React to make it easy for anyone to build great user experiences. Lauren Tan followed with a State of React, which was downloaded over 1 billion times in 2023 and highlighted the work of the React community to make React, React.
For more, check out these talks from the community later in the conference:
- Vanilla React by Ryan Florence
- React Rhythm & Blues by Lee Robinson
- RedwoodJS, now with React Server Components by Amy Dutton
- Introducing Universal React Server Components in Expo Router by Evan Bacon
Next in the keynote, Josh Story and Andrew Clark shared new features coming in React 19, and announced the React 19 RC which is ready for testing in production. Check out all the features in the React 19 release announcement post, and see these talks for deep dives on the new features:
- What’s new in React 19 by Lydia Hallie
- React Unpacked: A Roadmap to React 19 by Sam Selikoff
- React 19 Deep Dive: Coordinating HTML by Josh Story
- Enhancing Forms with React Server Components by Aurora Walberg Scharff
- React for Two Computers by Dan Abramov
- And Now You Understand React Server Components by Kent C. Dodds
Finally, we ended the keynote with Joe Savona, Sathya Gunasekaran, and Mofei Zhang announcing that the React Compiler is now Open Source, and sharing an experimental version of the React Compiler to try out.
For more information on using the Compiler and how it works, check out the docs and these talks:
Watch the full day 1 keynote here:
Day 2
To kick off day 2, Seth Webster shared a welcome message, followed by a Thank You from Eli White and an introduction by our Chief Vibes Officer Ashley Narcisse.
In the day 2 keynote, Nicola Corti shared the State of React Native, including 78 million downloads in 2023, and highlighted apps using React Native including 2000+ screens used inside of Meta, and screens from Microsoft in Microsoft Office and the Microsoft Windows Start Menu.
Nicola also highlighted all the work the community does to support React Native including libraries, frameworks, and multiple platforms. For more, check out these talks from the community:
- Extending React Native beyond Mobile and Desktop Apps by Chris Traganos and Anisha Malde
- Spatial computing with React by Michał Pierzchała
Riccardo Cipolleschi continued the day 2 keynote by announcing that the React Native New Architecture is now in Beta and ready for apps to adopt in production. He shared new features and improvements in the new architecture, and shared the roadmap for the future of React Native. For more check out:
Next in the keynote, Nicola announced that we are now recommending starting with a framework like Expo for all new apps created with React Native. With the change, he also announced a new React Native homepage and new Getting Started docs. You can view the new Getting Started guide in the React Native docs.
Finally, to end the keynote, Kadi Kraman shared the latest features and improvements in Expo, and how to get started developing with React Native using Expo.
Watch the full day 2 keynote here:
Q&A
The React and React Native teams also ended each day with a Q&A session:
- React Q&A hosted by Michael Chan
- React Native Q&A hosted by Jamon Holmgren
And more…
We also heard talks on accessibility, error reporting, css, and more:
- Demystifying accessibility in React apps by Kateryna Porshnieva
- Pigment CSS, CSS in the server component age by Olivier Tassinari
- Real-time React Server Components by Sunil Pai
- Let’s break React Rules by Charlotte Isambert
- Solve 100% of your errors by Ryan Albrecht
Thank you
Thank you to all the staff, speakers, and participants who made React Conf 2024 possible. There are too many to list, but we want to thank a few in particular.
Thank you to Barbara Markiewicz, the team at Callstack, and our React Team Developer Advocate Matt Carroll for helping to plan the entire event; and to Sunny Leggett and everyone from Zero Slope for helping to organize the event.
Thank you Ashley Narcisse for being our MC and Chief Vibes Officer; and to Michael Chan and Jamon Holmgren for hosting the Q&A sessions.
Thank you Ricky Hanlon for providing detailed feedback to speakers on their talks, working on design and animations for the keynote slides, deploying the React Compiler Playground and docs, and generally filling in the gaps to sweat the details and make this conference a success. Thank you Callstack for building the conference website; and to Kadi Kraman and the Expo team for building the conference mobile app.
Thank you to all the sponsors who made the event possible: Remix, Amazon, MUI, Sentry, Abbott, Expo, RedwoodJS, and Vercel.
Thank you to the AV Team for the visuals, stage, and sound; and to the Westin Hotel for hosting us.
Thank you to all the speakers who shared their knowledge and experiences with the community.
And thank you to everyone who attended in person and online for making React Conf 2024 great.
See you next time!