React Finland 2020 — What’s to Come and Call for Sponsors
The preparations for the third edition of React Finland (26–29.05.2020) are in progress and things are shaping up. The concept will be close to what it was last year with several improvements:
- Since it’s 2020, we’ll have 20 speakers (10 per day) and each will get a 30 minute slot to use as they prefer. We’ve paid particular attention to attract a varied and diverse group of speakers and most have already been selected.
- Having less speakers means we can have longer, 45 minute breaks while organizing more informal action during those. Earlier we’ve failed at panels and QA. Now we have the perfect place for them.
- We will run lightning talks during the breaks (likely around four per day). The idea is that these talk are more casual and ex tempore.
- Instead of doing one day of workshops, we’ve decided to extend them to two days but we’re still sticking with the full day format. The main benefit of this change is that now you can take two workshops. Sometimes the problem is that it’s tricky to choose but now there’s less of a problem.
- The venue will remain the same although I expect we’ll be able to use it more effectively.
- The scope of the event will remain the same for the main conference. We can host up to 400 React developers and enthusiasts.
- We’ll run a one day live coding conference called Freezing Edge (01.06.2020) right after React Finland. It’s an experimental format and we want to bridging the gap between different development disciplines in our own way.
- To keep conference efforts sustainable, we are moving from association to co-operative business form. The move allows us to address long term sustainability of our conferences as it’s important to make sure people doing the work get paid. The past has shown that often conferences in Finland stall and wither as volunteers run out of interest and/or resources to keep on going and we want to avoid that.
In short, it’s starting to look good for the conference and we’ve taken important steps to make it even better for 2020.
Call for Sponsors
A conference like React Finland has multiple purposes. It’s a showcase of Finnish software development and it lets us to bring world leading speakers to our humble country. In return, they learn about us and spread stories. I still keep hearing about the sauna stones we gave as speaker gifts in 2019. For me as a director, React Finland is more than a conference. It’s the highlight of the year and I hope it’s so for other developers as well.
I believe one of the important ways we can serve the local community, is to provide sponsorships. Although money is often one way to do it, we prefer combination of money and improved visitor experience. By doing things right, we can avoid being too much in the face while providing value to people coming to Finland from abroad and locals as well.
In practice this means taking care of the lounge areas and finding ways to collaborate. One of the interesting models has been connecting our speakers with companies in the form of private workshops. If we manage to attract amazing developers to Finland, why not to make it a win-win? We might have something to learn from them.
We’ve decided to keep the sponsoring levels same as the last year. The only major difference is that this time around we’ll apply VAT on top of the base cost. We’re also providing scaled down sponsorships for the new Freezing Edge conference.
Sponsorships are provided on “first come, first served” basis and if you want to secure your spot, please get in touch (info <at> react-finland.fi).
