What do you do when the conference you want doesn’t exist? Create it, of course! 

The Chain React Conference was started in 2017 by the team at Infinite Red, who wanted nothing more than to learn from other React Native enthusiasts, eat great food, and nerd out about Redux vs MobX. In 2018, we upped our game, adding more vendors, two workshops, and even more great speakers.

As frequent conference attendees ourselves, we know that details matter. From caffineation to caterers, from icebreakers to mixers to after parties, we put a lot of care into designing the conference to be fun and to maximize learning and networking opportunities.

Chain React

Note: there's a problem with the audio until 2:13 into the video, after which it is fixed. We apologize for the inconvenience!

Facebook drops a huge announcement at Chain React 2019! Marc Horowitz from Facebook gave us a look at Hermes Engine, a small and lightweight JavaScript engine optimized for running React Native on Android.

Hermes Engine Announcement

The problem: You're starting a conference. You announce the conference, start planning the venue, getting sponsors, & fielding talks. Things start getting serious, & before you know it you're overloaded with obligations. Oh, & you forgot: You also need a conference app!

You don't just want any conference app; you want it to be fun, engaging, & a valuable addition to the attendees. How can you do this in the least amount of time?

The solution: In this talk, I'll show how you can rapidly prototype, build, & deploy your app using GraphQL, React Native, & AWS AppSync so you can spend your time worrying about more important things in life. In addition to what you'd expect from a conference app, we'll be adding live chat so attendees discuss talks & speakers can field questions & interact with them in real-time.

Slides/Repo - https://github.com/dabit3/conference-app-in-a-box
https://github.com/dabit3/chainreact-admins

Hooking Up a Conference in Real-time with GraphQL

While React Native leverages the platforms native API and user interface elements to build mobile applications, transfer of control between the various layers could sometimes come at the cost of performance. 

In this talk, we will look at the various tips and tricks for taking full advantage of React Native and using the performance attributes of the new architecture. 

We will start by adding instrumentation to a sample application across the Javascript, Java/ObjC and C++ layers. Next, we will look at how this information can be used to improve at specific places in the render process. Finally, we will look at rounding up our performance practices by adding this to our CI system to ensure that the apps we build with React Native stay smooth and blazing fast.

Performance in React Native

Jetpack Compose is a new declarative UI framework that is being developed in the open for Android. It has a very similar programming model to React, and this talk will dive deep into the internals of both to explain the similarities and differences in the architectures of both, and how React Native might be able to leverage some of this technology long term.

https://speakerdeck.com/lelandrichardson/react-meet-compose

React, Meet Compose

React Native has come to stay. There is so much excitement about developing native mobile applications using JavaScript. React Native has made it possible for web developers to develop sophisticated native mobile apps.

In the last two years, after building our React Native Apps, there are many things that I have learned the hard way. Lessons learned in coding standards, state management, supporting multiple platforms, release management, just to name a few.

In this session, I would share my experiences building React Native Apps, and the 10 things that I wish I knew early on. By the end of this talk, you will be equipped with best practices to follow while building your React Native App. Make sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes that I did.

https://adhithiravi.github.io/ChainReactTalk2019/#/

Building React Native Apps: 10 Things I've Learned On The Way

While Animations can be created in React Native pretty easily, real world mobile apps require a combination of several layers of animations, gestures and micro interaction animations to make user experience stand out. In this talk we will walk through the process from defining complex animation, to implementing it by going through all stages of animation creation process.

https://slides.com/vladimirnovick/demystifying-react-native-animations#/

Demystifying complex animations creation process in React Native

"At Nozbe, we share almost all component-level code between React for the web and React Native (both iOS and Android) — without ReactXP, react-native-web, or react-primitives!

Let me show you how we did this — from project setup, through shared infrastructure, all the way up to shared components and styling — and how you can achieve the same thing.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dzaedyr0dzptoaj/SuccessfulCodeSharingStrategies-v1.1.pdf?dl=0

Successful Web & React Native Code Sharing Strategies

Make your React Native Apps Accessible

React Native CLI has been extracted out of the main repository a while ago, as a part of ongoing Lean Core effort. We have merged more than 100 PRs since then and the number is growing. We also shipped a ton of improvements with other exciting features on the roadmap. In this talk, I am going to give you an update where we are, what are the highlights from past few months and what you can expect from the future.

https://github.com/react-native-community/react-native-cli

The State of React Native Tooling

A useful metaphor for the React Native project is that of a huge ship. Operating such a vessel is a massive effort, that requires many people running back and forth the deck hoisting the sails and lowering the anchor - but also rowers, cooks, and skippers just to mention a few. During my two years on this journey, as a developer not working for FB, I've experienced and participated in the evolution of the project from a unique vantage point.

I could tell tales for days of the many seas we've been through, the high waves and the storms we've weathered - but one constant has been the help provided from other sailors like me, part of the community. The collaboration with the RN team allowed for increasingly more complex roles and projects to ship - and we are all but done.

So I want to raise a glass to these companions, and through my narration showcase what the community accomplished - and the new horizons we are steering towards.

https://speakerdeck.com/kelset/all-hands-on-deck-the-rn-community-experience

All Hands on Deck - The React Native Community Experience

As TypeScript continues it's gradual take over of the JavaScript world, you might be having some similar FOMO as myself:

“What will all my friends think of me if I'm not using TypeScript in my React Native project?” 
“Where do I even begin to convert this giant codebase to TypeScript?”
“What the #*$% even is TypeScript?”

Luckily, there is a solution! And it won't take you weeks to do!
This talk will show you all the steps involved in converting a React Native project to TypeScript, as well as many of the pitfalls and gotchas that you might encounter along the way. 

https://speakerdeck.com/amhinson/convert-a-react-native-project-to-typescript-in-10-minutes

Convert a React Native Project to Typescript in 10 Minutes

React Native Panel

While building a React Native app, you should think of scalability from the get-go. A native mobile app goes through a lot of different phases - deployment, internalization, component practices, handling assets, offline support, complex animations and a lot more. In this talk, I will go through some of the best practices you should consider from setting up a project, challenges most react native app faces to scalability. At the end of this talk, you will go home with practices you can apply to your projects and feel more confident doing so. 🚀

http://bit.ly/a11y-react-native

Beyond the React Native Benchmark

This talk is about my journey in building an app that will keep track of your gym life. One single codebase and React Native. Only one person making an app for both Android and iOS that goes from zero to production till seeing your gym buddy using it.

This talk is based in my popular Tweet https://twitter.com/ferrannp/status/1017477385422299136 and my passion in building apps as a hobby.

I plan to cover:

- Database-offline solution
- UI library & theme
- Orientation & multiple layouts support
- i18n
- Navigation & deep linking
- Accessibility & RTL support
- Premium features & monetization
- Release to store & beta releases

Repo: https://github.com/ferrannp/fithero

React Native - Case study: From an idea to the market

If you’ve built an app with React or React Native, chances are you’ve had to build at least one form. From profile screens to login pages, forms are unavoidable, and let’s be honest, they’re not very fun to build. 

For each field, you need to hold the value in the state of your component, implement onChange and onBlur handlers, implement validation… that makes for a lot of boilerplate, and that’s just for simple inputs. 

There are several libraries out there that attempt to simplify this process, from Redux Form, to React Form, to Formik, among others. In this talk, we’ll go over the existing solutions, how they stack up against each other, and what their limitations are.

https://speakerdeck.com/kirakik/lets-simplify-your-complex-forms

Let’s Simplify Your Complex Forms

Visual regressions in mobile applications can be serious problems and are notoriously tedious to catch. Hours, even days, can be spent manually sifting through screenshots of a mobile application before releasing it to real users. With automated screenshot testing, much of this tedium can be avoided, and mobile app developers can be empowered to iterate with confidence.

Screenshot Testing React Native Apps with Percy

React Native is advertised as a framework for developing native apps with javascript. However, developing Android apps requires more effort. This talk will look at the ways in which my team and I learned, sometimes the hard way, how to develop a react native app for Android, as well as my experience as a JavaScript developer being thrust into the native world.

Why Can't We Be Friends?

In a world where perpetually confused developers can’t quite get their React Native development environments working, new libraries emerge from the ashes of lost productivity: envinfo and Solidarity. Escape the complexity and be part of the wave of teams embracing change to save their projects from themselves.

https://speakerdeck.com/tabrindle/end-your-development-environment-nightmares-with-envinfo-and-solidarity

End Your Development Nightmares with envinfo and Solidarity

A brief exploration of decisions and difficulties encountered when employing third-party libraries in React Native applications, yielding actionable advice for open-source package maintainers in our community.

3rd Party Nightmares

Creating scalable and maintainable React Native app using Mobx State Tree

Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cBf1FFVewPSKI7TmMdrvsyk8NuYtxMUN/view
Repository: https://github.com/webmasterdevlin/mstdemo

Getting Started with Mobx Statetree

What is Expo, what have we been working on, and what’s up next? Give me your attention for half an hour and let me tell you about that.

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0Jab6KBEszi8hWKJ8Ey-07Csg#chain-react

Expo for Everyone

Have you ever wanted to allow someone to provide feedback on your application without installing the package? Maybe you need to provide customer support for different devices. 

Bitrise is a pipeline tool that will pull from your repository and has multiple configurations that allow you to build for different purposes. One purpose is deploying to Appetize.io which allows for a fully interactive version of your application on multiple devices and platforms without much effort. This has allowed us to train our support reps, but also allow them to walk through a trouble ticket with users on the fly.

In this session I will demonstrate a basic setup of Bitrise to build the application for both iOS and Android platforms, with a deployment to Appetize for both versions.