Jed Bartausky:

Welcome back to another episode of the React Native Radio Podcast. Episode 365, Chain React 2026 with Gant Laborde.

Robin Heinze:

Mazen, you have a new background. You're not in your normal space. Where are you?

Mazen Chami:

No, I'm traveling right now. I'm in New York, so I'm in my mother-in-law's basement.

Robin Heinze:

What part of New York?

Mazen Chami:

Brooklyn.

Robin Heinze:

Just casually docks your family. It's fine.

Mazen Chami:

Yeah. Right. They just throw me in the basement. There's a cat walking on

Robin Heinze:

Top of nice. So you're saying they deserve it.

Mazen Chami:

Who puts you in a freezing cold basement to work all day? Yeah.

Robin Heinze:

Family, that's who-

Mazen Chami:

For the love.

Robin Heinze:

Hey, but you have a lovely window up at the ceiling that you could probably escape from if there was a fire.

Mazen Chami:

Yeah. There's two. There's one that you can't see. There's a heating pipe right here, so I got to watch out and not hit my head. Oh, if I tell you the number of times I hit my head in this basement, my wife is genuinely concerned for me every time I go down here because I literally hit my head every single time. It's a very short basement.

Robin Heinze:

You didn't tune in to hear us talk about Mazen's mother-in-law's basement.

Mazen Chami:

I did. Or did you?

Robin Heinze:

Yeah, did. Well, he's in luck because we just did. You came to hear us talk about presumably Chain React, if you can read, because you probably clicked on this and you read that the title was Chain React with Gant Laborde. So that's what we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So Gant, Gant, I know you've been on the show several times before. You are very well known in the community, but if for some reason someone's living under a rock listening to this and doesn't know who you are, can you tell our audience who you are?

Gant Laborde:

Yeah. Gant Laborde from New Orleans, Louisiana. Grew up with hurricanes, the drink and the storm. I have a computer science degree that no one needs or ever uses and I have been a part of Infinite Red since before it was actually Infinite Red Incorporated. It was Infinite Red LLC back in the long ago.

Robin Heinze:

We upgraded.

Gant Laborde:

Yes,

Robin Heinze:

We did. You know what? I still don't know the difference if I'm honest.

Gant Laborde:

It's just taxes. Just taxes. There's a big difference there. Who really knows? I've been a mad scientist in computer science for a long time. You've seen me at Chain React. You've seen me in React Native. If you haven't, it's probably because I generally help a lot with Infinite Red day to day now, but back a day I invented Ignite. I also emceed the first Chain React conference. It's been fun. Oh, and a fun thing, this is a React Native Radio. Before Infinite Red owned React Native Radio, I was a guest on the original podcast owners. I was at episode 52 or something a long time ago and then they asked me to come on and be one of the hosts. So I hosted React Native Radio. Oh

Robin Heinze:

My gosh. You can't actually hosted React Native Radio before we

Gant Laborde:

Did.

Robin Heinze:

For

Gant Laborde:

Six to eight months I did it.

Robin Heinze:

Six, that long. I didn't know it was that long.

Gant Laborde:

I did for a while and then

Robin Heinze:

I- Well, that's some more.

Gant Laborde:

I had fun and then I kind of had to step back from that for a bit. So it's always good. I appreciate well after that Infinite Red acquired React Native Radio and then we've had a lot of fun just hosting it and doing it since then. But my first hosting was all pre then. My first guest on there was pre that.

Robin Heinze:

Wow. Well, we're very glad that you grace us with your presence every once in a while.

Gant Laborde:

I love Bainer.

Robin Heinze:

Very happy to talk to you today. Before we talk about Chain React, we need to talk about our actual sponsor.

Jed Bartausky:

Infinite Red. Infinite Red is a premier mobile app consultancy focused on Expo and React Native. We're a team of 30 that's located fully remote in the US with highly experienced mobile app developers. And we've been doing this for over a decade. We're also one of the first development teams to adopt agentic coding in a way that keeps high quality standards while also being able to dive in and do things the old school way if we need to. If you're looking for mobile app expo or React Native expertise for your next project, hit us up at infinite.re/contact. Thanks. And now back to the episode.

Robin Heinze:

All right, Chain React. What is it? What are we talking about?

Gant Laborde:

So as you know, Infinite Red goes back to just mobile app development before React Native was a thing. And once we went all in on React Native, also the same time as we formed the incorporation, we were looking at how to meet more people and create a community with JavaScript meeting mobile because the mobile community was interesting and sort of diversified and the JavaScript community was extremely opinionated and a little bit dangerous and viscous and you had a whole bunch of wild opinions fighting all the time. And this is sort of around the time that React started to win in the front end frameworks world. And so you saw this gluing together of JavaScript developers and mobile developers and it made its own small communities and we kind of brought those together. We said, "How about a conference?" So we put on the very first React Native conference, I think it was 2016 might have been the first one.

Robin Heinze:

17. 17

Gant Laborde:

Was the first

Robin Heinze:

One. 17, because it was my first year.

Gant Laborde:

Gotcha. We took a little while. We took two years of trying to get people together before we threw the first conference and it was amazing. We had people from all over the world. We had speakers from large corporations and we were like, "Wow, I can't believe Microsoft is really getting into React Native. Oh wow, I can't believe that Amazon sent somebody here. I wonder what they're working on. "

Robin Heinze:

Airbnb at the time?

Gant Laborde:

Yeah, we had Airbnb speaking and then the very next year we had the fallout of Airbnb, right?

Mazen Chami:

And they were not speaking.

Gant Laborde:

They were not allowed anywhere near there. That hurt React Native for at least a year, but the adoption and the community really worked together and it was a US React Native conference and then our good friends at CallStack had their conference I want to say later that same year. So they had the Polish React Native Conference was React Native EU. Today it's called React Universe, but they had React Native EU and we had Chain React and it was just such a cool thing. We had people traveling all over the place just to communicate and see what is this wild tool and how awesome is it going to be going forward. And from there it's just gotten so many amazing stories from people who attended looking for a job to people who worked as sponsors saying like, "Hey, I got hired and now we're sponsoring the conference."

Robin Heinze:

Wow.

Gant Laborde:

It's been a really fun journey as React Natives ascended into its fruition and being the mobile framework across platforms. It's been really cool watching that happen by being in person and talking to people in Portland

Robin Heinze:

Amazing. Yeah. I've enjoyed all of my opportunities to go to Chain React. I've been every time we've hosted it and it's a really special time.

Gant Laborde:

It really is. I think people don't understand conferences as much, especially people who haven't gone in a while or have not gone because they were post-pandemic people. Yeah, all the talks are on YouTube or live

Robin Heinze:

Streamed. Yeah, I get that a lot. I get that. Why would I go to a conference? They post all the talks on YouTube or they livestream it. Why would

Gant Laborde:

I go? It's like saying I want to have zero agency in what's going on here. I don't want to meet anybody who's the decision maker. I don't want to ask my questions. I don't want to have their opinions. I think what's really amazing is I am addicted to going to conferences and I am as funny as it sounds, I am a ridiculous introvert. I have a battery.

Robin Heinze:

Nobody believes you

Gant Laborde:

Say that by the

Robin Heinze:

Way. I know.

Gant Laborde:

Unless you've seen me on day three of a conference, then you know it's true. I'm like, the battery's gone, you are all getting shut out. But when you're there, the conversations, the experiences, that's what it's all for and it mixes living with making a living.

Mazen Chami:

Yeah. And I think I can see it. My first Chain React experience was 2019 and I was not working at Infinite. I think I've said it a couple of times. When it comes to those settings, kind of want to stay to myself, introvert, not talk to people. It's hard, right? Let's be honest there. But I remember speaking to people. I remember speaking to Jamon at Chain React. I remember meeting Shawnee who used to work at Infinite and having that connection there and then actually even meeting some speakers after the talks, because it's such a small conference. You're able to talk to everyone there and get opinion and help from everyone. I've mentioned it. I was able to fix some issue I had on my app just by speaking to a speaker by coming to Chain React plus more. It wasn't just that one "bug fix" that I got out of Chain React.

I got a lot more out of it.

Gant Laborde:

What

Robin Heinze:

Would you say to people who ask how a consultancy like ours who builds apps for a living, how did we even get into throwing a conference? How did that happen?

Gant Laborde:

One of the things I'll say is that being a consultant means, like I said, I am an introvert and people don't believe it, but being a consultant means having the time and then caring about talking to people. You have to have a little bit of a didactic spirit and I could have been a teacher if they actually got paid in a different life. But what I love about this is if you love sharing your code, you love sharing what you're working on, you love sharing this journey that we're on, then you're naturally drawn to consulting. And if you're naturally drawn to that, you're also naturally drawn to creating a safe space for people to talk, organize and learn together. And that's why I love going to conferences. I know Mazen's very similar because we've spoken at conferences together and I've seen him in this element.

People come up to him, they ask him question after question and he's got a smile on his face telling people the answer. We were in Seattle and there's the after party and you think an after party usually means people are going to relax, they're going to sing karaoke, they're going to take the free drinks, but when you're nerd at heart and you like talking to people, the after party is really talking to everyone and answering their questions and he was in his element.

Robin Heinze:

Speaking of the after party, I bet you have some really cool stories after doing Chain React, how many times we've done it now, six. I got plenty

Gant Laborde:

Of stories. Yeah.

Robin Heinze:

I really want to hear some of the after party and rest of conference stories.

Gant Laborde:

Oh my goodness. Well, starting with the after party, I have to say one time we were hosted by Expensify. Oh my goodness. They had a statue of two chains there and they have this multi-level-

Robin Heinze:

Right. This is their office, right?

Gant Laborde:

Their office is

Robin Heinze:

Gorgeous. Converted bank. Bank? Yeah. Bank building, right? Yeah. So you walk in and it's like cavernous. It's amazing. Grand windows, ornate. It's crazy.

Mazen Chami:

It's an art gallery. The first floor is an art gallery. Yeah. Yeah. I

Robin Heinze:

Saw more pieces of art than people at their desks.

Mazen Chami:

That's true

Robin Heinze:

Because I think they were all working from home and then their office is full of art. It was so cool.

Gant Laborde:

It was amazing. It's a super cool space and we don't have it on our website yet. Might be when this episode hits, but fun announcement. I talked to Expensify and they are hosting our after party again. So that was really cool because what happens is it's just down the street from this amazing venue where we have the talks just down the street a little bit across the street from a food truck place, because if you go to Portland, you got to hit the food trucks.

Robin Heinze:

Right. The pods as they're known, there's a food truck pod.

Gant Laborde:

The pod people.

Mazen Chami:

There's a whole Netflix show about it actually.

Gant Laborde:

Really?

Mazen Chami:

I remember the show. I don't remember the show, but yeah, one episode where they go to Portland.

Gant Laborde:

Oh my goodness. Yeah. There's so much interesting food and things there. But inside they'll have a supplied for everybody who goes to the conference, food and drinks will be supplied by Expensify in amazing after party there again. So you should look up the pictures from that one. We'll have some on the website at some point soon. It's a great spot. So we've also tried

Mazen Chami:

To figure out- And they know how to party. Dude,

Gant Laborde:

Yeah, they do. Well, you know what? I got to say something. People who go to conferences know how to really enjoy themselves. We're trying to come up with all these ways to get people to mix together. Like what if someone has, I'm interested in this on their shirt or another person has, "Hey, I'd like to know more about that. " We ended up scrapping all of that because when you're there and you're looking at code and ideas and what's coming out and you're meeting people and you're in a prime setting in the middle of the Pearl District in Portland, people mix. It's not hard to mix with other people at that point.

Robin Heinze:

Oh, so true. I still remember the after party. The after party sort of changes locations from different years. So one year was at Expensify and one year we actually just took over the Armory. Yes, we

Gant Laborde:

Did. Yeah.

Robin Heinze:

Which is where we have the talks and everything. And I feel like it was a photo booth. We had this photo booth that was going to take 360 picture. I don't know. People have seen him at weddings and stuff. Super cool idea, super fun. The thing is not working.

Gant Laborde:

It's totally broken.

Robin Heinze:

And any event planners worst nightmares, it's broken. One of our team members, John Major, literally takes his camera. He has a DSLR, nice camera, holds it up in the air and it's just spinning in circles with it taking these 360 photos of people in this photo booth. It was like the hit of the night because it transformed it from this sort of impersonal do it yourself thing to this giant party in the photo booth every time. And it was so amazing.

Gant Laborde:

It

Robin Heinze:

Was. Everyone was talking about it the next day.

Gant Laborde:

We should really tweet some of those videos from that. That was just really

Robin Heinze:

Funny. Oh, we should.

Gant Laborde:

Because everybody's having so much fun because he's doing the mechanical part for you and he's in there and they asked him to join the photo a lot of times too. So sometimes he's just in

Robin Heinze:

There and everybody spitting. A lot of the photos.

Gant Laborde:

Yeah.

Robin Heinze:

Oh, it was so much so much fun.

Mazen Chami:

That story is probably a very good example of how Chain React is just a big gathering of community and community members and how everyone is so friendly and so nice to each other and just kind of mingles very easily. And that's hard to do. There's some conferences. It's just a bunch of friends. Exactly. It's a bunch of friends getting it. Some conferences I've been to and it's really hard to break outside of a bubble. Or you know one or two people and that's pretty much it. That's for the length of the conference. You're with that same crew the whole time. But Chain React, everyone's intermingling with everyone. Everyone's getting to know everyone. It seems

Robin Heinze:

Like everybody knows everyone by the end.

Mazen Chami:

Exactly.

Robin Heinze:

It's very intimate sort of family feel.

Gant Laborde:

Yeah, especially if there's multi-track. So Chain React is a single track React Native only focused conference. And what happens is if you have the multi-track, you might start bonding with the person next to you, but the next talk they want to go to room three and you want to go to room seven and that sort of keeps those interactions small. When you have a single track, you're sitting next to the same person often. And when you get there the second day, you will want to sit in the same spot because you want to be around the same people. You were sharing notes, you were talking about ideas with them. It's just an extra fun way to see this calm and welcoming space. I've been to a business conference before and I actively tried to introduce myself. You got to break past that barrier, right? I actively tried to introduce myself to as many people in the room as I could and I worked up to like five people and zero people introduced themselves to me.

And so in two days at that conference, I got five new people that I met and it took a lot of effort and that was it. If I had just sat in my seat, I would have been a big zero.

Robin Heinze:

Yeah, totally. And I mean, the venue that we chose I feel like is really special in a way that a lot of conferences don't have. It's like the Armory, if you haven't been to Chain React, the Armory it's a theater. It's the home of Portland Center Stage, which is a theater company. And so the talks are in the auditorium obviously, but then the lobby area, it's a big oval

Mazen Chami:

And

Robin Heinze:

Then there's a balcony area, but you all feel like you're in the same room and just like the shape of it sort of keeps everyone in this big circle and so you can see everything that's going on and you're not just going around corners and being invisible. It really fosters the between the talks experience, the hallway track as people call it because everyone just is in this giant space mingling and seeing what's going on. It's really special.

Gant Laborde:

If you're an architecture nerd, there's definitely some science to it there. And believe it or not, they actually have wedding receptions in that space as

Robin Heinze:

Well. Oh yeah. Beautiful ladies. Because they think it's

Gant Laborde:

Great enough. They're like, "Hey, I'm a wedding receptionier."

Robin Heinze:

It literally used to be, it's called the Armory because it literally used to be like it would hold artillery, whatever it is, weapon stuff. During the war. Yeah. Words are hard. So it just has a lot of character and really interesting stonework and stuff too, but a very unique conference venue in my opinion. It's not a hotel ballroom.

Gant Laborde:

I think that really makes it ... I've been to a couple of conferences that do some similar and the venue does a really good job. There's another conference I went Mazen, All Things Open AI, which is right in Mazen's backyard. And the best of the Carolinas, as I'm told, he tells me that.

Mazen Chami:

Yes. The best one.

Gant Laborde:

But theirs has an old red ropes, popcorn, velvet seat, multiple theater and that's where they did that one. It adds something when the place has character and you're not at hotel XYZ and they're meeting

Robin Heinze:

Rooms.

Gant Laborde:

Ballroom C. Ballroom C. Don't forget, ballroom C is going to have a talk at 12:30, but the keynote is 9:30-

Robin Heinze:

Is it ballroom A?

Gant Laborde:

In ballroom A. Like I said, I go to a lot of conferences. I appreciate all of them, but I appreciate the character very much. And the people put the effort out for that. Everybody receives it.

Robin Heinze:

I love it. Okay. So we're deep in the warm fuzzies. Do you have any funny huge mishap stories that ended okay?

Gant Laborde:

I have quite a few doing this a bit. Some of the simplest stuff would be speakers leaving and still being mic'd up, but I'm under NDA not to tell you how that ended.

Robin Heinze:

We definitely had someone miss their sleep through their alarm.

Gant Laborde:

Yes.

Robin Heinze:

And they were the first speaker of the day.

Gant Laborde:

We've rearranged this. We've had the intro video fail

Robin Heinze:

Randomly after

Gant Laborde:

Being tested 500 times. There's a lot of fun things. There's of course Tai Kwon Jive, which lives in pure infamy here at Infinite Red.

Robin Heinze:

Please tell the story of Tai Kwon Jive.

Gant Laborde:

I will do my best. I will best. Here we go. So I think this was 2018 and it was around the time of the crypto madness and we were willing to take on mobile clients in not only regular but in this sort of crypto upheaval. So we put a couple of things on the table saying we have done some apps that receive or handle crypto their own currencies and we know how to do it. And to do that, you were able to buy, and I'm sure everybody still has some of these somewhere, these little metal coins that say Bitcoin on them and it's got that- This is

Robin Heinze:

Back when Bitcoin was pretty new. It was

Gant Laborde:

Kind of blowing up a little

Robin Heinze:

Bit, but it was new. It was a big deal. It was very new. Everybody

Gant Laborde:

Knew it was worth this much. It was like Bitcoin's worth 25,000 or $40,000 per Bitcoin. And people were like, "Oh, this is amazing." So we put a little Bitcoin itself on the table and what happened is we had somebody come into the conference off the street and he went up to our table and they said, "Oh yeah, well, what's your name? We'll go ahead and check you in. " And the guy says, "Oh yeah, I'm not here for the conference. I'm just looking around a bit." Or, "Oh, okay. Well, you're interested in the conference?" He's like, "Yeah, yeah, I am." So he puts the information into the system. So we collect his information that he's interested in it and then he keeps looking over at the little coin and I believe Jed was there. Jed, who's one of the editors here and does fantastic work at Infinite Red, he was there trying to talk to this guy and what happens is Jed doesn't pay attention to him for a second and the guy puts down a thousand dollar iPad on the table and quickly grabs the cheap metal Bitcoin.

Robin Heinze:

Round piece of metal that has Bitcoin on it.

Gant Laborde:

It says Bitcoin on it and Jets out of the door was running, just running as fast as he can thinking that he just stole a Bitcoin, he's going to be able to buy whatever he wants. And what's great about it is I think it took us a second to realize what the hell just happened. And so we pull up the system to see what he put in there and his email address was taikwonjive@ was like yahoo.com or something. Tai Kwon Jive strikes again, stealing another cryptocurrency. He just books out the door holding it. I can't imagine how he thought he could turn that into money. He's under a bridge somewhere still trying to sell that Bitcoin.

Mazen Chami:

Did you ever email Tai Kwon Jive asking for advice?

Robin Heinze:

Oh my gosh, because we have his email.

Gant Laborde:

We do. I

Robin Heinze:

Just

Gant Laborde:

Think of the taikwonjive@hotmail.net. It was just the most ridiculous email address and a dude puts down the iPad to steal the coin. It has a special place in my heart.

Robin Heinze:

Oh my gosh. So many fun stories, fun memories from all the Chain Reacts we've done. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who have been to Chain React. If you're still thinking about coming, what can people expect from this year's Chain React?

Gant Laborde:

Good question. So like I said, it's amazing that we have our after party at the huge Expensify building. We have speakers from CallStack, Software Mansion, Meta, Amazon, Expo and Infinite Red. I think we're getting ... Yeah, Charlie's doing, I think, a keynote from Expo.

Robin Heinze:

Charlie Cheever speaking. Seth Webster is speaking so many good speakers. I personally reviewed the talks to the CFP and there's some really good ones in there too, which I'm very excited about. Another question I think we've probably been getting a lot and it's just like the community's talking about is like, what about AI? This is a React Native conference, but AI is a huge part of our lives now. Is there going to be AI talks?

Gant Laborde:

Oh, a hundred percent. Plenty of AI talks. The trick is this, we've got to be careful not to do ... When you're looking at talks and evaluating them, I know people are worried about it being too much on a particular brand or too much outside of the given avenue. It has to feel like it really empowers you and helps you. And we got some submissions about talking about making React Native have ears and eyes with AI. We got submissions about how to really orchestrate your workflow. And then we have some that are still the deep dives because I think that with no AI at all, because you have to understand this stuff. That's what separates us from Joey Vibecoder on YouTube is that when it's time to vibe debug, they turn off the stream and we get to work. So I think that we have a good mix.

Robin Heinze:

Thinking of your guys' talks, since this is kind of an exclusive space for our listeners of React Native Radio, can you give them a sneak peek of what your talks are going to be about and how it's been coming up with your topics and writing your talks? For our listeners years only, this is an exclusive.

Gant Laborde:

Oh yeah. Mazen, you want to go first with yours?

Mazen Chami:

So you guys are making me commit to my topic then, huh?

Robin Heinze:

Yes.

Gant Laborde:

Conference driven shame podcast development. Podcast

Robin Heinze:

Driven.

Gant Laborde:

Podcast driven shame development.

Robin Heinze:

Yes.

Mazen Chami:

I'll give a little bit. Yeah. I want to give a little bit without giving anything away because I'm still trying to figure out my concept really. But what I'm planning on doing is just kind of evaluating different tool sets out there when it comes to mobile development in general and essentially how can you use AI will be involved in the talk like leverage AI to help you while evaluating those, get the most out of React Native. Okay. Still evaluating.

Robin Heinze:

Mazen is a seat of the pants kind of conference meeting, which we love that. We have literally had speakers submit a talk with a title and a description and they've changed it like more than once between the CFP and the ... Or maybe not the CFP. They may have been like-

Gant Laborde:

I'm going to tell the story.

Robin Heinze:

Invited speakers.

Gant Laborde:

I'm going to tell you a story real quick. Okay? I'm not going to say any names. The names will not be said to keep the people and the story innocent, but we had one speaker submit a talk, concept, an idea, get accepted through the CFP process. We promoted his talk on Twitter and all these other places back in the day, just placing his talk and his title and the description of it over and over and over and over again. And then he got on stage, he or she got on stage.

Robin Heinze:

We'll never know. Completely anonymous.

Gant Laborde:

And gave a talk with a different title all together about a different topic all together.

Robin Heinze:

Literally different title than the one that was on the website that people were looking at.

Gant Laborde:

Couldn't even ... We found out when the audience found out. Okay.

Mazen Chami:

And

Gant Laborde:

Then we had an audience member come up to us at the table and he was PO'd. He said, "I thought this talk was going to be about this. " And it was- Because

Robin Heinze:

You're like, "We did too, bro." Yeah.

Gant Laborde:

And honestly, we're like, "Do we owe you a coffee right now? I don't know what to do with this conference situation." So we told that gentleman, it was like, sorry.

Robin Heinze:

Maybe give it ... Yeah.

Gant Laborde:

We don't control the speakers. They don't work for us.

Robin Heinze:

They are freethinking people with their own free will and

Gant Laborde:

I love that part of it. There's something to live performances, live music. Music, live comedy, live talks. Just even lately in watching the last React Conf in Las Vegas, there was some stuff that happened on that stage that we still joke about.

Robin Heinze:

You

Gant Laborde:

Can't

Robin Heinze:

Make things happen perfectly. It doesn't make it to the YouTube videos. Oh

Gant Laborde:

Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Robin Heinze:

This is the stuff that you see when you're there in person.

Gant Laborde:

There's a lot. Yeah. You come back with a different sort of camera roll than what other people see when you're at a conference, for sure.

Robin Heinze:

The last thing I'll bring up, which is also something you will not get in the YouTube videos after the fact is our MC. Yeah. I know you said you were once the MC. I think you were the MC for the very first one, but you have a lot of other responsibilities. And so we contracted that out to a very special person who talked about him.

Gant Laborde:

Mr. Kenneth LaFrance. Kenneth LaFrance is a math teacher for 40 years now. He also is a standup and improv comedian. He's written his own short stories, his own short plays, and he is also an award-winning speaker. It's many times over. Kenneth LaFrance goes and emcees Chain React. There's no way until he says he does not want to, he is the MC for Chain React and he is a hoot. He talks to the audience, he dresses to the nines. He has such a personality and it comes out on that stage. So the time that you have between speakers that's usually a little bit of a letdown or an energy draw, especially since a lot of conferences like to put another developer up as the MC. And so you get this sort of-

Robin Heinze:

We love developers. We are developers.

Gant Laborde:

Right. Being a great developer does not make you a great MC. Yes. That is by far. And I can attest to that. I enjoy talking to people, but I hate MCing. I do. It is not my thing, but I'll do it. But Ken lives and breathes it. Kenneth LaFrance, he is a show in and of himself and he's the MC for Chain React.

Robin Heinze:

Very, very special. He gets interactive too. With the audience. If you're lucky enough to be the one that he bestows for the week, he will call on you. He likes to

Gant Laborde:

Know about people, their names, their background,

Robin Heinze:

And he

Gant Laborde:

Will remember your face forever.

Robin Heinze:

Good, good stuff. Well, we're just about out of time for the episode. Is there any final thoughts you want to impart, Gant, about Chain React and why the lovely people listening should come and hang out with us?

Gant Laborde:

Well, it's a treat for yourself and your career. I would say that if you can get your company to send you to Chain React, you're going to the Pearl District, Portland. If you're on the West Coast, that's really easy for you. If you're not on the West Coast, I'll say this, going to the Pacific Northwest in July is amazing. The weather's wonderful. I don't think it's allowed to rain. I don't know. It does not rain. It just feels amazing.

Robin Heinze:

Having grown up in Oregon, the summers here are very special and anyone who comes to visit me in the summer from the south, from the Midwest, from pretty much anywhere is like, this is amazing. It's not human. Oh my God. It's hardly ever humid.

Gant Laborde:

Yeah.

Robin Heinze:

It's like usually in the 80s. Very, very comfortable.

Gant Laborde:

Beautiful. The lack of the humidity is amazing. I'm in New Orleans, so I'm pretty

Robin Heinze:

Much

Gant Laborde:

Swimming in the air

Robin Heinze:

Right now. You were born in humidity.

Gant Laborde:

Yeah. And so I went to the wine and waterfall tour after a chain react once and who was just being by that falling water, cooled the air, your trees blocked out the sun. I was just like, I could live right here and just be part of this. Just don't move me from here. So I'll say that you've got ... If you work or are interested in React Native, especially the future of development with mobile app development, this is a place for you to really just feel the spot for a safe, friendly, welcoming, awesome area for you to think about the future. A lot of people send their decision makers to Chain React. It's very welcoming for the developer community, but it's also where people seem to go there and make big decisions about the future as well. And I'd say if you can go, treat yourself.

Definitely go. Get your boss to send you, get a team to go. It'll be enriching.

Robin Heinze:

Come join us. We want to hang out with you. You'll see Mazen on stage. You'll see Gant on stage. You'll see me at the Infinite Red Table for the whole week. That's

Gant Laborde:

True.

Robin Heinze:

We just want to hang out with you. If you go buy tickets, you can use code Friends15 for a little discount. Little friend discount.

Gant Laborde:

Exclusive. Little

Robin Heinze:

Friend discount. For those of you who got this far in the episode, thank you. But yeah, we just want to see you there. So come to J&M.

Mazen Chami:

Well, Robin, do you have a joke for us before we wrap up? I do.

Robin Heinze:

Oh, that's right. I'm supposed to do a joke. I'm the host and I can't. I forgot to prompt myself. I have a joke to leave you guys with. How do you make an egg roll? Gant knows the answer to this one because he posted this joke. I do.

Gant Laborde:

I do.

Robin Heinze:

How do you make an egg roll? You push it.

Gant Laborde:

You see, you push it and it rolls. You budget

Robin Heinze:

And it rolls.

Gant Laborde:

Yeah.

Robin Heinze:

Yeah.

Mazen Chami:

Got it.

Robin Heinze:

See, this is why I love the jokes channel. It's where I get all

Gant Laborde:

My jokes. How many this does it take to change a light bulb? But do you know why stormtroopers don't even change the light bulb?

Robin Heinze:

Why?

Gant Laborde:

Because they love the dark side.

Robin Heinze:

Oh, good one.

Gant Laborde:

I got that one on May the 4th be with you and I figured I'd share it.

Robin Heinze:

Beautiful. I love Star Wars and I love jokes. All right guys, go to chainreactconf.com. Get your Chain React tickets. We want to see you and we'll see you next time.

Mazen Chami:

Bye.

Gant Laborde:

Bye. Bye.

Jed Bartausky:

As always, thanks to our editors, Todd Werth, Tyler Williams, and Jed Bartausky, our marketing and episode release coordinator, Justin Huskey, and our guest coordinator, Mazen Chami. Our producers and hosts are Jamon Holmgren, Robin Heinze, and Mazen Chami. Thanks to our sponsor, Infinite Red. Check us out at infinite.re/radio. A special thanks to all of you listening today. Make sure to subscribe to React Native Radio on all the major podcasting platforms.