April 13, 2018, Kromhouthal, Amsterdam
THE BIGGEST REACT
CONFERENCE WORLDWIDE
tracksGeneral + React Native
speakersfrom all over the globe
react devsfans and lovers
The Event
React Amsterdam is a celebration of good things coming together:
React that rocks and spring in Amsterdam that blossoms
A full-day, two-track conference on all things React, gathering Front-end and Full-stack
developers across the globe in the tech heart of Europe. We're coming
back with a new gig on April 13, 2018.
Mark your calendars for the biggest React
community event.
Same as last year, days before (and after) the main event, we'll host a training day, with three workshops on advanced React and State Management as well as a crash course on React Native.
For more fun activities with networking with our community, join our official Slack channel.
Feel The Vibes
Check out the the after-movie and mood videos from React Amsterdam 2017 edition:
Check out our YouTube channel for more talk recordings of previous editions and meetups.
Follow us for updates
Subscribe for conference email updates to hear about the latest news and special deals:
Location
Speakers
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Michele Bertoli
Facebook, United Kingdom
Front End Engineer with a passion for beautiful UIs.
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Tereza Sokol
NoRedInk, Denmark
Tereza is an engineer at NoRedInk working on the Elm frontend as well as the developer of elm-plot, a plotting library written purely in Elm.
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Brent Vatne
Expo, USA
Front-end web/mobile developer working on Expo and React Native.
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Ken Wheeler
Formidable, USA
Director of Open Source at Formidable and the author of libraries like Slick Carousel, McFly, react-music, webpack-dashboard, Spectacle.
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Shirley Wu
Freelance, USA
Shirley Wu is a software engineer specializing in data visualization who put emoji on Obama’s face and showed the world how the final presidential debate in the US played on the minds of voters. Loves tinkering with React and D3 and giving fantastic talks about them.
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Mike Grabowski
Callstack, Poland
Head of Open Source, React Native Core Contributor.
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Tracy Lee
This Dot, USA
Tracy is a speaker, writer, and serial entrepreneur passionate about JavaScript and new technologies. Loves open source projects, pairing with friends, and empowering people to do awesome things. Tracy is also an organizer of ng-cruise and track chair for QCon.
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Michel Weststrate
Mendix, The Netherlands
Full-stack lead developer and an author of MobX.
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Leland Richardson
Airbnb, USA
Software Engineer at Airbnb. Active Open Source contributor to Enzyme and multiple other projects from Airbnb.
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Rebecca Hill
Usabilla, The Netherlands
Full stack JavaScript engineer at Usabilla, building feedback software. Not-so-secretly helping JavaScript take over the world.
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Kristijan Ristovski
ReactAcademy, Macedonia
Teaching React & Javascript at React Academy. Cares about open source, made and maintains sizzy.co, custom-react-scripts, and mobx-router. He had the chance to work and experiment with a variety of languages and frameworks.
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Alexey Kureev
Werkspot, The Netherlands
Software engineer passionate about React, React Native and their ecosystem. Co-author of RNPM. Author of "How to create your own native bridge" articles.
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Narendra Shetty
Booking.com, The Netherlands
Frontend Developer at Booking.com. Working on React & Redux since a year. Hate slow websites and strongly believe that web performance is a key for conversion.
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Vladimir Novick
vscaper, Israel
Software Architect, consultant, worldwide speaker, co-organizer of ReactJS Israel, Author of "React Native - Build mobile apps with JavaScript" book and several workshops and courses. On daily basis Vladimir works in Web, Mobile, VR/AR and IoT fields both for customers and on personal projects.
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Nader Dabit
React Native Training, USA
Nader has been developing with React Native for over 2.5 years. He has worked with and trained developers from fortune 500 companies like Amazon, Visa, American Express, and Microsoft, helping them to get up to speed with the framework as quickly as possible through his company React Native Training.
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Olga Petrova
Sencha, Germany
Software developer with more than 13 years of experience in developing enterprise and data science applications. Worked with a broad range of web technologies, JavaScript libraries, and frameworks, and she has a special interest in data visualization and developing enterprise web applications.
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Manjula Dube
Bookmyshow, India
Senior Developer at Bookmyshow, tech blogger, loves javascript & public speaking.
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Richard Threlkeld
Amazon, USA
Senior Technical Product Manager at AWS Mobile. He helped launch both AWS Amplify and AWS AppSync, and before that worked as the North America mobile development specialist for AWS customers focusing on native and hybrid clients, as well as infrastructure and security designs. Prior to that he worked as a dedicated architect for AWS customers rolling out Big Data solutions for Ad Tech and Gaming.
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Rotem Mizrachi-Meidan
Wix, Israel
Rotem is a software engineer, open source advocate, passionate about Android, React Native, mobile performance, writing developer tools and Lego! In his current position at Wix.com, Rotem is working with React Native, writing infrastructure and testing tools.
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Shalom Yerushalmy
Wix, Israel
Shalom is a software engineer, big data master, loves infrastructure and building internal tools for other developers.
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Almero Steyn
QDelft, The Netherlands
Almero Steyn is front-end engineer and accessibility specialist at QDelft in the Netherlands. He spends his time finding solutions for accessibility issues encountered on actual projects, including projects for the Dutch government. Almero advocates for a11y in design, development and testing and has authored the page on accessibility in the React documentation.
Evening programme
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Wowa Barsukov
Primelephants, Germany
Chief visioner officer at Primelphants. React Adept. Ableton lover and podcaster. He helps FinTech projects leverage their frontend development.
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Sara Vieira
YLDio, Portugal
Front-End Developer at @YLDio, open sorcerer, maker of useless modules, Blogger, Drummer and horror movie fan girl.
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Phil Plückthun
Formidable, United Kingdom
Phil is a core contributor for styled-components, has joined Formidable in early 2017, and is now focusing on building React Native developer tools and apps, bettering the CSS-in-JS ecosystem, and writing some Reason.
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Radoslav Stankov
Product Hunt, Bulgaria
Radoslav is a web developer for more than a decade. He believes that frontend and backend are equally important. In the last several years he juggles between Ruby and Javascript projects. Organizer of React.NotAConf. Currently works at Product Hunt.
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Simon Dudley
Auto Trader, United Kingdom
Senior developer with an interest in mentoring, functional programming and promoting clean code.
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David Carter
Auto Trader, United Kingdom
Allegedly full-stack developer with an ever-increasing interest in the crazy world of JS frameworks
Our MC's
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Gant Laborde
Infinite Red, USA
Chief Technology Strategist for Infinite Red, Worldwide Speaker, Published Author, Blogger, and Adjunct Professor focussed on React Native Mobile.
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Mettin Parzinski
Lab Rooms, The Netherlands
Frontend development consultant @ Lab Rooms. React guy that also did a RN app. Father, squash player, sells booze via Gall.nl, bad at chess. Working on a pet project with Draft.js too.
Schedule
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7:00
Ferry From Central Station
Take a direct ferry from Amsterdam Central Station to React Amsterdam Venue. The boat with green flag, and React Amsterdam logo on it, will cruise from 7 till 10am.
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7:30Registration
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8:00Welcome Breakfast
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9:00Conference Opening
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9:20Keynote by
Tracy LeeThis Dot
Reactive Programming Demystified: Drink the Kool-Aid
There will always be a new JavaScript framework to learn. Technology will continue to evolve and change, and developers will continue to rewrite applications. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could just copy paste 90% of our code from framework to framework?
Well, you can. Reactive programming enables just this AND the ability to future proof your code.
Not only can reactive programming help with your solutions to JavaScript fatigue, but the concepts and technology remain consistent from framework to framework.
Learn how to create a more composable application architecture and an arsenal of lego bricks with RxJS, a push based primitive and domain specific language that sits on top of JavaScript. -
9:50Michele Bertoli
Facebook
setState Machine
What if your components' state was deterministic?
Learn about implementation of State Machines to manage React Components' state - from the basics of the Automata theory to autogenerated tests. -
10:20Coffee Break
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11:00Michel Weststrate
Mendix
There and back again: grokking state and data
Many teams have been discussing on whether to go the immutable or mutable state route. Flux or MVC or MVVM? Redux, MobX or Apollo? Instead of answering the question, in this talk we will look at JavaScript code on a more fundamental level: How do data structures work in JavaScript. What assumptions can be we make if we treat them to be immutable? Or mutable? How can we express concepts like identities, references, collections, mutations, derivations in either case? And can we bent the rules between the two? This talk will provide you a deeper understanding of the difference between state and data. A deeper understanding of JavaScript itself. Which will help you to improve the state you manage, regardless of the library you use to implement that.
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11:30Shirley Wu
Freelance
D3 and React, Together
D3 and React, who should control the DOM? After all, React’s whole purpose is managing updates to the DOM so we don’t have to. D3, on the other hand, is a library for building data visualizations, and it too needs access to the DOM. And stepping back, when should we even use D3 and React together? In this talk, I will give guidelines on when React should have ownership of the DOM, and when D3 should instead. More importantly, I will cover the interactions and applications that will benefit the most from using D3 and React, together.
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12:00Lightning talks
Structure Your App's Story With Sagas and Selectors
How to “Reactify” Your Existing UI Components
Inclusive React: A Survival Guide
Lightning talk descriptions.
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12:30Lunch Break
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14:00Kristijan Ristovski
ReactAcademy
React State Management In a GraphQL Era
Now that GraphQL takes care of managing data in our apps, is an external state-management library even needed? Let's explore all the possibilities and compare the combinations of React, Apollo, Redux, MobX, and Next.js.
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14:30Richard Threlkeld
Amazon
GraphQL at scale with AWS
As the popularity of GraphQL grows, many hard questions are being asked by companies adopting it as an API standard. What databases or search engines can I use it with? How do you aggregate data from multiple sources globally? Can GraphQL fetched data be available offline, and if clients mutate it how are conflicts resolved? Is there a secure way to control data access based on user authentication? Do subscriptions scale to thousands or millions of users? How do I use it with content like images or video? We’ll learn about AWS AppSync, a managed GraphQL service with offline and realtime features, and see the latest features and functionality that have just been released to market.
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15:00Coffee Break
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15:30Manjula Dube
Bookmyshow
Rethinking With React 16
React v16.0 comes with some major changes and an update to the core algorithm. With React v16.0 Facebook has completely revised the internals of React while keeping the public API essentially the same.
Learn about what’s new in React 16 which would include a brief explanation of the new algorithm along with focus on few of the new features like Error Boundaries, Portals, Fragments and SSR with React 16. -
16:00Ken Wheeler
Formidable
Mixed Mode React
This talk will focus on the creative exploitation of React component architecture to render not only to DOM elements, but other targets as well, at the same time. We will explore techniques you can use to achieve this, common pitfalls, useful applications of these patterns and not so useful, but wildly entertaining applications of these patterns.
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16:30
React Open Source Awards
First annual React Open Source Awards, where our MC's will name the winners and present prizes to project representatives. Check out the nominees here.
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17:00
Closing of First Half-day Programme
Giving rounds of applause to speakers, volunteers and organizers and start the food truck break before the evening programme.
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17:30
Food Truck Break
Use it wisely to recharge or have a meal in the food trucks area or one of the restaurants nearby to get prepared for the Horror stories section and React Party starting.
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19:00Horror Stories
How We DDoS Ourselves with SSR
Public Speaking: How Bad Can It Be
Wonky Game Physics in Reason and Lessons Learned
The Tell-Tale Metric: Replatforming with Edgar Allan Poe
Horror story talk descriptions.
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19:30Wowa Barsukov
Primelephants
Music of React
I will show you how to use React components approach while creating music with Ableton Live. This talk will inspire you to connect two independents worlds, Music and React.
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20:00
React Party
Conference after-party with drinks, snacks, and two halls with music and performances till 22:00.
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9:20Leland Richardson
Airbnb
Cross-Language React
React as an idea and a paradigm is interesting in its own right, and should not be tethered to its JavaScript roots. Ever consider whether or not React would be possible in other languages? Other platforms? What are the pros and cons of doing so? If we had React in multiple languages, would it make sense to change the architecture of React Native?
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9:50Brent Vatne
Expo
React Navigation
You start using React Native. Styling? Got it. Animations? A little different, but sure. Now let's add a navigation bar and another screen that we transition to...
This is where you hit a fork in the road. You can either use a library that wraps the native navigation APIs for the platform or a re-implementation of those APIs using the same React Native primitives (View, Text, Animated, etc) that you use throughout your app. The former is commonly called “native navigation" because most of the implementation is in "native" and the latter is called "JavaScript-based navigation" because most of the implementation is in JavaScript. React Navigation is a "JavaScript-based" navigation solution and React Native Navigation is a "native" navigation library. The choice you make has a significant impact on your app, and it's something you will live with every day while you continue to work on the project.
I lead the React Navigation along with the creator of the project, Eric Vicenti. I'll explain why we think that building a JavaScript-based navigation library is important, what the limitations are (why there is room for both categories of solutions), and I'll show you how to take full advantage of it. -
10:20Coffee Break
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11:00Alexey Kureev
Werkspot
Network Layer in React Native
React Native provides us with a set of primitives for building mobile applications. A few of these can be aggregated into a "networking" layer that manages the transfer of data. This layer was designed to mimic an API we have in the Web, but despite all the similarities, it has its own *qualities* and caveats every good React Native developer should know about. In this talk I'll try to guide you through the networking layer in React Native and share some tips and tricks I've learned along the way.
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11:30Nader Dabit
React Native Training
React Native VR + AR Made Simple
The React ecosystem has given developers the opportunity to target platforms that were once thought out of reach for JavaScript developers. Now, the Viro platform opens the door to developing both AR & VR on both iOS & Android as well as GEAR VR and Google Daydream. In this talk, I will quickly go over how to get up and running with the framework and demo an app that allows user to upload images from the conference into a virtual room, as well as walk around and interact with them in Augmented Reality.
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12:00Tereza Sokol
NoRedInk
Making Programming for People
In this talk we’ll discuss the design philosophy of Elm by doing a comparative analysis between architecture and software development, to understand not only how to get started with Elm, but also why.
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12:30Lunch Break
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14:00Mike Grabowski
Callstack
Imperative is the new black
One of the benefits of React is its declarative interface and the fact that you can describe any advanced UI pattern with a set of components to have a predictable behavior. That is, completely different from what we have used to be doing - when writing imperative code. In fact, imperative itself is often blamed on Twitter for being highly dangerous and an anti-pattern. In this talk, we will explore different ways of building reusable libraries with React Native (like APIs and higher order components). We will see that imperative code is actually there at low-level and is what makes communication with native world possible.
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14:30Narendra Shetty
Booking.com
Push Notification With React Native
Push notification is a crucial feature for any app. It helps in engagement and retention of the user. Most users will not return to an app after installing it, and that is where push notifications come into play. In my talk I'll be talking about how to achieve this feature with React Native for both iOS and Android.
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15:00Coffee Break
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15:30Rotem Mizrachi-Meidan and Shalom Yerushalmy
Wix
Continuous Workflow for a Large React Native App: Mobile At Wix
The Wix app is a large operation involving ~40 developers from 6 different product groups and a pretty big amount of features. Scaling this project requires code architecture that enables each module to be developed separately, but easily fit the big puzzle.
We’ll discuss the way we do both unit and E2E testing, the way we scale our CI, the way we deploy and how we fix issues in production when they arise.
We’ll also share our plans to how we’re going to scale our app and dev process to support 100 developers a year from today. -
16:00Vladimir Novick
vscaper
Controlling Smart Homes With React Native
Smart homes become more and more popular. With this we still use applications that come with smart products to control them. In this talk I will show you an alternative how you can create your own apps with React Native, that control smart home appliances.
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16:30
Programme Continues in the Main Hall
Lightning Talks
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Rebecca Hill
Usabilla
Structure Your App's Story With Sagas and Selectors
As apps begin to scale, many developers find themselves asking the question - but where does all the hard stuff go? The complicated data manipulation, the validation, the process flow of our apps. In other words, the business logic. If React is designed for the view layer, and we’re using Redux or something similar for the state, then where does the business logic go? This talk looks at the different options and tries to answer that question.
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Olga Petrova
Sencha
How to “Reactify” Your Existing UI Components
React is a component-based UI library that doesn’t provide any built-in components. Over the years companies and developers have invested a lot of time and money in development of UI components based on VanillaJS or various frameworks. Building components is time consuming, has integration and maintenance risks, and worst of all, distracts developers from the task at hand - actually building the application. In this presentation, you will learn how to quickly and easily “Reactify” your existing JavaScript components to use them in React applications.
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Almero Steyn
QDelft
Inclusive React: A Survival Guide
Stuck in a jungle of inaccessible code? This swiss army knife of tips and tools gives you what you need to slice through the challenges and make your apps inclusive for all users.
Horror stories
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Radoslav Stankov
Product Hunt
How We DDoS Ourselves with SSR
The story is about how we DDOS ourselves at Product Hunt for about an year because of the way we've built our SSR React server.
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Sara Vieira
YLDio
Public Speaking: How Bad Can It Be
Well, my first conference talk didn't go exactly like planned.
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David Carter
& Simon DudleyAuto Trader
The Tell-Tale Metric: Replatforming with Edgar Allan Poe
A harrowing tale of tragedy and misfortune: how a year-long attempt to crowbar a React SPA front-end into a monolithic mobile platform serving many millions of users almost plunged over the precipice into failure. Prepare yourself for all the thrills, chills and linting errors anyone could ever hope for. Warning: tale may rhyme.
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Phil Plückthun
Formidable
Wonky Game Physics in Reason and Lessons Learned
Reprocessing is a new library for Reason, a rather new programming language building on the OCaml + JavaScript ecosystems. It’s a lean wrapper around OpenGL and WebGL and allows truly cross-platform games to be written rather easily.
Reason is great for a whole lot of things, but let me take you through a story of trying to write a 2D physics engine in just under 8 hours (Mistakes were made), what strongly typed languages don’t protect you off, and a vision of what you could build with Reason or Reprocessing. The universal future is coming, and Reason is orienting itself just right with projects like bsb-native.
Extended program

Community preparty
The day before

React Party
React meets Friday the 13th

Amsterdam exploration day
By bike, by feet, by boat
React Amsterdam Open Source Awards

This year we are kicking off first annual Open Source awards to highlight the most exciting and innovative projects of past year, highlighting lesser known projects form independant authors and maintainers.
Together with our community we defined 5 nominations and shortlisted top candidates to be presented to our jury of React opinion leaders and active OS contributors. The winners will be announced on the conference day, April 13, with YouTube live stream to follow.
Nominations:
- Breakthrough of the year
- Fun side project of the year
- Most impactful contribution to the community
- Productivity booster
- The most exciting use of technology
Sponsors
We would not be here, if companies like Facebook would not invest into Open Source so heavily, as well as React would not grow that much without support of multiple great companies from across the globe.
We're really grateful for all the trust and support our partners shared with us.
Would like to work together with the most notable React community supporters?
Check out the React job offers form our partners.