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Special: Announcing SyncConf 2025

In this special episode, together with Adam Wiggins and James Arthur, we’re excited to announce the first Sync Conf in San Francisco in November.

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Special: Sync Conf
00:00I just see people both talking about sync more on social media.
00:04I see a lot of predictions that this is the key technology for the next
00:08years or more, and I suspect like this is a one day conference, right?
00:13It's a kind of maximum 300 people.
00:15And my hope, and what I kind of think is that we'll look back on it in
00:1910 years time and see this as just one of the seminal conferences that
00:22actually the group of people who were there all then went on to do amazing
00:26things and you kind of look back and it was a privilege to be there.
00:29Welcome to Local-First fm. I'm your host, Johannes Schickling, and this
00:33is a special episode of the podcast.
00:35We're together with Adam Wiggins and James Arthur.
00:38We're excited to announce the first Sync Conference in San Francisco in November.
00:43I hope to see you at the conference.
Sync Conf Announcement
00:49Hey, welcome back James.
00:51Adam, it's so nice to have you back on the podcast.
00:53How are you doing?
00:54Great to be here.
00:55Feeling good.
00:56We got something to be excited about.
00:59Yeah, very well, thanks.
01:01Awesome.
01:02Well, like Adam already mentioned, we have quite the exciting announcement.
01:06The announcement was already made a couple of weeks ago, and in fact
01:11the very first time we talked about it publicly was at Local-First Conf.
01:16Where we announced that there would be a partner conference or sibling
01:20conference, however you wanna call it, called Sync Conf, which doesn't happen
01:25in Berlin, but happens in San Francisco , and it felt appropriate to bring on
01:29the co-hosts of the event, James Adam.
01:33Some of them are not here such as Emma, Johanna, and Jans.
01:37But, with you here, I think it would be interesting to talk
01:41through what the event is about.
01:42Talking through the vision of the event where it's kind of similar
01:47to Local-First Conf, but also where it's different for Local-First Conf.
01:52So I think, James, you brought up this idea initially that you just
01:57saw so much demand and so much.
01:58Pull and interest in sync engines, which is what Electric Sync is all about as
02:04well, that you, I think, raised the question, would it make sense to have
02:08a separate conference in partnership that is all about sync engines?
02:12So maybe you want to give your vision for the event and what's
Vision and Target Audience
02:19Yeah, absolutely.
02:20I think a lot of us in this space, we're seeing this concept of sync & merge as
02:26a, in a way sort of core technical aspect of Local-First that a lot of people
02:32who are looking to build local-first were interested in to deliver some
02:36of the maybe sort of harder benefits around instant modern user experience.
02:43Being a good architecture to build modern software on, whereas Local-First
02:47is this sort of broader concept, which includes really interesting motivating
02:52aspects of things like data privacy, which are not necessarily kind of on the
02:56kind of critical path if you're sort of building out a startup kind of in a hurry.
03:01and so sort of focusing on sync is a slightly more pragmatic take
03:05on some of the local-first ideas.
03:08I think why it's so interesting at the moment is if you just sort of lean
03:13back, it's just such an interesting time to be alive as a software developer.
03:17So much of the software stack is just being reinvented
03:21and rethought as we, speak.
03:24And so you have all of this, previous generation software, which is sort
03:29of team-based SaaS, enterprise software, and it's all essentially
03:33being rewritten as agentic software.
03:35And so there's this sort of huge move to where, in a way, all software
03:38is becoming agentic software.
03:41or certainly it's going to be like a large part of that software future.
03:44And just one of the key aspects of agentic software is if you start off
03:48with say, users of your software.
03:51One of the main drivers for like local-first or real time
03:54sync architectures in the first place is multi-user.
03:57So you introduce multiple users and if they're both doing things on the same
04:01data, you have to have some kind of sync architecture to keep them in sync.
04:05But with the agentic software.
04:06The moment you introduce agents as well as users, like all software
04:10inherently becomes multi-user.
04:12And so like agentic software is naturally collaborative and if you
04:16just sort of step back and think, well, how am I gonna build these systems?
04:20If you try to build those on manual data wiring.
04:24It's just crazy and you're gonna have bugs and stale data and a
04:27whole load of extra boiler plate.
04:29And so this sort of core technology of, sync or sync engine architecture,
04:34which in a way has emerged initially as like a component of
04:37real time or local-first systems.
04:40Is now just the key architecture for building agentic systems.
04:44And it's very hard to imagine how you could build agent systems without it.
04:48And as all software moves to agentic, it then really becomes the
04:52key architecture for building this next generation of modern software.
04:56Right.
04:57That, and that is very interesting since when we first started talking about like
05:01doing this extra conference that hasn't even been yet at the center of it since,
05:06like in many months ago, agentic Systems agentic coding has been sort of like on
05:13the horizon, but it hasn't been really there yet as prominently as it is today.
05:18So, like the topic and the core focus of Sync Conf is now even more relevant.
05:24It is not exclusively about agentic systems, but I think they make it just.
05:28Even more clear that we need a better answer for like data
05:32management, particularly in a multi-user or multi-agent way.
05:36Like if you think about users as a user agent, now we have just
05:40different ones, and that is like multiplayer, collaborative software
05:45has always been the foundation or one of the core pillars of local-first.
05:49But like you say, if you put that front and center as the most important one.
05:54That's the more pragmatic way of getting there.
05:56So Adam, you as one of the co-authors of the local-first essay, how do
06:01you feel about kind of tearing apart those different ideals of
06:05local-first software and now focusing on one in particular with Sync Conf?
06:11Yeah, well, certainly, I'll echo what James said.
06:13That's kind of a pragmatism and idealism, not necessarily against each other, but
06:18rather maybe the proportion in the mix.
06:20Local-first Conf, I think is very, and local-first, in general is very
06:23driven by those ideals of user agency, data ownership and that sort of thing.
06:28And what we see is just a better way for computers to serve
06:32human needs in the long run.
06:34but then something really interesting started to happen.
06:37At the conferences both years, but especially this last year,
06:41when we really saw a lot of people coming to the community.
06:44A lot more interested in those pragmatic benefits or maybe more compelled by them.
06:48And to me that's, you know, there is a version where, I don't know, I could
06:52feel, or people who, came from that more ideological background, which obviously
06:56I do, could feel like, wait a minute, you know, we're here with these grand ideals,
07:00and you just show up and say, Hey, we want fast UIs and cheaper hosting bills, and
07:03hey, this works really well with agentic AI and we say, wait a minute, you're
07:07missing out on those, those grand ideals.
07:09But I actually see it as a big tent thing that it's actually pretty interesting
07:14and actually pretty awesome that, people came to this technology or this kind of
07:19architecture for many different reasons, but we get a lot of different benefits and
07:26people have different reasons to prefer.
07:28I'm here for the pragmatic benefit of just the simplified stack and the developer
07:32experience, and other people are more about the user agency and data ownership.
07:37But we all can kind of, we all come together and I think that.
07:39The coal, that coalition is stronger and it's an opportunity to expand
07:44the reach and to, yeah, just to make this way of building software
07:48that we've all fallen in love with, something that can spread even further.
07:52That makes sense.
07:53So in a way, Local-First has, for me, always been about sort of like
07:58aspiring to, a greater, way of building things, to ultimately serve a human,
08:06give them more agency, et cetera.
08:08And it has been a huge source of inspiration for myself, and I think this
08:12is why we did the Local-first Conference as well, to broaden that even further,
08:16to give voices to many different people.
08:19Working on interesting things, et cetera.
08:21And, for me, like the core of it has always been, inspiring makers,
08:25building software that we can do better and sync engines and data syncing
08:32in general, I think is part of that.
08:34But I think it's the.
08:36biggest bang for the buck, basically.
08:38like this is where you can use off the shelf technologies today and you get
08:42the, furthest with that technology.
08:45Like there's, to really get there fully with local-first,
08:49I think very few apps at all.
08:51Like do that full justice to all seven ideals.
08:55Like if you basically, look at it through the eyes of, Martin
08:59Kleppmann where he, like, he defines of like, is it local-first software?
09:03Yes.
09:03No.
09:04I think very few pieces of software like fully are local-first,
09:08but I think that's fine.
09:09And Sync Conf is like very much like an, encouragement of that
09:14fact and of that trade off.
09:15Like I continue to be inspired by the local-first ideals.
09:20I think it makes a lot of sense for folks to like embrace sync engines like
09:25Electric, like Jazz, like Xero, et cetera, to build better apps faster and not having
09:30the ideals stand in the way of shipping.
09:34I think that said, right, and I think.
09:37As there's also, there's also a kind of a game afoot at the moment where working
09:43out the best stack for software because, so one of the big trends that's having the
09:47software at the moment is agentic, and so the type of software that we're building
09:52is changing, but at the same time, how we're building the software is changing
09:56because you have these AI code editors and LLMs and so the sort of first generation
10:02of those has chosen stacks, like, for example, Supabase which is awesome.
10:06And you can kind of go a long way there with like a backend as a service framework
10:10and a database built in and sensible APIs.
10:14But if you have LLMs generating code with data fetching in it, then
10:20that application that is writing can quickly turn into spaghetti.
10:23and I know from speaking to a number of them that, a lot of these leading AI
10:27code editor platforms and LLM platforms are just looking ahead to go, well,
10:31what actually is the best stack for the software that we are generating?
10:35And I think.
10:36As well.
10:36That's where you come back to distinctions between, say, imperative data fetching
10:41and declarative data fetching.
10:43And a sync engine is just like the core technology to unlock your ability
10:47to move to a declarative model that allows you to move these elements of
10:51data transfer out of the LLM generated code domain, which means that A, the
10:56applications that, the LMS generate are much better, but they're also much more
11:00maintainable and more likely to be able to move into production and evolve.
11:03That makes perfect sense.
11:05And so this brings me to my next question, who would be the target
11:10audience for the conference?
11:13So if you're now listening as a typical localfirst.fm listeners,
11:17maybe you're here for the thinking, big Pie in the Sky, inspiration.
11:23And you're dreaming of a world where like all software is purely
11:27local-first, but maybe you're also here.
11:29As a React developer who is currently using some like TanStack query and
11:35just like gets by building shipping stuff quickly and you're just looking
11:40for like a bigger lever to ship stuff even more quickly and giving
11:44people a better user experience.
11:46So my take would be the latter one is exactly the right target audience.
11:52Someone who ships code like not how it looks like in three years from now.
11:57But today, and they need to pick something that doesn't make their life harder but
12:02easier, with ideally no strings attached.
12:05Yeah, I think that's what I've been telling folks in the Ink & Switch
12:08community and the local-first community and the sort of folks
12:12that come to Local-First Conf.
12:13In a way, you probably know a lot of this already.
12:17so I see it as the people who are maybe more local-first curious.
12:21They've been interested in this, they've seen the energy in the space.
12:24They hear about these practises, you know, they use Linear and
12:26they're, how is it so fast?
12:28And then they see it, you know, Linear CTO giving the talk at
12:31Local-First Conf basically saying it's because we use a sync engine.
12:33And they go, okay, well I'm interested in that, but how do I get started?
12:36Where do I get started?
12:37so what I've basically been looking for is the opportunity to invite
12:41people who are on that edge there.
12:42They maybe are a more, what would you call a mainstream developer or
12:46just someone who's, you know, focused on building software with proven
12:49technology, which is absolutely a very sensical, way to work your career.
12:54But then, you know, you wanna be aware of things that can yes, help
12:57you build better software, help you build that software faster.
13:00And as you pointed out, there are parts of the local-first stack, if
13:04you want to call it that, that are kind of ready for production today.
13:08There's other parts that are still more researchy, more
13:10speculative and aspirational.
13:11And so I think that's part of what this conference is doing is focusing on
13:14those parts that are like, Hey, you can.
13:16You can really use this today.
13:18and the evidence is a lot of the speakers we have from places
13:20like Figma and Notion and OpenAI.
13:22In fact Notion just launched their offline support based on a lot of this pioneering
13:27work by the local-first community.
13:29And we're saying, Hey, this big company has done it for their at-scale product.
13:33one of their engineers who've worked on it is gonna come and tell you about it.
13:36And this is something you can practically use.
13:38It's less about the aspiration and more about.
13:41Here's something you can go back to your job or your side projects
13:44and start using right now today.
13:46Right.
13:46And I think another way to look at this as well is like the,
13:50bar is constantly rising, right?
13:52Like in the, baseline expectation of a consumer using an app like that bar is
13:58constantly going up, like similar to how back in the days it would've been fine
14:03to have like a mostly static website.
14:06When you click, you see sort of like the forwarding in 3, 2, 1, and at
14:11some point just needed to be dynamic.
14:12It needed to be fast, and there was mobile.
14:15Every app needed to have a mobile app as well.
14:18And I think now the baseline expectations are changing that
14:22Linear has sort of like normalized.
14:25High quality expectations.
14:26So does Figma, so does Notion, et cetera.
14:28So the next generation of apps now have to like the entry barrier is now
14:34already that high quality expectation.
14:37And I think the only way how we can get there, at least that I'm aware of,
14:41is to use sync engine technologies.
14:44And I think that's another way for people to look at why they should care
14:48about this conference is like, if they want to build applications that have a
14:54competitive, rational chance of being adopted, then I think this can be a
14:59critical, component to just like make faster apps that work collaboratively
15:05since if you don't use that and you try to build collaborative apps, good luck.
15:10I think, one thing is why we wanted to, host in San Francisco is that a
15:17lot of this, new stack for agentic systems is still being figured out and
15:20it's kind of being figured out on the ground by the people who are building
15:24that software 'cause you have to almost just dive in to kind of figure
15:27out what the actual problems are.
15:29What do you need to do to make these things work?
15:32so for Sync Conf, moving from Berlin to San Francisco is partly because that's
15:36where the people building this next generation of agentic software are.
15:40And then for the people that we wanted to come to the conference.
15:45Was almost deliberately to combine product builders and some of the kind
15:50of leading product builders or people defining those stacks like Tanner
15:53Linsley from Tan Stack, for example.
15:56with developers actually building kind of new software
15:59and agentic system on the ground.
16:01And I think if we can sort of have that cross pollination from this sort of
16:05world of kind of sync engine local-first technologists and developer tooling.
16:09With practical experience of building agentic systems, then it may be
16:14that actually it's not necessarily come to the conference to sort
16:16of find out how it's all done.
16:18It's like, come to the conference and let's figure it out together
16:21That's a great point.
16:21One of the things I've loved so much about Local-first Conf last two years
16:25is it really feels like being part of a community that is in the process of
16:29figuring itself out both what it stands for, but also what the technology is gonna
16:34be and what the hard parts of the problem are, and how to, you know, monetize
16:38it or make a, make a living out of it.
16:40How it relates to the current software that exists today, whether
16:44it's sits side by side or it's more revolutionary or more incremental.
16:48All of that is, feels like it's happening very live, and we're hopefully
16:51creating a venue where that can happen.
16:53the three of us here, as well as our other co-organizers, have our own opinions
16:57about that and maybe their own directions.
16:59We'd like to see things going, but it's community and it's evolving and in an
17:03organic way that's wandering in all kinds of interesting directions and
17:07exploring interesting nooks and crannies.
17:09And I see this as a another chance, again a different place with a different,
17:13slightly different demographic of speakers, but probably also attendees.
17:17And it's another, which is sort of exploring another canyon in the idea
17:20maze, another path down that I think will give kind of fresh perspective
17:25and it's hardly exactly, it's hardly about here's how you do it.
Speakers Overview
17:31Right.
17:32and I think people are in different, parts of the spectrum of like how
17:36much they have figured this out.
17:38I think we have like some real pioneers here.
17:40We have someone from Figma coming when Figma launched, I think
17:44it launched out of the gate.
17:46Being collaborative, like this is similar to how it blew me away when
17:51Google Docs launched and I saw like that blinking cursor and I could
17:54share it with a friend and like we, we could collaboratively like that magic.
17:58I just recall it so strongly and that was maybe even stronger for Figma.
18:03Like it blew me away how nice the software was, but then I could like, share it
18:08with someone and saw their cursor.
18:10Figma has had that for now, like many, many years.
18:13I, maybe even a decade.
18:15And so Figma has certly figured out a lot of pieces there, and I think
18:20they also, they have a much richer vocabulary around that already.
18:24And they've like blogged a lot about this, with their life graph system.
18:28And so, I think they have some really, really interesting stories to share there.
18:33so I'm really looking forward to, that talk in particular.
18:37But we also hear from like many other speakers, how they're already
18:41using some of those technologies in their applications and, their stacks.
18:46So I'm, I'm curious whether there's any kind of particular
18:49talks that you're already looking forward to and what you're, what
18:52you're particularly looking for.
18:55Yeah, well, I think we mentioned Figma and Notion already.
18:57They're both such notable examples of high craft software, but also at scale,
19:03at successful scale, in our industry.
19:06And so hearing from software engineers who have been working
19:08for a long time very directly on their CRDT based or sync engine
19:12based systems is gonna be fantastic.
19:15I'm also looking forward to hearing from Sunil Pai.
19:18Who's at CloudFlare now, but he's previously was creator of Party Kit and I
19:22think of him as both a local-first og, but also someone who's very forward thinking.
19:26And I think he is gonna, speak on the building agentic apps topic.
19:30And, you know, he, he's better qualified than almost anyone I know to tell, to
19:34talk about that thing of, that we kind of touched on earlier, which is okay.
19:38Here's how, here's how users are expecting software to work now.
19:42And it turns out that the sync engine foundation that we have created already
19:46is actually a really, in addition to all these other benefits, it has, like the
19:49multiplayer, collaboration by default or the better developer experience
19:53also actually is the best foundation for doing this kind of software.
19:57I think for me, the one I'm most looking forward to is Frank
20:00McSherry from Materialized.
20:02So personally right back in the beginning, before starting Electric,
20:06when I was first digging into this space, discovering some of his work
20:10on differential data flow, timely data flow, building that into Materialize
20:15as like a streaming database product was one of the big inspirations behind
20:19starting what we are doing with Electric.
20:21And so he has personally invented and then pioneered and evolved a
20:25lot of the core underlying tech, but behind, sync technology.
20:30But also I think with the journey with Materialize, which is now quite a
20:34mature company serving larger customers.
20:37They have evolved from being a streaming analytics database, to a platform
20:44where you can also build applications on top of that streaming data.
20:48And so I think his insights both into the development of the technology.
20:52But also the use cases of the demand that's sort of pulling them towards
20:56that application development use case is really telling because rather than
21:00just being like focusing, doubling down on analytics use case, they're
21:04seeing that their customers want them to build applications on this pattern.
21:08And so I think understanding about that would be really interesting.
21:10Yeah, for sure.
21:11I remember looking into Materialize many years ago, and I've been like,
21:15blown away by like the, similar premise basically, which is to think about data
21:21more declaratively and less imperatively so that you can basically, from
21:26your data sources have like a always up-to-date view, which is kind of like
21:31what sync engines are about as well.
21:34Like, yes, Materialize started out earlier, more in the analytical space,
21:38but now like, it's kind of like a blurry line where, where like your analytical
21:43workload and your like experiments stop and where your application starts,
21:48particularly now, where you kind of have not just the high quality expectation
21:53for software in terms of craft and like being collaborative, but also for like
21:58how smart your software should be, right.
22:01I think the days are over where the expectation can stop by software
22:06being like fully deterministic and like just a hard coded functions.
22:10But now you kinda, like you, you've used chat GPT, so like why not, why
22:15shouldn't your other tool like be able.
22:18to operate in that way and fulfill your, hopes and visions in this way.
22:23And so a lot of what makes it happen is data.
22:27And I think this is like also the main theme of the conference is like,
22:32okay, to build awesome apps, we gotta figure out the data thing and we, we
22:36shouldn't do it like in the 1990s.
22:39But we should do it like how it's done in the future.
22:42And that starts right now.
22:43And I think this is a super exciting like case study and perspective
22:49through the lens of Materialize that I think we can apply on like pretty
22:54much all technological systems.
22:56can take something away from this.
22:58So very excited about this one.
23:01another one I'm personally also really excited about is having
23:04Carl Sverre, on the conference.
23:07he has in the past built a system called SQL Sync, which is a really, really
23:13interesting sync engine based on SQLite, which is like as there are multiple
23:19technologies in the local-first or sync engine space hovering around SQLite, me
23:24building also one of them I think he has a particularly interesting approach by
23:29tackling this in a very low level way.
23:32he's worked in the past on different database engines or he's like
23:37really like a distributed systems engineer through and through.
23:41And he's been working on some new systems as well called Graft, which is
23:46basically a sync engine for memory blocks.
23:50That can, for example, empower a system like SQL Sync.
23:54So I think he's cooking some really, really interesting
23:57building blocks here that other systems could be built on top of.
24:01And you can build arbitrary collaborative applications on top of this.
24:06So if you build the next Figma, maybe you build it on top of that.
24:10So also really curious to, hear more from, from Carl on this.
24:15I think with that you see some cross-fertilization between some of the
24:18concepts where, so one of things that's really interesting about Graft is a lot of
24:23sync engines are syncing logical changes where it's more like physical replication.
24:28But of course, that's kind of the same technology underpinning serverless
24:31databases, things like Neon, for example, which has obviously recently
24:36been bought by Databricks, kind of because they were brought into this
24:38lake-base kind of concept, which is almost hybrid sort of analytics.
24:43So LTP workloads for app building, which is exactly what we just
24:46discussed around Materialize.
24:48So actually some of these sort of like sync concepts are actually
24:52sort of fusing with some of the developments in cloud and analytics.
24:57But they also represent potentially very different approaches.
25:00My chat with Carl was basically he, he's kinda like, ah, the
25:04CRDT application level thing.
25:06No, no, no.
25:06Do it at the, you know, the lower physical level.
25:08And obviously there can be different technologies for different use cases.
25:12So it's not necessarily that they're in competition, but it to that point of
25:15like, what is the right way to accomplish?
25:18What we wanna accomplish in our applications.
25:20We're all figuring it out together.
25:21And here are some different people who are on the cutting edge of
25:24trying each possible way of doing it.
25:28And let's kind of compare and contrast and, learn from each other and get
25:31inspired and even compete a little bit.
25:33I think that's part of what makes it exciting.
25:36Yeah, exactly.
25:37And I think about data, it's always the ultimate, like it depends.
25:41So you're building your system, you have like your trade-offs that you should
25:45leverage and then around those trade-offs, pick the best data architecture, the best
25:50implementation, the best off-the-shelf sync engine or roll your own.
25:54And I think someone like Carl has like over the years.
25:58Deeply studied those trade-offs and then has picked one that particularly spoke
26:04to him and started going all in on this to, a level of like excellence and
26:09like focus on performance, et cetera, that I think is like hard to match.
26:14So anyone who's coming to the conference and you're trying to figure out like, how
26:18do we build maybe our own sync engine?
26:20Should we build our own sync engine?
26:22Carl is definitely a person, to, speak to.
26:25And I think that's also one of the main questions to figure out, like,
26:28Hey, should we, for our product, should we build our own sync engine?
26:32The answer might be yes, or should we use an off-the-shelf technology talking
26:36to other practitioners is it a stupid idea to build your own sync engine or
26:41in which cases is it actually necessary.
26:44So I think that's one of the, key questions that technical decision
26:48makers can find the answer for than in no other place than at this conference.
26:52I think.
26:53So I'm, pretty excited about this and another person I'm very thrilled
26:58to have is my, friend Lee Byron, who is one of the co-creators of GraphQL.
27:03This is how I got to know him and spent a lot of time with him in my past life.
27:08But these days he's working at OpenAI and he's actually shipped
27:13some notable parts of ChatGPT particularly the Canvas feature.
27:18And so the canvas feature is, like already exhibiting one of the things that you've
27:24mentioned, James, which is basically that the AI is collaborating with us humans.
27:30And so when you're using chat GPT, you're collaborating on
27:35an artifact on this canvas.
27:37And so this is, to my understanding, actually driven by a either a CRDT
27:43or OT based system, like the details.
27:46We'll get to learn at the conference talk, but this is where OpenAI had with least
27:52help shipped their own implementation of this, that powers this experience that
27:57many of us use on a day-to-day basis.
28:00And I'm really excited to hear his perspective since he is obviously a
28:05connoisseur when it comes to good data management and tasteful data management.
28:10So I'm very curious what, what he's crafted there.
28:14I think OpenAI as a product is also really interesting in showing that
28:20just this evolution of like how LLM models are being productized, where
28:25earlier generations you had a kind of fundamental model and an API, but
28:29the actual software architecture now in front of them with routing layers
28:33and complex parts of that software is just increasing and increasing.
28:38And that is a domain, which is like those are some of the
28:41most complex agentic systems.
28:42And so understanding the architecture of how to build those is then really,
28:46interesting to kind of inform how to build other systems on similar architecture.
28:51And I think as we're seeing, a lot of it is about being able to, have different
28:55parts of the system agents, services, users kept in sync with the same data.
29:00So another speaker I'm really looking forward to is you, Adam.
29:05Adam, you are giving a talk as well.
29:08No one told me about this.
29:11So what can we look forward to in your talk?
29:14Yeah, I think the way I'm thinking of it is I do think it's still
29:17important to represent kind of those local-first ideals and again, people
29:21that come to this may be from a more.
29:24How do I build something today, pragmatic perspective.
29:26Maybe it's a chance for them to also see those more aspirational things.
29:30So I think I'll probably focus on some of those local-first fundamentals
29:35for kind of, for this audience and perhaps somewhat updated to 2025.
29:39So that's probably the way I'll go.
29:41I mean, given that amazing lineup you just mentioned, and by the way,
29:44there's some we haven't even mentioned already, not to mention our CFP, which
29:47is I think, closing in a few days.
29:49I don't know how we're gonna fit it all in, but certainly, I will be just one
29:54voice among many, but I hope to again, at least be a, a chance to plant that seed
29:59for those that want to go a little deeper in some of the idealistic, aspirational,
30:03kind of long-term community pieces.
30:06Yeah.
30:06And just to go through the list that we have of like speakers
30:09that are already announced.
30:11we also have Tanner Linsley who I think, Electric actually has been
30:16collaborating with more closely lately.
30:19So at Electric we've been working with Tanner and the TanStack team on
30:23TanStack db, which is a new reactive client store built into TanStack
30:27for building applications on sync.
30:30so TanStack is a popular framework for building web and mobile apps,
30:34and it's evolved out of React Query.
30:37Originally a kind of layer for.
30:39doing some of the sort of shared boilerplates around query based
30:42apps, talking to APIs where you have query caching and validation
30:46and then mutation primitives.
30:48and Tanner and my co-founder Kyle, have both been kind of thinking about the
30:55developer experience of building on React Query and TanStack for a long while.
31:01And kind of envisaging a more local-first approach with a more comprehensive,
31:07transactional, optimistic mutation APIs as a kind of ideal way of building software.
31:13So I think like, like a lot of Tanner's perspective on this is as somebody
31:17who has great taste around software should be built and has built one of
31:21the best frameworks for doing that, and with TanStack db, the collaboration
31:25has been a sort of way to go, can we build sync into that framework in a
31:28way that still adheres to his sort of quality of developer experience?
31:33And I know that both Kyle and Tanner just we're all very excited about what we've
31:37been able to create with TanStack db.
31:38So I think he's going to be talking through some of the specifics
31:41there around what we've built.
31:43Also just his view generally around how software should be built, ideally
31:47on a sync engine architecture.
31:49Right.
31:49Yeah.
31:49I'm really excited for that.
31:51I mean, I had the honor to have Tanner on the podcast a little while ago where we
31:56talked about TanStack DB in more depth, and I think Tanner is really like, for
32:02me, representative of the target audience that I envision for the conference.
32:08Like the pragmatists with taste and the aspiration for building high quality
32:15products and doing so in a way unlike me how I'm building Overtone, which
32:20still hasn't shipped, but I'm trying to like get out the last bit of quality.
32:26And for me, it's about the journey as well, but I think TanStack as a ecosystem
32:32that's for pragmatists, that's for people who wanna ship, not tomorrow, but today.
32:36And I'm really looking forward to like seeing how we gonna
32:41get the best of both worlds.
32:42That's like pragmatic software.
32:44With a new approach of sync engine, so really excited for Tanner's
32:48contribution there as well.
32:50we also have a slightly different perspective, probably less from
32:53a practitioner's take here.
32:56we have Martin Casado from Andreessen Horowitz, who's in the past been
33:01like absolutely pivotal for many layers of the stack in like from
33:06software defined networking.
33:08these days he's a VC at Andreesen Horowitz, where he has a pretty
33:12good perspective on the larger software ecosystem and like
33:16infrastructure tools in particular.
33:18So he has been looking at sync engines for quite a while and that broader space.
33:24And so you're gonna also hear his take on that ecosystem, which
33:29I'm really excited about as well.
33:31At Local-First Conf, we always try to make sure we represent at least a little bit
33:34the business side, whether it's bringing up companies who have been successful
33:38at this, like Ditto or someone who can speak about the, essentially the different
33:43business models and monetization.
33:44'cause that's definitely one of the biggest questions people have is that
33:48SaaS and cloud and kind of data hoarding you might call it, has been such an
33:53incredible business model in the last decade or so, and it's just really
33:56clear how you make money from that.
33:58but people have more maybe concerns or reservations about Local-First.
34:02I think in the end, actually the business model looks pretty similar to SaaS.
34:05Realistically.
34:06but like, so having someone come in who can come at it from a hardnosed
34:10investor perspective, again, they're less, in this case, they're less
34:13motivated by, I want a better developer experience or by any kind of idealism,
34:17but more just thinking where is a good place to make money, where successful,
34:21the next generation of successful software business is gonna be built.
34:25Yeah, so there will be more talks, but I don't think they're yet announced.
34:31And there's still an open CFP as well, which may be this your last
34:35chance to try to speak at the conference by applying, there will
34:40be a selection committee, et cetera.
34:42we already got way more submissions than we have space for.
34:45But that being said, please take your chance to apply as I think
34:50there is a quite an interesting range of different topics that should
34:54be represented at the conference.
34:56So, there's more to talk about, but that's probably at a separate time.
35:01So maybe.
35:02rounding out.
35:03there's still some tickets available to my knowledge.
35:07so for people interested coming to the conference, check out the conference
35:11website on syncconf.dev, where I think the early bird tickets are already sold out.
35:18But they're still the normal bird and late bird, and they're, I think they're, the
35:22birds are flying out pretty quickly, so you should get your chance to pick yours.
35:28and yeah, with that, maybe some last words from James and Adam on
35:33what you're looking forward most.
35:35Yeah, I'll just add onto the call to action there to say, you know, not
35:38just submit your talk if you want, or buy a ticket if you want to come.
35:41But also, if you know someone that, again, is kind of in that demographic
35:45of local-first curious, but has never really taken the plunge you wanna
35:49invite them, you know, maybe this is the right opportunity for them to come
35:53into this world we all love so much.
35:56and I'll also note that I think we're almost full on sponsors, but
35:59we maybe have one more space left.
36:01So if you wanna do that, that's a possibility as well.
36:04You can just email us.
36:05yeah, and as for your question of, yeah, what am I looking forward to
36:09most, that's, that's really tough.
36:10I'll tell you what I'm not looking forward to is that Johannes, typically
36:14you and I have done the blocking out of the schedule and figuring out the time
36:18slots and the breaks and all that stuff and all of these great speakers and
36:22cramming all of this into one day in a way that also leaves room for hallway
36:26track and, you know, breathing space to think about what you've just learned.
36:30That is a challenge I am not looking forward to.
36:33But once we once we conquer that little milestone, I'll be very much looking
36:38forward to attending and I think just like a local-first comp being there.
36:42Not only hearing the talks, but the ideas that are provoked from that
36:46and hearing what people are building and how the talks kind of change
36:50or inspire their, change, their perspective or inspire them on that.
36:54I just have learned so much at our conferences these last two
36:57years, and I feel like this one.
36:59That is in a new place with a slightly different type of person is also gonna
37:03be a similar kind of, you know, mind blow emoji, expand the perspective new,
37:08new way to think about this space.
37:10That even though I've been thinking about it for over a decade somehow,
37:14I always feel like I learned something new at these conferences.
37:16I think you kinda looking at a space like this, you get a sense of just the
37:20kind of timing of the ideas emerging.
37:23And certainly from my perspective, I just see people both talking
37:28about sync more on social media.
37:30I see a lot of predictions that this is the key technology for the next
37:34years or more, and I suspect like this is a one day conference, right?
37:39It's a kind of maximum 300 people.
37:41And my hope, and what I kind of think is that we'll look back on it in
37:4510 years time and see this as just one of the seminal conferences that
37:48actually the group of people who were there all then went on to do amazing
37:52things and you kind of look back and it was a privilege to be there.
37:55So I think that's the kind of event that we're trying to create.
37:59and it kind of just feels like the timing is right there.
38:02It's such an exciting time in software development and I think that this is
38:05just gonna be one of the most, sort of special occasions to be at that
38:09we'll look back on fondly in time.
Outro
38:12I couldn't agree more.
38:14Did we actually say actually when it is November 12th, 2025 in San Francisco
38:22and the website is syncconf.dev.
38:24That's great.
38:25Awesome.
38:26Well, thank you so much for coming on the show to discuss this, and I'm looking
38:31forward to seeing the two of you at the conference in November in San Francisco.
38:37But I also hope to see many of our listeners at the conference.
38:42Can't wait to reconnect with this community.
38:45Awesome.
38:46All right.
38:46See you.
38:46See
38:47you then.
38:48Thank you for listening to the localfirst.fm podcast.
38:50If you've enjoyed this episode and haven't done so already, please
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39:04A special thanks again to Jazz for supporting this podcast.