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