One small Conf Combo, please

If you have two keynotes, like for ship AI, both need to practice. It's not just the CEO, I think.

If you're going to put yourself on stage, you've got to do the prep. Said by two guys who didn't really come prepared for today's podcast with any topics except for this. This will be a quick episode. The funny thing is we almost missed something that has been like a huge part of our past, Next.js Conf. And they did some things really nice this year. They did some other things. I mean, we went in depth on them last year. There was a lot to say. I don't think some of that bears repeating. Some of it was fixed. Some of it wasn't. So let's get into it. I think the first thing that was a big improvement was actually the keynotes of Next.js Conf. And then I said keynotes because they did not only Next.js Conf. They also had their AI day. What did they call the AI day?

Ship AI.

Ship AI. And so that one was tacked on basically back-to-back conferences. And one was all community Next.js, some Vercel-focused. And then the other was all AI and Vercel-focused again. But, you know, all from that angle.

I personally love that. Like, I actually would encourage other companies to do that if they want to do community events. Because in the past, Vercel had Next.js Conf. And then six months later, they had Vercel Ship. Then they had to get people to one or the other. People had to come twice, etc. And with this, they can actually leverage people who want to learn about Vercel. Like, since you're already going to Next.js Conf. Just come to the Vercel one as well. It's the next day. And they can also get a lot of customers who maybe go to a Vercel AI. As a prize to go to Next.js Conf. So I think it's really nice. And they also do maybe only one party. They do one or two speaker dinners. But they can get the speakers from Next.js Conf. With the Vercel AI together. So then the next speakers are actually next to the customer speakers in the Ship AI. So I love it. I love the idea. And I personally think more companies should do that.

Yeah. And traditionally, Next.js Conf. Has been a one-day conference. So this makes it more worth it. Especially now that they're much more focused on in-person. Which is clear. And I wanted to make that comment. That this thing used to get a massive online audience. And that's a thing. I criticized them for this last year. And I'll make the same critique. They had this massive audience. They could get, you know, tens of thousands of people concurrently watching this. And then 100,000 or 200,000 people to watch the recordings of the keynote in the days and weeks following. That's not happening anymore. You know, now they're not even breaking 10,000 views on these videos. And the concurrent views are way down. The online, like, Twitter presence. The people talking about it. But it's way, way down. And I think that's a huge loss. It's a curious thing. We talked in depth. We can link in this episode, last year's episode. Where we kind of already covered how they could fix this. How it was different in the past. But it's a hard problem. And I know they've had a bunch of executive changes. And focus shifts. And, you know, maybe they just don't care about that type of audience anymore. And it's really about the in-person audience.

I think they should care about both. But I do agree they had almost nobody online watching it. And then what I do think they did well is. Their video had very few viewers. So they actually deleted that video. And then they are now doing edits to the keynote that actually was live. And they are uploading a new video. So that will start from zero. Which they didn't get that many viewers. So I think it's okay. And on the other side, they actually get to do some edits and stuff like that. Which didn't happen. But it is sad that there was nothing. Not that many views on Twitter and on different places. What I did like about this comp is what they did with the badges. I saw a lot of people talking about that.

I'll hold you there. Because just another thing on the YouTube videos. They turned comments off on the keynotes. Which is a crazy move. Like that thing just kills your engagement. Sometimes that happens when you have a streamer. Like if you're using some sort of service or agency to stream your event. You got to make sure they let the comments be on. You got to make sure that you select that this is not content for kids. Because sometimes people select that thinking it'll get broader reach. But actually it narrows your reach. Because YouTube wants to be very careful with what it shows to kids. And they don't allow comments on videos meant for kids. And there's just a bunch of...

I didn't know that.

Yeah, there's just a bunch of stuff there. You know, you got to have all that. The point of posting to YouTube rather than like hosting your own like fancy video. Which we did on one edition of Next.js Conf. But the reason you post to a platform like YouTube. Is so that the algorithm can find new people to see your content. And so if you go against... If you turn off signals that the algorithm traditionally uses. To decide if more people want to see your content. Like comments. Then the algorithm can't show it to more people. It doesn't have the signal. And that's the whole point of Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn. It's to let the algorithm spread the word beyond the normal reach of your people.

What I was going to say, I'm going to change topics. There was one thing I did see a lot of social in social. Which is the badges. So many people posted their badges from both Next.js Conf and Ship AI. I don't know if you saw them. But they basically did custom badges based on how you looked. So you went there. And then they would print a badge based on your photo. Probably using AI. And then that I actually think is a fantastic collectively. I saw a lot of people like showing off theirs on Twitter. The only one that didn't show it off was shadcn, of course. Who is still Anon. And had their Anon picture of Morty. But other than that, that I think was very ingenious. Because people will like it. And they will remember it and keep it. And I think you could even take it an extra mile. Where what if you do one of your kid? So instead of printing a badge for me, I print it for my kid. And it's like, okay, I can take something to my kid bag. And I'll see it all the time. I think it's a good way for people to actually save a badge when people do not. Because it's something that's focused on them and very custom.

Yeah. I mean, these are cool. I'm looking at some right now. It's cool that you got a different one for each day. And they were styled differently. And it's cool because the advanced play for most conferences is if they can put your profile picture on there at all. You know, if they can put your GitHub or your Twitter photo on. That's an advanced play. This took it to another level. So that is cool. It's a nice collectible. And it does build things like that build loyalty over time. Like, it makes you want to keep going back.

Exactly. Like, it's about the experiences and what you do. I didn't see that many tweets and this time I didn't go. So I don't know exactly how the conference went per se. But other than that, what I also thought was cool was this time they actually got sponsors for the official after party. Which, by the way, the venue was incredible. It was like a church. So you went there and it was like a church. The sponsors were Braintrust. I'm highlighting my customer now. And Browserbase as well. And what I think they did actually really well is they had a photo booth. And the photo booth for every picture had Vercel, Braintrust, and Browserbase in each picture. So I saw a bunch of pictures being shared on Twitter that actually had the three brands in there as well. But I like the idea of you have partners, not only for the event and the booth, but actually for fun activities as well. Like the after party. And then other companies like Clerk, which is also a customer, did a hackathon, which they always do, around Next. So I think if you're at our company and you want to do something around the events, those are something I think smart to do as well.

Yeah, agreed. Yeah. I don't think I completed my thought earlier on like the keynotes were better, but the intros were much, much better. Guillermo was much more comfortable on stage, or at least more to the point. And recognizing that, you know, he wasn't just up there to chat because that's what he did last year for the first few minutes. It was kind of chit-chat and talking about memes. And, you know, it kind of took him a minute to get to the point. But they did a good job with the keynotes this year. And I don't really have much else to say. I will say it had to have been hard for G to do two very different keynotes back-to-back day after day. So that is one thing to note if you're a founder. If you want to do back-to-back types of events or conferences like this and have two very different topics, the rehearsal, it's got to be intense. And you got to be ready for that. I do think we're going to see more of these back-to-back type of events, though.

I think so. I loved it. So if I can have any influence, I would say yes. But I don't know. We'll see if we can make it happen. G is very good, I think, at keynotes. So he has a lot of prep. That's why I think he was really good. In this case, what I heard from others is that Malte's keynote, the CTO, wasn't as good as G. And I think it's very likely he didn't practice as much and stuff like that. Which is also another thing to think about, which is like if you have two keynotes, like for ship AI, both need to practice. It's not just the CEO, I think.

Yeah. Did you hear it was his delivery that wasn't as good or the actual content?

Yes.

Okay. No. Yeah, I saw that. And Malte's not as first on stage. And yeah, it takes so much more practice than you want it to be. And it's hard when you're also someone who's like building the thing to actually get up, like to make the time for the practice in addition to making sure that the thing is going to ship. But it's critical. Like if you're going to put yourself on stage, you've got to do the prep.

Okay. Maybe.

Said by two guys who didn't really come prepared for today's podcast with any topics except for this.

I will say something that you know that Vercel is a luminary in the industry is there's always chatter about what they ship right after the conference. This time it was useWorkflow. If you were on Twitter, you probably saw the useWorkflow. People loved it. People hated it. But whatever they ship, it's always in some way controversial, which I think is good for them because people were like, oh, it's fantastic. It's like dark magic. But I love it. It's so easy. And others were like, no, it's dark magic. It's impossible to debug and stuff like that. What is interesting is basically their new product, useWorkflow, is competing with Ingest, Temporal, Upstash, who were their partners. And I probably imagine that some of their partners are a bit pissed on like, hey, you're shipping the things that we had before. So that will be also interesting to see.

Yeah, very interesting. No further comments.

Okay. I think that's it for today. We're doing a short episode. There wasn't that many things happening on DevTools marketing outside of this, I think. I did see a lot of selfies on Twitter. I know if you saw them, like your growth, Radix UI. It was a fun week. And also in Argentina, Milei one. So very happy about it as well. But yeah, I don't know that.

We've got a big.

It was a pleasure as usual.

We've got a big special announcement coming probably before the next episode is published. Hopefully by the time this is published. So that'll be fun.

Should be fun.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.