A two-day look at what’s next for React and Next.js
Next.js Conf 2022 kicks off on October 25 at 10:30am PT, with nearly 90,000 virtual attendees expected to tune in. The lineup features more than 25 speakers covering how teams build, iterate, and scale with Next.js—from architecture modernization to delivering better user experiences.
The closing keynote: from cloud to edge
This year’s final session is a fireside chat between Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch and Kelsey Hightower, Principal Engineer at Google, centered on the future of the Web. Their conversation will explore how the application stack is shifting from traditional cloud infrastructure toward edge computing, and what that means for developers building the next generation of web applications.
Scaling content delivery with hybrid architectures
Several sessions focus on how teams are using Next.js to handle large-scale content distribution. RapidAPI’s VP of DevRel Ahmad Awais will walk through his approach to pairing WordPress with Next.js and Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) to serve over one million developers. The talk demonstrates how combining a CMS with Next.js can provide both content flexibility and static-site performance.
Another session looks at globally distributed applications from the data layer up. MongoDB’s talk covers how its developer data platform works with Next.js and Vercel, using a document model and built-in services to simplify the development workflow while keeping applications responsive for distributed audiences.
Full-stack patterns and design systems
A set of talks examines how Next.js fits into different tech stacks, often pushing well beyond its role as a frontend framework. Theo Browne, CEO of Ping, makes the case that Next.js functions as a backend framework, highlighting its server-side capabilities and full-stack potential.
Amy Dutton from ZEAL will demonstrate how Next.js and Prisma lower the barrier for frontend developers moving into full-stack work. Her session covers foundational concepts like API routes and schemas, showing how the pairing enables rapid feature development without abandoning the familiarity of a React workflow.
Discord software engineer Tru Narla will walk through building a design system directly in Next.js with Tailwind CSS. She’ll explain how to translate Figma components into typed React components, preserve type safety, and produce UI that is both accessible and easily customizable.
Performance-first experimentation
A final thread of the conference addresses a common tension: adding experimentation tooling often drags down performance. Tinybird Frontend Engineer Raquel Yuste will share how her team constructed a full analytics SaaS in three weeks using Vercel Edge Middleware and Edge Functions. The session shows how to build a privacy-first analytics tracker and dashboard, and how others can extend the open-source starter kit for their own use.
Builder.io Co-Founder and CEO Steve Sewell tackles how to integrate third-party services without paying a performance penalty. His talk covers loading scripts with Next.js’s Script component, when to use it, and how to keep data fresh while still taking advantage of static rendering.
The full agenda, including the complete list of speakers, is available on the Next.js Conf site. Registration remains open, and the live event begins at 10:30am PT on October 25.
