Back at React Summit in New York, KBall & Nick sat down with Tom Occhino & Shruti Kapoor for more fascinating conversations.

Tom Occhino, a key figure in React’s history at Facebook (now Meta), reveals the origin story of React, which began when an ads engineer presented a revolutionary approach to web UI rendering. The discussion extends to React’s evolution through Next.js.

Then, Shruti Kapoor breaks down React 19’s major features, including React Server Components (RSC), the new compiler implementation, and enhanced APIs that promise to streamline development workflows.

Vercel CPO, Tom Occhino, joins Jerod for a one-on-one covering React & Next’s past, present & future. We discuss the birth of React, Tom’s move to Vercel, deploying Next apps to non-Vercel hosts, React as the next jQuery, the viability of Web Components, Vercel customers getting surprise bills & so much more.