Announcing Relay Meetup, a global, remote meetup for Relay, the GraphQL client
Tags: graphql, javascript, react, relay
Published: 2020-10-05 18:10:54

I'm very excited to announce [RelayMeetup.com](https://relaymeetup.com) - a remote meetup dedicated to Relay, the GraphQL client. 

Every month we'll host an online meetup full of interesting and hands-on content on Relay. Each meetup will feature one or more _talks_, and a _theme_. 
* The talks can be about anything as long as it has some connection to Relay. Presentations, interviews, live demo/coding sessions - anything goes!
* The themes will cover aspects of using Relay hands-on. We'll focus on practical knowledge and real life examples - bringing as actionable content as we can.

We want to create a friendly, laid back and natural space where anyone curious about Relay can feel at home. We'll stream live on YouTube, and everyone is welcome to either join live or watch the recorded event afterwards.

## The time for Relay is now
People who spend enough time to learn Relay in depth tend to fall in love with it. There's truly no alternative in the GraphQL client space that offers what Relay offers. And, with the [upcoming hook APIs](https://relay.dev/docs/en/experimental/a-guided-tour-of-relay), fully leveraging suspense and concurrent mode, Relay is as relevant as ever.

The Relay community is vibrant and full of activity. But it's still small. Adoption isn't where at least I believe it deserves to be. That's because of a number of reasons. Let's sum it up by saying that Relay isn't as accessible to get started with as the alternatives, and not as easy to find good learning material on. This meetup is a first step towards helping tackling that.

## Helping to grow the community
I've been involved with the Relay community for a long time now. In addition to using Relay both professionally and personally since it was released, I've built a [bunch of projects and experiments related to Relay](https://github.com/zth?tab=repositories&q=relay&type=source), written a number of [articles on Relay](https://dev.to/zth/relay-the-graphql-client-that-wants-to-do-the-dirty-work-for-you-55kd) and contributed some to Relay itself.

I'm also a partner at the Swedish consultancy [Arizon](https://arizon.se/consultancy). We love Relay at Arizon, and we'd like to give back to the community somehow. This meetup is one way of doing that. Relay solves the problems we've been facing in UI development in a way that makes sense, is scalable, and intuitive. We'd love for more people to find their way to Relay, and experience what we've experienced.

## 21st of October - our first meetup
Our first meetup will be held at the 21st of October at 19:00 GMT+2 ([check your timezone here](https://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/?t=19%3A00&tz=Stockholm)), streamed on YouTube ([subscribe to the channel here](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxj4aSkoqMQ_aLTo-lieGOQ)), and available for anyone to watch both live and afterwards.

Here's what we'll cover in this first meetup.

### Using Relay in production
The first meetup will feature [Eloy Durán](https://twitter.com/alloy), former Director of Engineering at [Artsy](https://www.artsy.net). Artsy has been using Relay for a long time, and we'll talk about Eloy's and Artsy's experience of using Relay in production over the years.

### Updating the cache after mutations
Our theme for the evening is _updating the cache after mutations_. We'll dive into strategies for updating the cache after mutations in simple as well as more complex scenarios. 

This segment will feature [Jan Kassens](https://www.twitter.com/kassens) from the Relay core team at Facebook, as well as Eloy again. Together we'll discuss various approaches for updating the cache, as well as how both Facebook and Artsy, two very different applications with different needs, approach these problems.

Check out the event on [our website here](https://relaymeetup.com/meetups/1), the scheduled [YouTube stream here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdFVc28G_-A), and the [Meetup.com event here](https://www.meetup.com/relay-meetup/events/273730799/).

## Get involved!
Again, I'm very excited to finally be able to do something like this in the Relay community. Relay is a passion of mine, and I fully believe that the value of Relay now, with suspense and concurrent mode incoming, is greater than ever. There hasn't been a better and more exciting time to get into Relay.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you're interested in getting involved. Here's a few things we'd love to see:

- There's a lot of businesses and people using Relay outside of Facebook, and we'd like to involve the industry as much as possible. Is your company using Relay? Come on the meetup and talk about your experience!
- Have something interesting around Relay to present? Or have a cool demo of something related to Relay you'd like to show? Have a vague feeling that you have something interesting to show or tell, but don't know just how yet? Reach out to us and we'll figure it out together!

Finally, if you want to stay current with what we're up to, don't forget to [follow us on Twitter](https://twitter.com/relaymeetup) and [join our Meetup.com group](https://www.meetup.com/relay-meetup/) if you're on there.

Looking forward to seeing you the 21st of October for a fun evening full of interesting content on Relay!