Local-first Has a Branding Problem

Talk in english

Is “React on the Server, Postgres on the Client” the new normal? Well, probably not for 99% of you. The truth is that local-first software development hasn’t really caught on yet. And hearing about Linear and Figma as the de facto references is getting kind of old. Why haven’t local-first architectures become more popular? I fundamentally believe that local-first has a branding problem. The term “local-first” itself drives many of us towards an instinctive repulse — “Oh no, not that fad again”, or “Why would I even need local-first?“.

In this talk, I’ll make my case for why local-first has a branding problem, and how we should be thinking about it (hint: local-first is about much more than local first). I’ll walk through some examples with both Zero and ElectricSQL, so we won’t end up in a theoretical snoozefest.