Faris Aziz is an engineer, international speaker, and workshop instructor specializing in React, Next.js, and resilient system design. He has worked in startups from founding teams to scaling organizations and has led teams of over 10 engineers. As a front-end expert, Faris has built and scaled systems used by millions, working with companies like Smallpdf, Fiit, Discovery, and Navro. He focuses on performance, observability, and maintainability, ensuring robust and user-centric applications. Passionate about sharing knowledge, he co-organizes ZurichJS and speaks at global conferences. In his free time, he contributes to web tools like Raycast and ponders why builds fail everywhere except his machine.
Talks by Faris Aziz 🎤
Rebuilding the Soul of the ZurichJS Platform: Media-First Frontends with ImageKit
We love this community. ZurichJS is all about the people, the moments, the vibe. And Enrique, our photographer, captures it beautifully. We’ve got hundreds of incredible photos and videos from past meetups—but for months, we didn’t have a good way to show them off. We wanted to, we just didn’t have the time to build something that would do it justice. Then I went to CityJS London and saw a live demo from the ImageKit team. They dropped into a Next.js project and had real-time, responsive, optimized media flowing in minutes. I had a chat with them right after. I asked, “Could I get this running for ZurichJS in a weekend?” They said yes—and we did it. In this talk, I’ll walk through: - Why our old static image setup wasn’t cutting it - What limitations we hit with Next.js asset handling - How we rebuilt the ZurichJS media experience using ImageKit - What worked, what didn’t, and what surprised us And the best part? The ImageKit team will join us live at the end for a quick-fire 5-minute Q&A, so you can pick their brains directly and see what’s coming next.
Building Raycast Extensions: Fast, Useful, and Actually Fun
Raycast lets you turn your workflow into keyboard-driven magic. In this quick talk, I’ll walk through how I built the official Smallpdf extension in a night: - What makes a good Raycast extension - The basics of the Raycast API - How to build, test, and publish one - Lessons learned from shipping a real tool
ZurichJS Platform: Looking Ahead
The ZurichJS platform is evolving. We’ve been working on new features to make things smoother, smarter and a bit more fun. In this lightning talk, I’ll give a quick peek at where things are headed and what’s coming next.
From Traditional Dev to the ZurichJS platform in 2 Hours: My Accidental Journey into 'Vibe Coding'
What's all the hype with 'Vibe Coding'? How did it help me ship ZurichJS at lightning speed ⚡ In this lightning talk, I'll share how I created the entire ZurichJS platform in under 2 hours using AI assistance. Turns out you don't need to be in a Silicon Valley garage with lo-fi beats playing to achieve the mystical "vibe coding" state! I'll walk through my journey from skeptic to convert as I built a full-featured platform including: - Next.js with those fancy animations everyone loves 💫 - Backend infrastructure that actually works - Sanity CMS integration (because content is still king) - SEO-optimized pages (Google still exists in the vibe coding era) - Analytics tracking (because what even happened if you didn't track it?) No fancy prompts or "I whispered to the AI and magic happened" stories, just honest reflections on how my development approach evolved and what I learned by embracing this trend to get pragmatic with shipping things fast. For developers wondering if "vibe coding" is just another buzzword or actually useful, come hear from someone who's shipped real code both ways! 🚀
Solving Real World Data Fetching Challenges with Next.js and TanStack Query: A Pragmatic Case Study
We’ll cover real-life examples of how to handle complex data fetching scenarios using modern web tools.
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