The NFL runs on tight deadlines. Every kickoff and Super Bowl demands that millions of fans get flawless live video, stats, and fantasy features, whether they’re on iPhones, Xboxes, or connected TVs.
In this episode of React Universe On Air, Mike Grabowski talks with Michael Blanchard (Director of Engineering at the NFL), about how React Native became the backbone of this high-pressure, multi-platform ecosystem.
Michael shares his journey from web engineer to leading NFL’s engineering teams across nfl.com, three mobile apps, a cross-platform video player, and a suite of connected TV apps. Together with Mike, he explores the NFL’s migration strategy, the transition from Haul/Webpack to Metro and Expo, and the cultural shifts that helped merge web and native engineers into one collaborative team.
You’ll learn:
➡️ Why the NFL went full Greenfield (twice)
➡️ How NFL+ shaped their second rewrite
➡️ Lessons from moving from Haul/Webpack to Metro
➡️ How Expo SDKs gradually replaced community libraries
➡️ How GitHub Actions + EAS Build reshaped their CI/CD pipeline
➡️ Strategies for handling 20–30 PRs daily in a monorepo
➡️ How React Native powers mobile, web, and multiple connected TVs
➡️ What cultural shifts enabled true cross-platform collaboration
Catch more React Universe On Air episodes 🎧 https://clstk.com/4gp8Cw5
Sign up for our newsletter ✉️ https://clstk.com/4mfmRof
Follow us on X 🐦 https://x.com/callstackio
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to the React Universe
01:35 Meet Michael Blanchard from NFL
03:03 NFL's digital presence and platforms
04:24 React Native in NFL's mobile apps
08:32 How React spread across all platforms
11:47 Collaboration between web and native teams
18:11 Technical decisions regarding different platforms
23:48 V2 of NFL's flagship app
25:14 Choosing migration strategy
30:10 Maintaining more product versions
34:33 Adopting Expo
42:10 Modernizing CI/CD
46:48 Team structure and workflow at NFL
53:29 Final thoughts
What really happens when React Native’s core contributors gather behind closed doors?
In this episode of React Universe On Air, recorded live at React Universe Conf 2025, host Łukasz Chludziński sits down with Joel Arvidsson, Jay Meistrich, and Thibault Malbranche to unpack the hottest debates and wisest insights from the Core Contributor Summit.
They dive into:
➡️ How the cooperation between consultancies, big organizations like Meta or Microsoft, and OSS contributors looks like
➡️ 2025 as the “year of stability” for React Native
➡️ The promise (and pain) of React Native for desktop apps
➡️ Flipper’s decline and new community-driven DevTools
➡️ Whether React Native 1.0 is just a marketing label or a true milestone
➡️ How agencies and individuals balance open source with client work
➡️ Practical advice for engineers who want to contribute and join the conversation
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to the React Universe
01:21 Meet our guests: Thibault Malbranche, Joel Arvidsson, Jay Meistrich
02:33 What is Core Contributor Summit
04:02 Meta vs. community usage of React Native
07:19 Year of stability & tooling challenges
09:00 Surprise session: React Native for Desktop
16:10 Concrete outcomes vs. planting seeds
21:02 Open Source dynamics & collaboration
27:30 React Native 1.0
33:45 Future directions & getting involved
36:50 Final thoughts
Catch more React Universe On Air episodes 🎧 https://clstk.com/423vF9D
Sign up for our newsletter ✉️ https://clstk.com/3Kb23kM
Follow us on X 🐦 https://x.com/callstackio
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Observability & OpenTelemetry in React Native
Many React Native apps ship without full observability. The result? Blind spots in performance, crashes, and user behavior once your app is in the wild.
In this episode of React Universe On Air, Łukasz Chludziński sits down with Jonathan Munz (Senior Software Engineer at Embrace) and Adam Horodyski (React Native Expert at Callstack) to unpack how OpenTelemetry can bring structure and clarity to mobile monitoring.
They break down why mobile observability is harder than observability on backend, what the OTLP protocol enables, and how to instrument React Native apps without locking into a single vendor. You’ll also hear how community-driven tooling like React Native OpenTelemetry and the Embrace React Native SDK can simplify setup and improve data portability.
You’ll learn:
➡️ How observability and OpenTelemetry work together
➡️ The 3 core OpenTelemetry signal types for mobile
➡️ Why mobile instrumentation is more complex than backend telemetry
➡️ How OTLP improves interoperability between tools
➡️ Where auto-instrumentation is still missing in React Native
➡️ The role of Embrace and open-source libraries in reducing setup overhead
Check out episode resources on our website 📚 https://clstk.com/4104nAF
Catch more React Universe On Air episodes 🎧 https://clstk.com/45EWnYe
Monitor what matters in your React Native app with Callstack’s help 🤝 https://clstk.com/3HoM3KI
Sign up for our newsletter ✉️ https://www.callstack.com/newsletter
Follow us on X 🐦 https://x.com/callstackio
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to the React Universe
01:07 Meet our guests
03:07 Defining observability and OpenTelemetry
04:32 Signals in observability
11:57 Challenges with observability in React & React Native
16:04 Standardization and OpenTelemetry protocol
18:08 Embrace and Open Telemetry
21:29 Future of OpenTelemetry in mobile
27:23 Exploring React Native OpenTelemetry
29:54 Community involvement in OpenTelemetry
37:34 Real observability in React Native
46:41 Future of React Native observability
50:40 Hey, listeners, here’s what we want you to do
54:46 Conclusion and final thoughts
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From 30min to 3min Build Times With React Native Enterprise Framework
What if you could skip most native builds—and still ship confidently? In this episode of React Universe On Air, we explore how the React Native Enterprise Framework (RNEF) helps large teams dramatically reduce build times and streamline development at scale.
Our guest Michał Pierzchała, Principal Engineer at Callstack, shares how RNEF was built to solve real-world bottlenecks in enterprise React Native projects. Alongside him, Łukasz Chludziński discusses his experience testing the framework in a live production environment, where build times dropped from 35 minutes to just 3.
What you'll learn:
- How RNEF slashes native build times with CI-based caching
- Ways to adopt the framework incrementally—no full rewrite required
- How brownfield support lets you drop React Native into native apps easily
- What makes RNEF different from Expo and Community CLI
- Real-world savings and improved developer-QA workflows
Check out episode resources on our website 📚 https://clstk.com/4e5OL3W
Explore React Native Enterprise Framework ✨ https://clstk.com/4kAt7ap
Catch more React Universe On Air episodes 🎧 https://clstk.com/3SJRk1G
Get 20x faster builds on your CI in less than a week with our help 👉 https://clstk.com/3ZWJ9Tq
Sign up for our New York meetup in June 2025 👉 https://clstk.com/4kEyG7C
Follow us on X 🐦 https://x.com/callstackio
00:00 Welcome to the React Universe
01:07 Host & guest introductions
02:40 Project overview: React Native Enterprise Framework
04:04 Challenges in large repositories
04:50 Testing and build time optimization
07:31 Building RNEF on a real-life use case
12:37 Integrating RNEF POC to the project
15:00 Incremental adoption mindset
21:42 What it all has to do with React Native Community CLI
26:05 Optimizing build process with smart caching
44:06 Seamless collaboration between devs & QA
47:28 Brownfield projects with RNEF
55:50 Where RNEF stands in the ecosystem
59:08 What does it mean to be a React Native framework?
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You Don’t Need a Rewrite, You Need React Native Brownfield | React Universe On Air Coffee Talk #27
Is rewriting your native app really the only way to go cross-platform?
In this Coffee Talk episode, we explore how React Native Brownfield offers a smarter path forward.
Łukasz Chludziński invites Oskar Kwaśniewski and Burak Güner—who work directly on React Native Core and brownfield tooling—to discuss how recent advances in React Native have made brownfield integration far more viable, stable, and scalable.
You’ll learn:
➡️ Why brownfield isn’t what it used to be (goodbye, brittle bridging)
➡️ How `RootViewFactory` and `ReactNativeFactory` APIs simplify setup
➡️ What’s new in React Native Brownfield 1.0.0
➡️ How to keep your architecture clean while integrating React Native
➡️ What this means for modern native stacks like SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose—and future-facing platforms like visionOS
Whether you’re maintaining a legacy app or building for what's next, this episode gives you a blueprint for hybrid success.
Explore React Native Brownfield 🙌 https://github.com/callstack/react-native-brownfield
Check out episode resources on our website 📚 https://bit.ly/3ESW3Lf
Catch more React Universe On Air episodes 🎧 https://bit.ly/44A0q8q
Get your React Universe Conf 2025 tickets 🎟 https://hubs.li/Q03l-47N0
Sign up for our newsletter ✉️ https://bit.ly/3H2xsE6
Follow us on X 🐦 https://x.com/callstackio
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome to the React Universe
02:00 Meet our guests: Oskar & Burak
02:50 Let’s talk brownfield app development
03:37 Craziest brownfield setups our guests have seen
08:19 Greenfield vs. brownfield React Native
14:14 How we used to approach brownfield development
18:20 Callstack’s React Native Brownfield
23:30 RootView Factory & React Native Factory
28:50 New Features in React Native Brownfield 1.0
35:35 Sharing data between native and JavaScript
41:00 How about using different React Native versions
43:30 Cost of complexity
47:00 Learn more and get in touch with our guests
React Universe On Air is your go-to podcast about building cross-platform apps with React and React Native, featuring practical lessons, forward-looking ideas, and talks with industry leaders.
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