Reflections on Effect Days 2025
Now that the dust has settled (and our group conference chat has gone quiet 🙂), I wanted to share a few thoughts from the organizer side of Effect Days, or, as some like to call it, the Effect Days experience.
This was our second edition. Last year had a kind of spontaneity and magic you don’t always get to recreate, the energy of a first-time gathering, the excitement of new connections, the feeling that something was starting. What emerged, though, was something deeper, more grounded, more thoughtful, and in many ways, more meaningful.
One thing we heard a lot after Effect Days 2024 in Vienna was that people wished the event had been longer, so this year, we extended the event to a full three days. We spent three days in the same venue by the sea in Livorno, Tuscany 🇮🇹. That choice ended up being one of the things people appreciated most, not just for the logistics but also because it gave the event a sense of continuity and a more relaxed vibe.
This year’s talks reflected the evolution of the Effect ecosystem and community. The talks felt more mature, more real-world, more tested, and more curious. We saw firsthand how Effect is being adopted in production by companies like MasterClass, Vercel, Zendesk, DXOS, Markpropmt, ExpandAI, and others — and even discovered more teams building with it.
We had sessions exploring how Effect powers AI systems at scale and the architecture of Effect Cluster, among others. We’re incredibly grateful to all the speakers for the time and seriousness they brought to preparing their talks.
The event was as much about connection as it was about content. What stood out just as much were the side conversations, discussions about local meetups, ideas for content, and questions over dinner that kept going until late into the night.
Effect Days isn’t a big conference, and that’s intentional. It’s about depth over scale. This year, the energy felt quieter but more intense. It felt like a room full of people who truly care about the craft of software, about building better tools, about Effect, and about the ecosystem we’re trying to grow together.
As an organizer, you always worry about what could go wrong. And plenty (almost) did. 😅 But what carried this event, once again, was the community. The attendees, the speakers, the Effect team, and everyone who showed up with energy, openness, and curiosity.
And like last year, we heard from multiple people that this was the best conference they’d been to! This is not something we take for granted.
One moment that stuck with me personally was during the chess simulation on Community Day. The room fell into a deep, focused silence, and you could feel the concentration and quiet respect. There was something aesthetically powerful about it, a calm intensity that stood out in contrast to the buzz of the rest of the event. That’s the kind of presence that made the event feel even more alive.
I got to speak to a lot of people during those three days, and I kept hearing the same thing: “You have to do this again”.
We don’t know yet what next year will look like. But if you were there this year, thank you for making this one what it was. If you’d like to stay connected or share your own reflections, the Effect Discord is always open! We’d love to hear from you.