Vercel Ship

I remember seeing photos of the Vercel Ship event last year and definitely feeling the FOMO. This year Vercel invited Torc out to Ship. I had the honor of representing us and documenting the whole thing for the rest of my favorite tech community (spoiler - it’s y’all!). 🥰

We all know Vercel has great products (I personally use their hosting and v0 services daily) but this event made me appreciate their marketing - it is nothing short of genius.

Upon arrival there were folks handing out I ▲ NYC bags of bagels as well as iced coffees. After security you were taken up an elevator to registration where you picked up your fancy name badge and a sleek gift with Evil Rabbit’s branding on it, along with the tote bag, t-shirt, stickers, and hat. I was also able to procure a ▲ coffee mug. :)

The entire facility is decked out in black - even the sponsor booths are uniform in the Vercel color scheme. Then there’s the main hall: the chandeliers glided up and down between sessions, only to tuck themselves away when there was activity on the stage.

Every speaker I saw included a fun demo or meaningful announcement, from the ability to run any Dockerfile on Vercel to Auth0’s live demo about identity and authorization for AI agents where Chris Sev, Director of Developer Relations, used the Vercel AI SDK to book travel to Japan for the entire audience. 😅

You could plan your day around the talks, attend workshops, or mingle in the open areas where even more sponsors, snacks, and coffee were set up. I attended a few talks in the morning and after lunch then had fun chatting with people, planning collabs (whatup AWS-Torc workshop!), and handing out swag - the mechanical switch fidgets are always a big hit. 🥳

I’m excited to explore using Vercel’s new open-source framework, eve, to build a call-tracking tool for my family’s volunteer fire department that cuts out all the extra patient info they don’t require.

If there’s a Vercel Ship coming to a city near you, I’d definitely recommend attending. Hopefully I can make it back next year and hear about all the new and fun features that are in store!