Our first-ever Bubble Developer Summit proved what we already knew: Bubble Developers are more than a collection of individuals. It’s a community — a movement. One that’s changing the world.
If you missed it — or just need to relive the magic — you can rewatch the whole event below. We’ve also recapped the biggest news from the event, broken out by topics — including handy timestamps to help you jump to relevant points in the stream.
1. Kicking things off (01:00)
"We’re working towards a world where no code software is the rule, not the exception." — Josh Haas, Co-Founder and CEO, Bubble
Co-CEOs Josh and Emmanuel were thrilled to welcome developers of all backgrounds and experience levels to our first-ever Developer Summit. These stats only scratch the surface of what the Bubble Developer community is all about, but they’re pretty cool all the same:
They also reminded us how much the technology that Bubble Developers create matters:
- Bubblers have built massive businesses
- Bubblers are building technology that disrupts industries and changes lives
- Bubblers are carving out new opportunities as freelancers, agency members, and founders of new agencies.
- Bubblers are even gathering for international coworking trips!
For every programmer out there, there are a hundred people who can think like a programmer, but don’t have the training. Bubble’s mission is to enable all of these people to participate in the global economy as creators, not just consumers, of digital software.
2. Introducing agency profiles (06:58)
"We're excited to announce how developers, freelancers, and agencies can showcase, work and attract clients through agency profiles." — Josh Haas, Co-Founder and CEO, Bubble
In order to help Bubble Developers attract and win more clients — or to help you find a great Bubble Developer for your business or project — we launched new agency profile pages. They now live in our agency directory, a centralized, trustworthy place for Bubble Developers and potential clients to connect.
Anyone signed up for an Agency plan (whether you’re a freelancer or a team of many) can create an agency profile. These profiles give you more control over how you market your company on Bubble, and they help potential clients understand how you work.
Use your agency profile to showcase exactly what clients want to see:
- The primary services you offer
- Examples of apps you’ve built
- Quick stats we compile on your community contributions
- Customer reviews, integrated with existing reviews you may already have Clutch
- Links to external pages like your company site or personal portfolio.
Clients can also directly send you an RFP (request for proposal) directly from your profile, if they want, instead of having to go through the RFP portal. Agency profiles are the first of a few ideas we have to give developers more love on official Bubble channels. Stay tuned!
3. The official Bubble Developer Certification (10:53)
"The whole point of creating an official certification from us is to increase trust in the ecosystem." — Emmanuel Straschnov, Co-Founder and CEO, Bubble
For years, we’ve been asked by developers and founders for a way to vet qualified Bubble builders, and for a universal standard for what it means to be a qualified, professional Bubble Developer. Clients want to know they’re hiring someone skilled and trustworthy, and devs want to be recognized for their knowledge and effort.
Announcing Bubble Developer Certification:
- A new exam for professional Bubble Developers
- Certification will be challenging! Community feedback said the exam should accurately measure the high bar for professional Bubble Developers. We agree!
- Each certification will last one year. We’ll be regularly updating the course to reflect new functionality and features.
- We’re rolling certification out in batches over the coming weeks. The waitlist is open today.
We’re taking the responsibility of creating a certification very seriously, and will keep investing in it. The Bubble Developer Certification is the new universal standard for what it means to be an expert Bubble Developer, and it will help Bubble Developers stand out from the crowd to attract and win clients.
Read more about how the exam is structured and what it covers in our explainer blog post, and visit the certification page to sign up for the waitlist.
4. Agency tiers (20:30)
"Your success is our success, so let’s do something big together." — Emmanuel Straschnov, Co-Founder and CEO, Bubble
We want to make it easier for engaged, high-quality agencies to stand out. Introducing agency tiers, the most sought-after program requested in our last set of agency roundtables:
- Tiers recognize exceptional agencies and freelancers, and they help all developers differentiate to win more business, regardless of size.
- There are 3 tiers: gold, silver, bronze, and all active agencies have been given a tier to start. (New agencies will be placed in their first tier later this fall.)
- In 2023, the tiers are based on value generated in the Bubble ecosystem. In 2024, they’ll also account for certification and client satisfaction.
No matter your tier, we are helping all developers in three main areas: lead generation, business growth, and closer collaboration with Bubble. Bubble’s new partnerships team will be more active with agencies, we’re rolling out new enablement assets and co-marketing opportunities to help you grow, and we’re introducing dedicated management for our top tier partners.
5. Bubble roadmap and platform investments (29:07)
VP of Product Allen Yang gave an update on three big areas we’re working on:
Enterprise Readiness
Enterprise clients often have specific, rigorous security standards and feature requirements. We’re excited about the progress we’ve made, and we’re working hard on more improvements to security, compliance, and performance for enterprise-grade apps (which we also know will benefit all Bubble apps).
- Single Sign-On (SSO) will enter beta testing in July. A big step toward unlocking an upmarket audience for Bubble Developers building for clients!
- Bubble’s SOC 2 report is imminent. In the same way that SSO will help us better serve enterprise clients, SOC 2 will also open the door for Bubble Developers to win larger customers.
- We’re also excited about our page load performance and bulk data manipulation improvements. Soon, our landing page load performance and working with much larger amounts of data will be much faster.
"Bubble will always be an extensible platform with our API connector and plugins, but our goal here is for Bubble's database to be the best on the market." — Allen Yang, VP of Product, Bubble
Developer Experience (35:23)
One thing you’ve told us a lot is that as applications grow and mature, managing that complexity becomes increasingly challenging on Bubble. The revamped version control feature was a big step, and we’re actively working on two more:
- Reusable elements (aka reusable components): You’ll soon be able to specify properties on reusable elements, and use them as dynamic data sources for any elements within the reusable, including appearance settings. Reusables will be more flexible, making it easier to build modularly.
- Logic updates: We’re improving the modularity of logical expressions, exploring concepts like allowing custom events to return data. Along those lines, we’re also working on the idea of a temporary local variable, and the much-requested idea of loops.
Bubble + AI (36:19)
We believe that AI and no-code are force multipliers for each other: Whatever effort you put in, these technologies multiply, helping more founders and developers achieve 10x results. AI and no-code are also both becoming more widespread. This means more people can turn their ideas into reality faster and at less cost than ever before, which allows for rapid iteration and testing. And this is why we’re investing in AI.
- We're excited to be working with the Microsoft team to launch an Azure AI plugin that will make it even easier for Bubble Developers to harness the intersection of these technologies.
- Back in March, Josh announced our early AI work. We're already seeing promising results for creating conversational interfaces for building no-code apps. And we want to push AI even beyond that. We are making headway on our research and exploration here, and we’re excited to be able to announce more AI progress soon!
"We're making progress towards you being able to say what kind of app or page you want, and Bubble using AI to create it. Like, ‘Build me a CRM for dog walking in Bubble.’" — Allen Yang, VP of Product, Bubble
6. Community developer awards (46:42)
Finally, we wrapped things up by celebrating a few all-star Bubble Developers, as nominated by the larger community!
- Bubble Mentor: Renato Asse, founder of the Sem Codar course and community
- Bubble Trailblazers: Victor Nihoul & Wesley Wasielewski, co-founders of Flusk
- Bubble Champion: Thibault Marty, founder of Ottho
These folks are also the first ones to have tickets and travel accommodations to this October’s BubbleCon! Stay tuned for more info soon, but for now, save the date: October 24–25, 2023.
Whether you caught the summit live or are catching up right now, thank you for being part of the Bubble community! 💙
