Sri Lanka’s tech community celebrated a major milestone at the nation’s first-ever official Next.js event. The Next.js Conf Colombo Watch Party, held on October 22nd at Trace Expert City, Colombo, was co-hosted by Founderflow and CeylonCash and saw an incredible turnout of over 150 developers, founders, and industry leaders.
The event, which placed Colombo on the global map alongside London and Berlin, quickly gained international recognition. Pauline Narvas, a Senior Community Manager at Vercel (creators of Next.js), praised the grassroots effort on X (formerly Twitter), stating: “I’m so impressed by what community can do. Kudos to the Colombo community for self-organising this nextjs Watch Party. Incredible turnout!”
Beyond the live-streamed keynote from San Francisco, attendees were treated to a fully interactive community experience. This included an engaging food networking session hosted by Pizza DAO, alongside quizzes and giveaways powered by ecosystem partners Perplexity AI, GDG Sri Lanka, ByBit, and STEMLink.
The event served as a powerful launchpad for two major, long-term initiatives; with the launch of Official Sri Lankan Next.js Community and Next.js SaaS Sprint v1.0: a high-intensity, 16-day, four-sprint challenge designed to empower early-stage developers to become real-world founders, moving from idea to revenue-generating startups.
Dumidu Thabrew, Founder of Founderflow, a private, vetted, noise-free community platform for Sri Lanka’s Tech Ecosystem, commented on the event’s strategic importance: “This event was a powerful demonstration of what happens when you empower a passionate community. We didn’t just want to watch the future; we wanted to give our builders the tools to create it. The launch of the official community and the Next.js SaaS Sprint are our next steps in turning this incredible energy into tangible, real-world businesses founded and built in Sri Lanka.”
CeylonCash, Sri Lanka’s largest Web3 and fintech community, joined the initiative as co-host to bridge the gap between Web2 developers and the decentralized internet. Through its developer initiatives, educational events, and partnerships with global platforms like Binance, Bybit, and Tether, CeylonCash continues to position Sri Lanka as a frontier for open digital innovation.
Nisal Chandrasekara, Founder of Ceylon Cash, the Sri Lankan pioneer in Web3, emphasized the event’s broader significance. “The future belongs to ecosystems that converge. This collaboration between Next.js, Founderflow, and CeylonCash wasn’t just a watch party, it’s a signal that Sri Lanka’s developer energy is ready for the world stage. We’ve always believed that innovation scales faster when communities unite, and this is exactly that moment for our island.”
The Next.js Conf Colombo Watch Party has set a new benchmark for community-led tech events in Sri Lanka, successfully bridging the gap between local talent and global tech leaders.
