Do you love Slack? We do too. We’re happy to introduce the new Firebase Slack community to discuss all things Firebase!

Slack has been a great tool for community members to help one another. The Angular and iOS Slack communities have grown to over 4,000 strong each, and we hope we can do the same.

What will we be discussing?

When you want to learn a foreign language, the best way is to surround yourself with those who speak it.

The Firebase Slack community is a place to learn from other Firebase developers. Such as Firebase GDEs (Google Developer Experts), active Github contributors to libraries like AngularFire, and even Firebase team members (I’ll be there!).

The Slack community is a place to discuss app ideas, data structure questions, feature requests, guidance on problems, and feedback about Firebase in general. Oh, and we love GIFs too.

Code of Conduct

Our goal is to gather a diverse group to represent the community. In doing so, we expect community members to treat each other kindly and respectfully. We have a complete Code of Conduct that can be viewed here.

How do I join?

To join, click here to go to the inviter website. Once you input your email, you’ll get a confirmation to join in your inbox. (Make sure to check for spam if you don’t see it).

We hope to see you there soon.

Get ready for a whole new series of screencasts. Today we're excited to announce the launch of our new YouTube series, Firecasts!

Firecasts is a hands on YouTube series for Firebase developers. Tune in each week and learn how to build realtime apps on Android, iOS, and the Web.

All Platforms

While the first episode is on Android, Firecasts is platform agnostic. We have episodes queued for iOS and the Web as well. Tune in each week for a new screencast. And, if you want to see something specifically covered...

#AskFirebase

Your input matters. If you want to see a topic covered, tweet at us using the #AskFirebase hashtag. We'll be answering those questions in future videos.

At Firebase, we believe the best way to learn is by doing. We're excited to hear what you want to learn.

You've likely already heard that Parse will be shutting down. It brings us no joy in seeing them close their doors. While Parse was a competitor, they were also a part of the developer tools community and ecosystem. We were both working towards a common goal: empowering developers to create great apps.

I’m writing this post to reassure current and future Firebase developers that we are working full steam ahead on realizing that goal.

Firebase joined Google fifteen months ago, and the experience has been fantastic. We’ve had a chance to work closely with many products inside Google Cloud and across the company with teams like Play. We're in the process of moving our account system to Google accounts so we can deeply integrate with Google's family of developer products.

Also, we’ve been busy:

• 
  We introduced lower and simpler pricing
  


• Our iOS & Android SDKs received persistent offline support


• Mobile development with Firebase became much easier with FirebaseUI


• AngularFire moved out of beta into 1.0


• Another acquisition, Divshot, joined us to work on Firebase Hosting


• Our JVM client was tailored to fit Google AppEngine


• We released an early preview of Unity3D support


• We collaborated with Udacity to launch a Firebase course

These are just a few examples.

For those of you who have asked about migration from Parse Core to the Firebase Realtime Database: there isn’t currently an easy migration path. The data models and APIs are quite different. We recommend moving to Google Cloud by running Parse’s server on App Engine. To do so, follow this guide.

Though we’re sad to see Parse shut down, it does not change our roadmap. Firebase and Google are committed to radically changing how app development is done, and we’re working hard towards that goal.

We have big plans for the future.

The third annual Static Showdown hackathon is coming February 20-21, 2016 -- and this year it's presented by Firebase!

What is it?

The Static Showdown is a worldwide virtual competition where teams of up to four have 48 hours to build a web app with one catch: entries must be built without any custom server-side code. That means 100% HTML, JS, CSS, and off-the-shelf back-end services like the Firebase Database.

Where do I sign up?!

Registration has just opened, so get some friends together and build something awesome!

We're excited to continue the Static Showdown tradition started by Divshot. Past years have seen everything from music synthesizers to social networks, and we can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.