Jed Watson
Co-founder of Thinkmill and OSS developer. Creator of Keystatic, Keystone, react-select, and classnames.
Specialties
- Front-end Engineering,
- DevOps,
- API Platforms,
- Content Management Systems,
- React,
- GraphQL
Find Jed on
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Meet Keystatic
Thinkmill founder Jed Watson introduced React Sydney to Keystatic our new file-based content management system that makes Markdown, JSON and YAML content in your codebase editable by humans.
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The Thinkmill Learning Loop
How the work we do in open source and client services drives our craft to new levels.
· 2 min readtalk
Single source of truth development
Jed demonstrates an end-to-end project using Prisma, Keystone, GraphQL, TypeScript and Next.js where everything is derived from a single source of truth for the schema and types.
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We’re really proud to see so much adoption of our OSS tools
Our ability to do great work is inseparable from the communities we’re a part of. Seeing our open-source projects used by so many people remains a constant source of inspiration.
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The State of Headless CMS
Jed joined a panel of experts to discusses the current state of Headless CMS and what lies over the horizon.
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Introducing KeystoneJS, the CMS & API Platform for Prisma
Jed’s workshop on how to build a polling system into a blog with Keystone, NextJs, GraphQL & Prisma.
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Keystone, GraphQL & Prisma
Jed discusses the new Keystone 6 at Prisma’s Korea Meetup
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Next-gen CMS & GraphQL API with Keystone & Prisma
Jed shared our freshly minted Keystone 6 with the world at Prisma Day conference in July 2021. His talk is a great way learn how Keystones combination of features and flexibility set it apart from other backend frameworks and Content Management Systems
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ReactConf AU, one year later
We put on Australia’s first ever React Conf in February 2020. You won’t believe what happened next!
· 5 min readtalk
The Value of Open Source
Jed wraps up ReactConf AU by discussing the sustainability of open source, the value OSS creates for us all individually and as a collective, and then proposes some small steps we can all take to ensure the future of our vibrant community.
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Building React Select
Jed talks about how he accidentally built the most popular React component, experienced death by a hundred props, got buried under hundreds of PRs, invented a component extension API, learned that styles are also a function of state, influenced some major design systems and finally got some sleep.
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Rebuilding React-Select
Jed discusses the upcoming React Select 2 and his experiences working in open source.
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Content Management & Node.js
Jed Watson talks about Content Management Systems in Node.js.
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Going Mobile with React
Jed shares what we’ve learned approaching the unique challenges of building mobile web apps with React.
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Making the case for Progressive Javascript
I’m crediting Mark Dalgleish for this one, but I want to make the case because it’s the best alternative I’ve heard to “Isomorphic Javascript”.
· 3 min readarticle
My first year of Open Source Commitment and KeystoneJS
If you want to do something, do it every day. This is the story of my first year writing open-source software.
· 5 min read
More posts from other Thinkmill voices
Designing beyond the median user
For seventy years software has shipped one shape to every user. The confluence of design systems, headless platforms, and agent-native exposure has coalesced to make that constraint optional. A retrospective of the median-user problem and the new architectural horizon now opening.
· 10 min readWhat engineering teams owe for the AI speed boost
AI-assisted development genuinely accelerated engineering teams, but many organisations stopped at the velocity gains and ignored the accumulating debt. The costs: code nobody fully understands, weakened code review culture, bloated dependency trees, and architectural decisions made without real judgement about tradeoffs...
· 4 min readA behavioural framework for the monsters in your team
The AI in Design 2026 report captures a profession mid-mutation. The "Frankenjob" label the coverage put on it misses the seam where the real work happens.
· 5 min read
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