The WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America 2026 has come to a close. After several intense days in San José, we left with many new contacts and valuable technical discussions. We also left with a very positive impression of the conference format, which has now made its way from Europe to the United States.

For Text Control, participating in the first North American edition was especially important because the United States is our largest market and has been an integral part of our company for years. With our U.S. headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, we don't approach this market from a distance. We work here, meet customers here, and attend conferences here. We also continuously learn from the developers and organizations building software for the U.S. market.

Bringing the WeAreDevelopers Concept to North America

We had attended WeAreDevelopers events in Europe before, so we were familiar with the concept and energy of the conference. Bringing that format to North America was ambitious, and it was great to see a new, large developer conference establish itself in the United States.

For us, the event started with the Tech Leaders Night on day zero, where around 300 technology leaders gathered before the main conference began. It was an excellent opportunity to meet people in a smaller setting, exchange ideas about current technology trends, and discuss how software development is changing with the integration of AI into almost every development workflow.

Over the following days, our booth became the center of many more conversations on the exhibition floor.

What Developers Wanted to Talk About

At first, document processing may seem like a very specific area, but once we start talking to developers, it quickly becomes clear how many applications depend on sophisticated document functionality.

At our booth, we demonstrated TX Text Control's document editing, generation, processing, reporting, electronic signatures, and AI-assisted workflows. Many discussions began with seemingly simple requirements, such as creating a PDF or editing a DOCX document in a browser. However, they quickly evolved into much deeper conversations about document automation, template management, compliance, signatures, data extraction, and deployment architectures.

This is precisely why mature document technology is important. Developers generally do not want to build and maintain their own DOCX import engine, PDF renderer, document layout system, electronic signature implementation, or reporting engine. They want these capabilities to be reliable building blocks within their applications.

AI Is Changing the Role of Components

One of the clearest themes at the conference was, unsurprisingly, AI. However, the conversations were less about adding another generic chatbot and much more about how AI can become useful inside real applications.

For document workflows, that means combining AI with structured and deterministic document technology. An AI model can summarize a contract, analyze clauses, suggest changes, extract information, or generate content, but the application still needs reliable technology to load the document, understand its structure, manipulate it, preserve formatting, generate a compliant PDF, or apply an electronic signature.

This is also changing how developers look at software components. Many simple UI components that were once purchased as libraries can now be generated surprisingly quickly with modern development tools and AI. Deep functionality is different. Complex document processing engines, highly integrated libraries, and mature ecosystems represent decades of engineering, edge cases, compatibility work, testing, and domain knowledge.

Rather than making technologies such as TX Text Control less relevant, AI is making them more useful because developers can combine intelligent workflows with proven document infrastructure instead of trying to recreate that infrastructure themselves.

Build the Application, Not the Document Engine

This was also reflected in conversations with many developers who were evaluating alternatives to existing document processing products or considering whether to develop the necessary functionality internally.

Building something yourself can initially seem appealing, especially when the initial requirements are small. However, the real cost usually becomes apparent later on when additional file formats, layout compatibility, complex tables, headers and footers, form fields, signatures, PDF standards, accessibility requirements, platform differences, and new versions of Microsoft Word need to be supported.

For many organizations, investing in a perpetual commercial component is less expensive than continuously building and maintaining this infrastructure internally. The development team can focus on the application's business logic and rely on a specialized technology stack for document processing.

This philosophy also informs our licensing approach. While much of the software market continues to move toward recurring subscriptions and usage-based pricing, we strongly believe in perpetual developer licenses and predictable deployment models.

A Lot of Activity at Booth 624

Of course, a developer conference is about more than just technical architecture discussions.

Throughout the event, Booth 624 had a steady stream of visitors. We handed out our California-themed giveaways, demonstrated our technology, and concluded the conference with our PlayStation 5 raffle. Most importantly, however, the booth gave us the opportunity to speak with developers directly about their current projects and how document technology fits into their applications.

These discussions are extremely valuable to us because they often lead to product ideas, improvements to our documentation, new examples, and sometimes entirely new approaches to features we already provide.

The U.S. Developer Conference Landscape Is Growing

Another major developer conference in the United States would be good for the ecosystem. While there are many specialized conferences, there is still room for large events that bring together developers, architects, technology leaders, platform vendors, and software companies from a variety of fields.

WeAreDevelopers has established a recognizable format in Europe, so it was exciting to see that concept arrive in the United States. The first event always provides opportunities to learn and grow, and the foundation is already in place. We are looking forward to seeing how the North American edition evolves.

For us, the conference confirmed something even more important: Developers continue to build sophisticated applications in which documents remain a fundamental part of business processes. The combination of mature document technology and modern AI creates entirely new possibilities.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth, joined a demo, entered the raffle, asked us a technical question, or came by for a chat.

We look forward to seeing you at the next conference, which is next week for us at BASTA! in Mainz, Germany.