Recap of my RailsConf 2007 Experience

May 22, 2007 @ 12:53 PM | posted by carmelyne

(last updated: 06.19.07)

Image Credit: Dave Thomas' Website



What did I like most about the conference?

That would have to be the keynotes.

DHH didn't announce anything life changing but I think it's a challenge to continue exploring the beauty of REST and the simplicity with a great productivity feel of the whole Rails on Ruby architecture. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Avi Bryant who I'd teasingly call now the Adam Brody of computing. It was great to hear Avi's perspective.

Tim Bray's reality check that Java, PHP, .NET will not go away and will be there to stay. That's fine. As a developer, I do prefer that because if we're all doing Rails then it would be plain silly. Imagine the 5 sec maintenance and off to the beach skit by RailsEnvy? I'd get no beach spot! Tim also mentioned that there were no women in the conference or perhaps the lack of. As a male geek in the development world, would you encourage your daughters to enter it? I would like to hear your thoughts on that.

Koz and Buck. That was really cool to see them refactor and why they recommend the different things they recommend. I am a big fan of The Rails Way blog.

I love Cyndi Mitchell's final slide on the enterprise during the keynote "Bring Ruby to the Enterprise. Not the Other Way 'Round." She's an excellent speaker and I met her briefly at Rock Bottom during one of the party nights.

Dave Thomas is The Uber! I wanted to yell I love you Dave! when he briefly mentions rubychix.com and turned around and showed their very own white male version site. I wish someone would send me my pic from the rubychix site cause I never got the chance to see the pic.

Ze! That keynote made me cry and laugh at the same time. I actually checked the safety cards and was looking for the bags on the plane on my way home to Chicago.

Lastly, RailsEnvy's series of "Hi, I'm Ruby on Rails".

What were my favorite sessions?

Spam I Have Known by Jim Weirich and Memcaching Rails by Chris Wanstrath.

What were my favorite BOF sessions?

Hackety Hack with Snackety Snack. Err was that the right title? It was engaging. All the thoughts and suggestions were so brilliant that I wish _why heard them all.

Cool people I met?

I can't even begin to enumerate them all. There were a TON of wonderful people. Let's do the reverse instead. Who were the people I wish I got the chance to approach, say hi to and chat with for a bit? Those would be Damon Clinkscales, Eric Hodel for sharing his Coda notes with me, Marcel, Tobias, Koz and Jamis of the core team, PragDave, Mike Clark and Ze!

Coolest thing during the conference

As of today, $33,000 was raised for charity by attendees. Now how cool is that?

Getting female tees from Peepcode from Geoffrey Grosenbach!!!

Sitting down with other female developers in room 201 on Sunday to participate in the DevChix podcast interview by Geoffrey. That was really cool. I'm looking forward to its release.

Updated: 05/22/2007

Forgot Chad Fowler's and Joey Devilla's ode to DHH via "I'm A Noob".



[ Last updated: June 19, 2007 @ 03:12 PM ]

Filed in Ruby / Rails, Thoughts


7 Responses to...
“Recap of my RailsConf 2007 Experience”

  1. jerry richardson:

    What kind of Coda notes? Like tips for using it with rails? Do tell...

    Posted: May 22nd, 2007 at 01:13 PM
  2. carmelyne:

    @jerry, the Coda(http://www.panic.com/coda/) notes were in reference to conference notes we took simultaneously via the Coda Collaboration feature. There were at least 4 of us collaborating initially. We'd all be in different rooms but I can see their notes while they type it (and vice versa) so it felt like I was in 2-3 sessions at the same time.

    Posted: May 22nd, 2007 at 01:30 PM
  3. Eric Hodel:

    Actually, I was using SubEthaEdit. I've checked out Coda, but I'm no good at making things pretty, so I doubt I'll buy it. Its nice that the two editors can share with each other, though.

    Posted: May 23rd, 2007 at 01:29 AM
  4. carmelyne:

    @Eric - Hi. Ah thats very interesting. It would be amazing to use that power of collaboration for documentation. Wouldn't it be neat to use during a local user group meeting? We can spend 15 mins to collaborate in writing documentation. Incremental 15 mins here and there from various user groups would equal to a very well documented API.

    Posted: May 23rd, 2007 at 11:38 AM
  5. Edgar Garcia:

    As a "male geek" I think that I would totally support a career in programming for my future daughter. I'd at least hope that aside from her career, she knows how to program in several languages. I feel that by being able to program, your mind gets wired a bit differently, then in other fields and would think that it greatly enhances someone's character and personality.

    Posted: May 23rd, 2007 at 02:04 PM
  6. Eric Hodel:

    I use SEE often for writing documentation, notes, talk proposals and so-on. Its one of my favorite tools.

    Posted: May 23rd, 2007 at 08:00 PM
  7. carmelyne:

    @edgar - it can be a very intimidating environment to be in. I've learned to develop a certain kind of tolerance and humorous approach to it.

    @eric - I've not tried SEE. Maybe I'll grab a trial if they have one. So far I'm doing Coda + Textmate. Coda because of the design/view aspect. Coda, to me, is like having Textmate + iTerm + Dreamweaver + Collaboration together. I know some find that too much.

    Posted: May 24th, 2007 at 12:18 PM

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Snippets of 06/24/07

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# Starts with 'A'..'Z' Paginate / model
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