by mtodd
ZOMG ROFLscale Rubyconf OR Why you missed out.
We’re still recovering from RubyConf (specifically the 10k, Jonathan’s first ever, has yet to release its iron grip on his calves), but we have had some time to reflect on what value we at Highgroove extracted from the conference.
What you missed
There’s something to be said for face to face interactions. For those of you
unfortunate enough to miss RubyConf, you missed the most valuable part of the
conference. Sure, there are links to slides to hold you over until the ever
awesome Confreaks post the videos . But, sitting at your computer desk, you
don’t get to continue the conversation once the video finishes. The
conversation begins in the presentation but continues outside of it. The
asynchronous communication of blogs, tweets and the friction of IM cannot
compare to the tight, agile, serendipitous feedback loop of conversations.
Passion was dripping from the speakers and attendees alike, drowning
conversations in enthusiasm about cool toys and awesome tools and the frequent
opportunities to contribute back. It’s so evident when you’re watching excellent
talks like Aaron
Patterson’s
where he poignantly and artfully shares technical insight, humorous anecdotes,
bits of culture, and sage
wisdom.
That’s just something you often miss in the tweets and commits from across the globe.
It’s evident that the passion driving our community really pushes the quality of
our work and makes the conference attendees, general Rubyists and Highgroove’s expert developers, excited about sharing what we find and how we triumph!
What we gained
Eric Hodel and Nathaniel Talbott caught us up to speed on Rdoc / Rubygems and
RubyConf respectively. Daniel Jackoway impressed with his work on Ruboto and
Nick Sieger’s talk on Warbler is immediately useful!
Other highlights include Eleanor McHugh and Elise Huard discussing concurrency
in Ruby as well as Jonathan Dahl’s fantastic parallels between strong writing
and strong code.
A few key quotes from Jonathan Dahl’s talk (here’s a copy of the same talk from an earlier conference").
“Marketing is about obscuring rational thought.”
“Vague language and bad writing are a key tool to propaganda.”
“Bad writing is hard to understand, but also buggy.”
Finally, Tom Preston-Warner’s talk almost had
us standing up and walking out to get stuff done. Now that’s a super inspirational talk.
And that sums up rubyconf as a whole: super inspirational.
What inspired you?
This post was written by Jonathan Wallace and Matt Todd. Chris Kelly also wrote up his reflections! Read his blog post.