Conference Mania! Part I: RubyConf 2007
In the last couple of weeks I have attended both RubyConf 2007 and Future of Web Design (which was a whirlwind travel schedule in which Gist spent only a mere 25 hours in New York from landing to take off the next day). Here is part 1…
RubyConf 2007
RubyConf was great! There was such a great turnout and some really great people there! I love the community feel of RubyConf, you can truly feel that people are there for their love of Ruby and not because they get paid to be there. I felt that the Ruby Central guys did a great job not only lining up speakers, but ensuring that there was plenty of time to talk in the halls and not just run from session to session.
This year RubyConf had a multi-track format, which apparently they haven’t used in the past (this was my first RubyConf). I felt that it was managed well but really missed out on some great talks (Luckily Matt Heidemann was there with me so we split up to try to catch them all). My biggest criticism was that the titles of the talks were very misleading and there was little to no information on what the speakers were actually going to be talking about; that made it even more difficult to choose.
Hanging out with some of the caboosers after the sessions was some great fun, it’s always great hanging out with super smart people who love what they do.
To keep this brief, I just have to say that it was really cool to hear Matz speak on the future of Ruby, but I have to say that Evan Phoenix stole the show with his Rubinius talk. I’ve seen Evan speak before and I must say I really like his speaking style, very relaxed, humorous, entertaining, but wonderfully informational. Not informational in the lame stats and figures that I care little about, but informational in explaining the hows and whys, and why I should care about his project.
I’ll try to post some more specific details at a later date regarding some of the presentations I saw.