I think it hit me late Saturday night, standing next to $600 of fine Whiskey while watching a Keynote presentation on the subtle distinctions in Regional variations, that geeks wear their passions on their breast pocket, sometimes right next to their MiFi card. Geek culture is a rhythm that, if audible to your ears, will drive your soul to seek out fellow dancers.
eRubyCon 2009, latest edition of EdgeCase’s Enterprise Ruby Convention, isn’t really about racking up the largest number of talks and demonstrations on the most number possible parallel track, like some conferences I could name. One track, one room and at most 6 speakers in a day, it is less of a conference and more of a Gathering.
In the Middle Ages, Knights would travel great distances to compete in Tournaments. These competitions were rarely violent or hostile, instead they were almost civil in their mutual respect and admiration. These were the world’s Elite fighters and they were there to train with, learn from and socialize among the best martial artisans of the era. Many would come to watch them demonstrate their techniques, to pay tribute and to be enriched by the experience. These were the twelfth century predecessor to the modern tech community conference.
I’ll cop to pushing that analogy a bit in the corners and around the middle, but if you were at eRubyCon this year, you saw masters in the Ruby space shine.
The talks leaned this year to what Charlie Nutter calls ‘introspection’ as many discussed the human condition. Since Ruby’s dorm roommate is Agile, we heard many speakers talk about how their Agile teams work and interact. The first day, Neil Ford talked about his work on ‘The largest Ruby on Rails project’ and how fit two dozen agile minded, pair programming souls into a conference room and made it really really work. Leon Gersing and Charlie Baker also had an agile case study on the GAP’s Ruby work and their adoption of agile practices. The first day you came away thinking all you ever really needed to know about Agile programming you learned in Kindergarten: communication, shared space, the buddy system and nap time.
Day two kicked off a revolution, in a way, as Jim Holmes and Glenn Vangerberg bookended the day with talks on leadership and Judgement. These discussions were powerful enough to inspire the creation of a Enterprise Tool Bucket List that highlights all the ‘industry changing’ technologies that salesforces have sold CEOs on over the years, only to completely collapse a couple years later. The idea being that any sizable technology decision being made on promises and hype should be held against this list and shot.
ScotchFest was the highlight of the weekend, where really smart people gather around and let inhibition reducing chemicals talk for them. It was a bit like hanging out at a block party in Cambridge, MA next to the MIT campus. Ill post some of the less incriminating video, the rest will be sent anonymously to concerned parties with ransom notes.
Day three was a more technical course kicked off by the Very Impressive Randall Thomas, a title he earned by mere fact of hosting the Whiskey party the night before followed by a 9am talk on Functional Programming that wasn’t even slightly boring. (incidentally, this same title was held last year by Charlie Nutter)
eRubyCon is one of the good things going on in the Mid West that makes this community work. I encourage anyone with an interest in Ruby and a good sense of humor to look me up next year, I will gladly give you the nickel tour.