The SquizLog

RailsConf, Rails 2.1 and OSDC

In the context of my professional life as a software developer, I feel it's time I wrote about a couple of recent events and preparations for another one later in the year.

RailsConf

What an experience! The sessions, the chance to meet so many knowledge and enthusiastic Rails developers, the socialising, living in Portland for a week, shopping at Powell's City of Books, the sightseeing in the Columbia River Gorge and Seattle; all of these were highlights of my recent trip to RailsConf in Portland, Oregon.

As far as the sessions at the conference go, there were so many excellent talks I don't intend to review them all here but I will mention a few. Kent Beck's keynote was a highlight; I love his passion for helping people create better software and making the practice of creating software a better human experience. The Dialog Concerning the Two Chief Modelling Systems, presented in the form of a play by Jim Weirich, Joe O'Brien and Chris Nelson was a superb blend of entertainment and education. Other presentations that imparted useful knowledge included David Chelimsky's Integration Testing with RSpec's Story Runner, Aaron Bedra's De-Railing: Smashing the Rails Stack and Chad Pytel's Advanced Active Record Techniques: Best Practice Refactoring. And on a light-hearted note, Oh the Fail I've Known by Adam Keys was very entertaining.

The final session, which involved core Rails members Michael Koziarski, Rick Olson, Jeremy Kemper and David Heinemeier Hansson fielding questions about Rails from the audience, left me with a keen desire to attend RailsConf 2009.

What's new in Rails 2.1?

Last Wednesday's Sydney Rails meetup gave the opportunity for Martin Stannard and myself to relive RailsConf as we shared our reflections of the conference. Also, after Rails 2.1 was announced at RailsConf, I was happy to share some details about it's features. You can find the slides here.

Next weekend the wider Australian Rails community will be converging on Kariong for RailsCamp 08. Paradoxically, I won't be able to attend due to a personal commitment.

OSDC Proposals due by 30 June

After successful conferences in Melbourne (2004, 2005, 2006) and Brisbane (2007), this year's Open Source Developers' Conference will be held in Sydney from 2nd to 5th December. The conference draws presenters and attendees from a wide variety of open source software communities and promises to provide many opportunities for geeks to learn, share and network.

If you have something to share, or know another developer who has something to share about open source software, please do make sure proposals are submitted by 30 June.