RailsConf 2008 Personal Take Aways

I had a blast at RailsConf this year and just wanted to say a few things regarding the experience.

First off I want to thank Ruby Central (Chad, Rich and David) for their continued hard work.  All the hard work from O’Reilly employees as well.  Some unsung heros there I’m sure.

The Doubletree hotel bumped me up to the 15th floor because I checked in so late on Thursday night.  The room was amazing.  I didn’t want to leave, but the conference was better.

The conference sessions had some great speakers.  I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining Joel Spolsky was.  I really took a lot out of his lesson.  More than just the three bullet points:

• Put the user in control
• Obsessive over aesthetic
• Observe culture code

These three things are the qualities that if you had all three you have the maximum potential for what he called a “blue chip” product.  If you can focus on these things you can create a superior product.

For those people who didn’t attend the third point really boils down to knowing the language or jargon of your product’s domain.  So if you were creating a product for a 9-1-1 telecommunications center you’d probably need to know a term like EMT stood for Emergency Medical Technician.

The other big thing for me I took away from the conference was Nathaniel Talbott’s talk: 23 Hacks.  He mention that when talking to Chad Fowler about the joy of hacking Fowler admitted that he starts many more projects than he actually finishes.

For the longest time I have punished myself for starting so many “failed” projects as I might have called them.  But that both Nathaniel and Chad do the same thing, start many but complete few, that made me feel less self-conscious about my “incomplete” projects (note the adjective change).

Chad also said that musicians create much more music than they actually release.  And it’s in that joy or act of “jamming” on music where they practice in order to get better for when it is publicly consumed.

It all gels into a new paradigm for me and my programming.  That I can start as many personal projects as I want, as long as I’m hacking and having fun I can learn/practice/grow my art.

Sounds like next year is Vegas.  Should be interesting.  From personal experience working for another company, they should be ready for a huge increase in attendance.  Good thing O’Reilly has their back.

Now I’m off to code something.  Anything.  And have fun in the process.