I have to admit, I have avoided RailsConf over the years because it didn't seem to be my kind of thing.  While I work day to day in Rails, most of my coding is on backend and infrastructure work, so I'm able to get by with only a working knowledge of the whole stack.   But this year, thanks to the B'More on Rails crew, there is a beautiful oasis for even the most old-fashioned Ruby purists to thrive in.  It's called BohConf, it's completely free and it's fucking awesome.

The morning was an endless cycle of momentary flurries of collaboration followed by deafening silence that appears when hackers are busy honing their craft.  The organizers had set up a "Community Code Drive" in which open source authors could meet with users and potential contributors and hack on things a bit.   I was happy to be one of the folks to run one of these sessions this morning.

Community Code Drive

I was hosting a session on Prawn, which let me finally meet in person quite a few folks I've had conversations with online.  We fixed some bugs, shared ideas and code, and some folks were even kind enough to indulge me by checking out some of my latest experiments with our overall architection.  I'm planning to do it all again tomorrow, so for those who are interested in Prawn, you know where to find me.  You can check out Wednesday's schedule to see some of the other folks who will be around.   If none of these projects seem like your kind of thing, you should still come down with your own project hack on if you're looking for a great place to hang out.

Programming Contest

This afternoon, the organizers announced a programming contest that'll run until 2pm tomorrow.  It's an interesting data visualization problem that has to do with coming up with an interesting picture of Baltimore's recent crime data.  The cool thing is that it's super open ended, so folks can hack on anything that might be fun to play with.   I'm really looking forward to seeing what people share tomorrow, and I plan to work on this tonight with Jia, Jordan and Chenoa and see what crazy ideas we can come up with.   For those motivated by shiny things, there are also some cash and books to be won.

Code Retreat

In the afternoon, the folks here at BohConf ran their own variant of Corey Haines's code retreats.  Folks worked in pairs repeatedly trying to build a fresh implementation of Conway's Game of Life in tightly scheduled 45 minute sessions.  After each session, there was a bit of retrospective and then people swapped partners.   The emphasis was on trying different things, explicitly doing things a little differently than day to day work.   Listening in on the conversations, it seems like this approach works great, and reminds me of some of the trainings I've done.   It's amazing what sort of great ideas and discoveries come out of just working on an interesting problem and discussing what you find.

While Jordan and I didn't swap out partners throughout the session, we did attempt to write a Game of Life implementation in Clojure.  It turned out that it was sufficiently different from our day to day work for us to get nowhere near completion in a 3 hour period.   But nonetheless, it was fun to try out a completely new language, and just loosen the shackles of the daily grind a bit.

Hands Down, Best Ruby Conference Ever 

I've spoken at a ton of conferences, and have a lot of friends that I've learned a lot from by hearing them speak.  I've even helped organized conferences myself.  But for me, the best thing about conferences is, and always has been, the hallway track.   Interacting with other hackers, taking some time to really sit down and hack without worrying about regular responsibilities, and being in a very supportive environment is where it's at for me.

So when you take the hallway track and give it first class status, and you set up a group of organizers who are super laid back and nice, you get a feel that reminds me of Ruby conferences over five years ago, in which everyone hacked, and everyone shared.  No matter whether your conference is large or small, if you're an organizer, get in touch with the B'More on Rails guys and talk with them about what they did here.  It's full of win, and is something we really need more of in the Ruby world.

Don't believe me?  Come see for yourself!

There's another full day of BohConf running from 9am to 5pm tomorrow.  Among other things, tomorrow includes a BarCamp style unconference in which anyone can put together something to talk about and share.  If today is any measure of how tomorrow will be, we're in store for another great day.

Hope to see you tomorrow.  Please do stop by and say hi if you've read any of my stuff or are interested in my projects. I'm happy to discuss anything you'd like about those things, or check out some of the neat stuff you've been doing.