[Geeky] RubyConf Summary (updated 2)
RubyConf 2010 was excellent. It was my first and probably not my last. Some general thoughts and then a master list of links (the real meat.)

Unlike most all ‘business’ type conferences and talks I have gone to, the RubyConf style of presentation (and perhaps the Rails or Ruby community — I don’t know where it stops) is beautifully minimalist. Very few words on slides, large and impactful photographs. Is it because no one uses PowerPoint and few even use Keynote? I don’t know. But there were no text heavy, bullet heavy word slides. And also, lots and lots of code (that part is definitely a geek thing.)

Here is a loosely organized set of links to the things that hit me most at RubyConf this year. It’s random and idiosyncratic (same thing?) but it reflects my real-time notes and feelings. These were all new to me but they might be old news to you, of course.



These are my top links:

nicksieger’s warbler at master — GitHub — This was one of my top 5 talks. Warbler is a tool to package a Ruby and/or Rails application into a single .jar or .war file to be run on any other computer that has a Java VM installed. If this works as advertised it is a very important bit of technology. I am going to try it out

MacRuby: The Definitive Guide — Another one of my favorite talks, about MacRuby, a Mac OS X implementation of Ruby. From what I saw it looks very real, with good integration with all the Mac OS X libraries, and running on top of the Objective C runtime. It wasn’t totally clear what Apple’s posture is relative to MacRuby, but I hope it is positive.

mattmatt’s showoff at master — GitHub — Showoff is a very neat presentation tool. It’s not an app like Keynote its actually a gem which processes a minimalist markup and serves it up in a local Sinatra server. Also easily lets you deploy your presentation to Heroku. Hmm. Is it mattmatt’s or schacon’s showoff at master — GitHub???

Git Wrangling — This was an intense and complex talk about Git. There is as we know, so much more in Git than most people use, and this talk touched into it. Also, Scott Chacon had a funny (but I think he was serious about it) interlude about how to be a gentleman. It includes the recommendation that a gentleman will always rise when a lady enters the room. Also check out these links with further details about the slides (really, they are good!).

Ruby Mendicant University — A really inspiring talk by Greg Brown about his vision and mission to teach people about Ruby and programming. But this is not a fly by night little course, Greg has a big vision and is pursuing this in a comprehensive and highly innovative manner. I was very impressed and will follow and support Greg’s work. A great guy!

And here are many more really good ones:
['Pito Salas']
['Code', 'Rails', 'Ruby', 'Programming', 'Technology']