Ruby Hero Awards
Confreaks, LLC
The Ruby Hero Awards recognize everyday heroes of the Ruby community. The Ruby community is full of good people who help each other in diverse ways to make the community a better place. Once a year at RailsConf, we take a moment to appreciate their contributions and hopefully encourage others to make a difference.
 Hi there. So we do this little thing every year and we've been doing it for a little while. Indulge me for a little bit while we do this. It's called Ruby Heroes and the purpose of it is to recognize some of the lesser known people or the people that have done such great important work in the Ruby community that we feel like we need to do something a little special for them. We run this on a website called RubyHeroes.com every year. So at the beginning of the year or sometimes a little late, sadly, we tell people to go to that website and we say, hey, so this year, who has impacted your life as a Rubyist as a Rails developer? Who has made it easier? Who has produced stuff that helped you do your work or has been extremely kind to you or has made the community as a whole better? So as I said, we started doing this in 2008. So it's been nine years now. And we've had a lot of really great people over the years. People that are more well known. People that are less well known over the years. So you might recognize some familiar faces that have gone on to do great things. And this year, we've had 454 nominations from the community at large. We've had 133 nominees from these nominations, so people that were thanked by other people. And we have a committee of 20 past heroes among the previous heroes that went through and basically tried to do a step which removes this aspect of popularity contest. So it's not just about how cool and popular people are. We try to find people who are doing great work and that are not necessarily well known. And they've selected nine new heroes for this year. This is actually a record. We've had eight one year, but never that many. So we're going to try to keep it fast. But before we do that, I'd like to thank a few people who helped us put this together because they're amazing. So first, there's Ruby Central, which you know, of course, but they've helped us a ton getting this event together and helping the people that we're going to thank come here, which is sometimes very difficult. You'll see. Also, there's Code School. Morgan and I work for Code School and they allow us to take the time to prepare this to work on the app every year to organize this event and come to you to present it. And lastly, there's you. And I want to kind of like take a moment to talk about you guys. The importance here is when someone does something nice, it's very important for you to remember to say something about it, to go talk to them, especially when you're in a group like this where you can actually go see them. I know sometimes it can be scary, but if you do it or if you do it through Ruby Heroes, these people feel bolstered sometimes when stuff gets hard, so it helps them. All right. So let's get to it. So the instruction is really quick. I'm not sure everybody's here. We've tried really, really hard to bring everybody here. And if they're not, then we'll just, you know, give them a round of applause. Otherwise, they'll come up on stage and see Morgan over there who's going to help them out. And then we'll all look at them for a little bit awkwardly as they just stand there. Because that's easy. So not a lot of time, a lot of heroes. As I said, watch your feet. I mentioned that. There's stairs over there. That's not for you guys. You can watch your feet if you want, but that's more for the people like trying to fumble over here. So I'm going to give you a little quote that someone said specifically while the nominations were going on about each person so that you get a sense of their impact if you're not familiar with them. First up, because of our tireless efforts in making the open source community a better place by creating the contributor covenants and trying incredibly hard to get people even in the most hostile environments to adopt it. Please welcome Coraline Ada Enkic. Thank you. He's a long time Ruby and Rails Committer. He's the author of many widely used gems like Kaminaru, Trace Route, Database Rewinder and more. Please welcome Akira Matsuda. Thank you. All right. In the last four years, they have raised almost half a million dollars and recruited hundreds of coaches and mentors to get dozens of women into programming and contributing to open source. We can attest that it changes people's lives. Please welcome on stage the Rails Girls Sum of Code team, Annika Lindner, Laura Gaetano and Sarah Reagan. He has put many years and tremendous effort into continuously and incrementally improving the C Ruby implementation. He wrote YARV pushed for flow numbs, implemented partial generation garbage collection, which is a mouthful and many, many other improvements. All of these things have been the primary drivers of increased performance and better garbage collection in Ruby. His impact is large, but his presence is not at least in much of the world outside Japan. Please welcome Koichi Sasada. His articles are always informative and enjoyable. Furthermore, they focus on big language issues, performance, memory, delicious food. And they mention problems and solutions. He represents what is good about the Ruby community. Please welcome on stage Richard Schneemann. He likes to sit on the other side. With Ruby Tapas, he continues his long tradition of leveling up Ruby developers everywhere. In his appearance on the Ruby Rogues podcast, he always asks interesting questions and provides tidbits of wisdom on Ruby and the state of our community. With books like Confident Ruby and Exceptional Ruby, he has given guidance to many new Ruby developers on writing clean and readable Ruby code. He has inspired me, not me, but the person who said that, to not only be a better Ruby developer, but also a better software developer overall. That's why he's my Ruby hero. Please welcome Avdi Grimm. And finally, he has been leading the JRuby project for most of its existence, which has been responsible for many enterprises actually using Ruby. He's constantly working on making JRuby better and faster and regularly going to conferences all over the world showing you how you can use Ruby and still have higher performance. Please welcome Charles Nutter. So now that they are all awkwardly looking at you and waiting impatiently to get off on stage, can you please give them a really, really big round of applause? Thank you all very much. That's it for us. And remember, this is important. Keep being nice to the people who make your life a little better every day. Thank you very much.
 Hi there. So we do this little thing every year and we've been doing it for a little  while. Indulge me for a little bit while we do this. It's called Ruby Heroes and the purpose  of it is to recognize some of the lesser known people or the people that have done such great  important work in the Ruby community that we feel like we need to do something a little  special for them. We run this on a website called RubyHeroes.com every year. So at the  beginning of the year or sometimes a little late, sadly, we tell people to go to that website  and we say, hey, so this year, who has impacted your life as a Rubyist as a Rails developer?  Who has made it easier? Who has produced stuff that helped you do your work or has been extremely  kind to you or has made the community as a whole better? So as I said, we started doing  this in 2008. So it's been nine years now. And we've had a lot of really great people  over the years. People that are more well known. People that are less well known over  the years. So you might recognize some familiar faces that have gone on to do great things.  And this year, we've had 454 nominations from the community at large. We've had 133  nominees from these nominations, so people that were thanked by other people. And we  have a committee of 20 past heroes among the previous heroes that went through and basically  tried to do a step which removes this aspect of popularity contest. So it's not just about  how cool and popular people are. We try to find people who are doing great work and that  are not necessarily well known. And they've selected nine new heroes for this year. This  is actually a record. We've had eight one year, but never that many. So we're going  to try to keep it fast. But before we do that, I'd like to thank a few people who helped  us put this together because they're amazing. So first, there's Ruby Central, which you  know, of course, but they've helped us a ton getting this event together and helping the  people that we're going to thank come here, which is sometimes very difficult. You'll  see. Also, there's Code School. Morgan and I work for Code School and they allow us to  take the time to prepare this to work on the app every year to organize this event and  come to you to present it. And lastly, there's you. And I want to kind of like take a moment  to talk about you guys. The importance here is when someone does something nice, it's  very important for you to remember to say something about it, to go talk to them, especially  when you're in a group like this where you can actually go see them. I know sometimes  it can be scary, but if you do it or if you do it through Ruby Heroes, these people feel  bolstered sometimes when stuff gets hard, so it helps them. All right. So let's get  to it. So the instruction is really quick. I'm not sure everybody's here. We've tried  really, really hard to bring everybody here. And if they're not, then we'll just, you know,  give them a round of applause. Otherwise, they'll come up on stage and see Morgan over there  who's going to help them out. And then we'll all look at them for a little bit awkwardly  as they just stand there. Because that's easy. So not a lot of time, a lot of heroes. As  I said, watch your feet. I mentioned that. There's stairs over there. That's not for  you guys. You can watch your feet if you want, but that's more for the people like trying  to fumble over here. So I'm going to give you a little quote that someone said specifically  while the nominations were going on about each person so that you get a sense of their  impact if you're not familiar with them. First up, because of our tireless efforts in making  the open source community a better place by creating the contributor covenants and trying  incredibly hard to get people even in the most hostile environments to adopt it. Please  welcome Coraline Ada Enkic.  Thank you. He's a long time Ruby and Rails  Committer. He's the author of many widely used gems like Kaminaru, Trace Route, Database  Rewinder and more. Please welcome Akira Matsuda.  Thank you. All right. In the last four years, they have  raised almost half a million dollars and recruited hundreds of coaches and mentors to get dozens  of women into programming and contributing to open source. We can attest that it changes  people's lives. Please welcome on stage the Rails Girls Sum of Code team, Annika Lindner,  Laura Gaetano and Sarah Reagan. He has put many years and tremendous effort into continuously  and incrementally improving the C Ruby implementation. He wrote YARV pushed for flow numbs, implemented  partial generation garbage collection, which is a mouthful and many, many other improvements.  All of these things have been the primary drivers of increased performance and better  garbage collection in Ruby. His impact is large, but his presence is not at least in  much of the world outside Japan. Please welcome Koichi Sasada. His articles are always informative  and enjoyable. Furthermore, they focus on big language issues, performance, memory, delicious  food. And they mention problems and solutions. He represents what is good about the Ruby  community. Please welcome on stage Richard Schneemann. He likes to sit on the other side.  With Ruby Tapas, he continues his long tradition of leveling up Ruby developers everywhere.  In his appearance on the Ruby Rogues podcast, he always asks interesting questions and provides  tidbits of wisdom on Ruby and the state of our community. With books like Confident Ruby  and Exceptional Ruby, he has given guidance to many new Ruby developers on writing clean  and readable Ruby code. He has inspired me, not me, but the person who said that, to not  only be a better Ruby developer, but also a better software developer overall. That's  why he's my Ruby hero. Please welcome Avdi Grimm. And finally, he has been leading the  JRuby project for most of its existence, which has been responsible for many enterprises  actually using Ruby. He's constantly working on making JRuby better and faster and regularly  going to conferences all over the world showing you how you can use Ruby and still have higher  performance. Please welcome Charles Nutter. So now that they are all awkwardly looking  at you and waiting impatiently to get off on stage, can you please give them a really,  really big round of applause? Thank you all very much. That's it for us. And remember,  this is important. Keep being nice to the people who make your life a little better  every day. Thank you very much.
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Hi there. So we do this little thing every year and we've been doing it for a little while. Indulge me for a little bit while we do this. It's called Ruby Heroes and the purpose of it is to recognize some of the lesser known people or the people that have done such great important work in the Ruby community that we feel like we need to do something a little special for them. We run this on a website called RubyHeroes.com every year. So at the beginning of the year or sometimes a little late, sadly, we tell people to go to that website and we say, hey, so this year, who has impacted your life as a Rubyist as a Rails developer? Who has made it easier? Who has produced stuff that helped you do your work or has been extremely kind to you or has made the community as a whole better? So as I said, we started doing this in 2008. So it's been nine years now. And we've had a lot of really great people over the years. People that are more well known. People that are less well known over the years. So you might recognize some familiar faces that have gone on to do great things. And this year, we've had 454 nominations from the community at large. We've had 133 nominees from these nominations, so people that were thanked by other people. And we have a committee of 20 past heroes among the previous heroes that went through and basically tried to do a step which removes this aspect of popularity contest. So it's not just about how cool and popular people are. We try to find people who are doing great work and that are not necessarily well known. And they've selected nine new heroes for this year. This is actually a record. We've had eight one year, but never that many. So we're going to try to keep it fast. But before we do that, I'd like to thank a few people who helped us put this together because they're amazing. So first, there's Ruby Central, which you know, of course, but they've helped us a ton getting this event together and helping the people that we're going to thank come here, which is sometimes very difficult. You'll see. Also, there's Code School. Morgan and I work for Code School and they allow us to take the time to prepare this to work on the app every year to organize this event and come to you to present it. And lastly, there's you. And I want to kind of like take a moment to talk about you guys. The importance here is when someone does something nice, it's very important for you to remember to say something about it, to go talk to them, especially when you're in a group like this where you can actually go see them. I know sometimes it can be scary, but if you do it or if you do it through Ruby Heroes, these people feel bolstered sometimes when stuff gets hard, so it helps them. All right. So let's get to it. So the instruction is really quick. I'm not sure everybody's here. We've tried really, really hard to bring everybody here. And if they're not, then we'll just, you know, give them a round of applause. Otherwise, they'll come up on stage and see Morgan over there who's going to help them out. And then we'll all look at them for a little bit awkwardly as they just stand there. Because that's easy. So not a lot of time, a lot of heroes. As I said, watch your feet. I mentioned that. There's stairs over there. That's not for you guys. You can watch your feet if you want, but that's more for the people like trying to fumble over here. So I'm going to give you a little quote that someone said specifically while the nominations were going on about each person so that you get a sense of their impact if you're not familiar with them. First up, because of our tireless efforts in making the open source community a better place by creating the contributor covenants and trying incredibly hard to get people even in the most hostile environments to adopt it. Please welcome Coraline Ada Enkic. Thank you. He's a long time Ruby and Rails Committer. He's the author of many widely used gems like Kaminaru, Trace Route, Database Rewinder and more. Please welcome Akira Matsuda. Thank you. All right. In the last four years, they have raised almost half a million dollars and recruited hundreds of coaches and mentors to get dozens of women into programming and contributing to open source. We can attest that it changes people's lives. Please welcome on stage the Rails Girls Sum of Code team, Annika Lindner, Laura Gaetano and Sarah Reagan. He has put many years and tremendous effort into continuously and incrementally improving the C Ruby implementation. He wrote YARV pushed for flow numbs, implemented partial generation garbage collection, which is a mouthful and many, many other improvements. All of these things have been the primary drivers of increased performance and better garbage collection in Ruby. His impact is large, but his presence is not at least in much of the world outside Japan. Please welcome Koichi Sasada. His articles are always informative and enjoyable. Furthermore, they focus on big language issues, performance, memory, delicious food. And they mention problems and solutions. He represents what is good about the Ruby community. Please welcome on stage Richard Schneemann. He likes to sit on the other side. With Ruby Tapas, he continues his long tradition of leveling up Ruby developers everywhere. In his appearance on the Ruby Rogues podcast, he always asks interesting questions and provides tidbits of wisdom on Ruby and the state of our community. With books like Confident Ruby and Exceptional Ruby, he has given guidance to many new Ruby developers on writing clean and readable Ruby code. He has inspired me, not me, but the person who said that, to not only be a better Ruby developer, but also a better software developer overall. That's why he's my Ruby hero. Please welcome Avdi Grimm. And finally, he has been leading the JRuby project for most of its existence, which has been responsible for many enterprises actually using Ruby. He's constantly working on making JRuby better and faster and regularly going to conferences all over the world showing you how you can use Ruby and still have higher performance. Please welcome Charles Nutter. So now that they are all awkwardly looking at you and waiting impatiently to get off on stage, can you please give them a really, really big round of applause? Thank you all very much. That's it for us. And remember, this is important. Keep being nice to the people who make your life a little better every day. Thank you very much.
work in the Ruby community that we feel like we every year. So at the beginning of the year or you. And I want to kind of like take a moment to community a better place by creating the and solutions. He represents what is good about important. Keep being nice to the people who make