We’re still recovering from RubyConf (specifically the 10k, Jonathan’s first ever, has yet to release its iron grip on his calves), but we have had some time to reflect on what value we at Highgroove extracted from the conference.

What you missed

There’s something to be said for face to face interactions. For those of you unfortunate enough to miss RubyConf, you missed the most valuable part of the conference. Sure, there are links to slides to hold you over until the ever awesome Confreaks post the videos . But, sitting at your computer desk, you don’t get to continue the conversation once the video finishes. The conversation begins in the presentation but continues outside of it. The asynchronous communication of blogs, tweets and the friction of IM cannot compare to the tight, agile, serendipitous feedback loop of conversations.

Passion was dripping from the speakers and attendees alike, drowning conversations in enthusiasm about cool toys and awesome tools and the frequent opportunities to contribute back. It’s so evident when you’re watching excellent talks like Aaron Patterson’s where he poignantly and artfully shares technical insight, humorous anecdotes, bits of culture, and sage wisdom. That’s just something you often miss in the tweets and commits from across the globe.

It’s evident that the passion driving our community really pushes the quality of our work and makes the conference attendees, general Rubyists and Highgroove’s expert developers, excited about sharing what we find and how we triumph!

What we gained

Eric Hodel and Nathaniel Talbott caught us up to speed on Rdoc / Rubygems and RubyConf respectively. Daniel Jackoway impressed with his work on Ruboto and Nick Sieger’s talk on Warbler is immediately useful!

Other highlights include Eleanor McHugh and Elise Huard discussing concurrency in Ruby as well as Jonathan Dahl’s fantastic parallels between strong writing and strong code.

A few key quotes from Jonathan Dahl’s talk (here’s a copy of the same talk from an earlier conference”).

“Marketing is about obscuring rational thought.”

“Vague language and bad writing are a key tool to propaganda.”

“Bad writing is hard to understand, but also buggy.”

Finally, Tom Preston-Warner’s talk almost had us standing up and walking out to get stuff done. Now that’s a super inspirational talk.

And that sums up RubyConf as a whole: super inspirational.

What inspired you?

This post was written by Jonathan Wallace and Matt Todd. Chris Kelly also wrote up his reflections! Read his blog post.