MARTYHAUGHT

RailsConf 2007 Reflections

As RailsConf 2007 comes to an end, I have some time to reflect on the conference as a whole. Unlike last year I didn’t feel compelled to blog a day by day experience. Instead I’ll mention the highlights and give my general feelings on the experience. Undoubtedly this year’s conference was different from the last. It definitely had a greater corporate feel but I don’t think this was all bad. O’Reilly did a good job with logistics. The Oregon convention center was a pretty nice place and certainly large enough for the 1600 conference attendees. The only complaint I have about the logistics was the food — most notably the lack of water and snacks. I believe they were available during some of the breaks but in some of those cases it wasn’t obvious where they were. If nothing else, they could have made that clearer on when things were available. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask to have those things constantly available. The breakfast choices were also a bit lacking. While perhaps having fresh fruit is too much to ask for a conference of this size, the lack on non-sugar based pastries shouldn’t have been. Really, would bagels be too much of a stretch? I will be sending in my feedback so hopefully next year this can be avoided. On the upside, I know they had Starbucks coffee but not being a coffee drinker this wasn’t a benefit personally.

Moved, Busy

Based on the silence on my blog you can guess I’ve been busy. You can also guess that blogging isn’t my highest priority. Both are quite true though I’ll see if I can keep a better blog presence. First, my family and I have been busy moving into a new house and getting out of the old one. Friday May 11th we moved into our new home and I can say that I hope that I don’t have to move again for another 20 years. While our previous rental home was awesome it’s nice to have our own home again. Second, I’ve been quite busy volunteering to my daughter’s Waldorf school, www.shepherdvalley.org. I migrated their old static web site to a dynamic one based on the Radiant CMS. There’s still much to do on it but I’m taking a short break while we handle the move. I’m also serving on the school’s Building Design Committee where we are designing a grades building for the school.

I’m currently attending RailsConf 2007 in Portland, Oregon. I will be following up this post shortly with my thoughts on the conference.