MARTYHAUGHT

Last week was mountain.rb. It was an intense week for me with all the organizer duties weighing on me but the event turned out great. I got a mountain of positive feedback and some even considered it the best regional Ruby conference out there. I don’t know if I’d go that far since I know of many ways that it fell short of what I was hoping for. Now that it’s all done I can finally emerge to a normal schedule. Being an event organizer was fun in some ways but I am very thankful it is not my main job. However, I would like to go over a few of the things that stood out for me personally.

Before I get into my short list, I need to clarify what would possess me to organize a conference pretty much solo. For several years the Ruby communities in Boulder and Denver have asked me if/when Mountain West would come to the area. Originally that was the idea but after they had such a successful and easy time in Salt Lake, they opted not to move it around. I can’t blame them for that since it’s a TON of work to put on a conference and doing it outside of your home town is even tougher. Since I helped Mountain West back in the first two years folks around here got the expectation that I would do it myself after they opted out. So that’s how the seed was started. I had some idea that putting it on would be a lot of work but I also knew I had enough inside information to put one on.

The underlying reason why I would undertake a conference is I love building communities. I thoroughly enjoy Ruby conferences and I wanted to bring that to Boulder. Ultimately, I wanted to have a big Ruby party in my back yard. Now that you know more of my motivations let’s talk about the things I was really happy with.

First, a great vibe. This is something you cannot engineer but you can set up the right conditions and hope for the best. I think the first ingredient you need is a good number of passionate attendees. We had over 190 folks attend the conference, many of which were very excited to visit Boulder regardless of who was speaking. Countless locals were super excited to have an affordable conference in their hometown. The next ingredient is a nice location. Downtown Boulder is a very nice spot and I think perfect for a conference. The only two factors that are a bit lacking is an abundance of hotels within walking distance and plenty of free parking. However, the concentration of tech companies, restaurants, bars, shops and just flat out inviting pedestrian mall makes for a fabulous start. The Boulder Theater is easily the best single track conference venue I’ve seen. It was private, had plenty of space for the attendees, had a top notch stage and sound system and a very unique seating arrangement that encouraged people to meet up and interact. They allowed me to cater in the best food I could find and let the hallway track flourish as time allowed.

Many people commented on how awesome the venue was and the strong interaction of attendees. You could simply feel it in the air as you walked around.

Second, awesome food. I wasn’t locked into an unispired and overpriced catering outfit. So I chose our favorite coffee shop, The Cup, to put on breakfast and provide coffee through the day. They totally nailed it. Bagels, coffee cakes, really fresh fruit (and not that boring pineapple/honeydew/cantaloupe spread you see everywhere), granola and yogurt and warm quiches. For lunch I had the next door Indian restaurant bring in a tasty lunch. They even replenished the spread with freshly fried naan every 10-15 minutes. For the second day, we had Chinese street food. That certainly beats the tired box lunch you so often see. I also made sure there were gluten-free and vegan options for all meals.

Third, the community events. We had a Pivotal Labs sponsored taproom tour on really cool Banjo Billy buses Wednesday night. Twisted Pine and Avery hosted us with great brews and a tour of the Twisted Pine facility. If you like craft brew this was a fun and enjoyable event. We had a packed hackfest at Quick Left Thursday night. I also got to have some fun playing Agricola at the weekly board game night at Everlater. There was a morning meditation both Thursday and Friday as well as a trail run Thursday morning. So many options for folks to try out what Boulder is about. To cap it all off Friday night we had a tech crawl at 7 different locations in downtown Boulder. It was really cool to see some of the locals join the crawl with many of the attendees. Finally, EdgeCase and Engine Yard sponsored a single malt scotch tasting at Pivotal Labs’ Boulder office. What a way to end the week!

Not afraid to experiment, I tried some new things. First, I designed a social card trading game for the conference. CampSteve, a local artist, did some amazing illustrations for it and I had a lot of fun putting it all together. I think most enjoyed the game, though you really can’t make everyone happy, especially with something that they weren’t expecting to deal with at a software conference. Second, I tried doing a short 15 minute tech talk format. I think that worked pretty well too.

Though I was a bit too busy and stressed to enjoy it all, I could tell a lot of people were impressed with what I had put together. That makes me feel good after all the hard work I put into this.

I will post photos of the event in a bit once they are ready and yes, we did record video. I’ll post again once that’s available.

Some things didn’t go as I had wanted but that’s not uncommon, especially in your first year. What’s cool about that is I have lots of ideas on how to improve mountain.rb for next year. So look for more details in 2011. For now I’m going to relax and get back to coding!

Update:

Though I was the only organizer and I ended up doing 90% of the work, I did not do everything on my own. Charley Baker, Jahnavi at Pivotal Labs’s Boulder office, Joe Fair and Paul du Coudray helped me significantly. My goal for next year is to spread around the workload even more.

blog comments powered by Disqus