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My evening at FOSCON

Posted by Thu, 04 Aug 2005 03:08:00 GMT

I will be honest and say that at 6:28 PM, I decided that I was just not going to be able to make it to FOSCON. I was wedding clothes shopping which is taken place in SoCal later this week. When I got into my car I noticed that my friend, Cliff, had left me a few voicemails saying that he would be there. I ran home, dropped off my girlfriend and headed to Free Geek.

I got there just in time to see them introduce DHH. He gave his keynote, which is the same one that he will be delivering tomorrow. Short, sweet and to the point. He took a few questions, like, “Couldn’t this be redone in Perl and wha t would the difference be?” (not word-for-word… but close).. David responded, “Clean code.”

Afterwards, I managed to sneak in a , “Hi, I am Robby” but never managed to get to talk with hime anymore than that. Perhaps I will be able to make it to OSCON tomorrow and get a chance to introduce myself again. :-)

During the pizza eating portion of the evening, I got to talk with the man behind Ruby himself, Matz. We talked for a few minutes. I told him that I was the one who did RubyURL and how I got excited and told my friends when he mentioned my site on his blog.

The next speaker was…umm.. I forgot his name. It’s not on the site. He gave a quick overview of some really cool things that are coming to Ruby on Rails… and that is Rails-powered….FLASH!

Yes, Flash applications on top of Rails. It’s a port of NextStep or something. I didn’t keep up with it all, but what I did gather was quite cool sounding. What was his name…?

UPDATE: His name is… Rich Kilmer.

Glenn Vanderburg then gave a 42.minute talk on MetaProgramming with Ruby. That happened about 3.hours.from_now.ago. It was a nice talk and learned a few things about method_missing that I didn’t know before. I am using it in a few examples in my book, so it was nice to see some gotchas.

The last speaker was why the lucky stiff. WOW. He and thirsty cups (his backup band) gave a 30 minute concert, video, interactive,... I don’t know what the hell to call it. It was the most creative programming tutorials/talks that I have ever seen. He said that he would post the videos and information after tomorrow (when he gives the same tutorial at OSCON).

If you are going to see this… it would be wise to take pictures, video tape it… and bring your laptop for interactive participation. He gave a quick intro into drb and the audience (you) gets to be a part of that. I cannot wait to show my friends those videos.

My friend Cliff, who is a Python fan, seemed to enjoy himself. Maybe… just maybe… he might give Rails a real shot. He has this weird hangup about using tal for views, so I pointed him to Armita.

It was great to meet all those who came up and introduced themselves to me. I was the red head who looked like he hadn’t eaten anything all day. That slice of veggie pizza was well needed. :-)

Thanks to the folks in PDX.rb and Free Geek for putting this event on. I am glad that I made it out.

It’s time for some sleep…

UPDATE You can see some pictures from FOSCON on Flickr, under the tag… foscon

http://flickr.com/photos/tags/foscon/

David wins Oreilly-Google award

Posted by Wed, 03 Aug 2005 00:35:00 GMT

David Heinemeier Hansson won an award at OSCON tonight for his leadership of the Ruby on Rails project.

Congrats David!

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