Well, I think my presentation went well. People seemed to enjoy it at least. That's a big load off of my shoulders. I covered nine libraries that every developer should know about (even if they don't use them). I've dropped a pdf of my slides here. I hope they're interesting/useful for you.
I really liked Patrick Hurley's presentation on 'Ruby, Performance, and C'. He showed some real presentation chops with images, quotes, and colors sprinkled liberally throughout his presentation. He talked about the fact that once you've done everything else, rewriting in C is all that's left. He did a nice job of walking us through an example.
I also thought Craig Damyanovich did a great job (especially as a first time presenter. As a nod to his love of hockey, he covered BDD and RSpec in a 'three period' format (only in Michigan). Craig was really laid back and seemed completely calm all through his presentation. I know I didn't feel that way.
Watching the interplay of the audience and the speakers was interesting. I'm not sure if it was because of the smaller group (about 60 people), the intimacy of the setting (theatre seating for 150 or so), or the fact that this was a regional conference. Whatever caused it, it was fun to watch. At one point a question directed toward the speaker turned into a five minute discussion between the speaker and several people in the audience.
Perhaps the best thing though, was hearing the confluence of ideas — four people (inlcuding me) mentioned RSpec, three of us talked about rcov, and two of us talked about Profile (and friends) and RubyInline.
I'm not sure who will end up running the next regional Ruby conference, or if I'll be able to attend, but if it's anything like this one I sure want to.
3 comments:
Agreed. The conference was a lot of fun. Too bad you had to take off early. We had a blast at the GR Brewing Company afterwards.
http://sbrb.org - that is the website of the ruby group that I run. Like I said, if you are ever in the area and feel like speaking, just let me know.
Pat,
Thanks for your great refections on the conference. I'm glad you enjoyed it. We really appreciated having you there (even for a short while).
I may have seemed calm, but I sure was swiveling in that chair quite a bit! ;-) Anyway, I had a great time, and I'm glad everyone else did, too. To those who scored a ticket to RubyConf, I'm looking forward to seeing you in Denver.
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