Just some general thoughts and impressions about the first day of RailsConf 2006

• Dave Thomas started things up with a list of challenges for Rails to rise to. Definitely a lot of things to agree or disagree with, but a lot of good context for the rest of the meeting. I’m now looking forward hearing Justin Gehtland talk about what’s been going on over at Relevance LLC.
• Introduction to Capistrano—not a bad session, and I think Mike Clark was a great speaker for this topic. The main snag hit when about half the audience seemed to be looking for a more advanced look into multiple machine deployment and the rest (myself included) were looking for a good general usage pattern for the tool.
• Jim Freeze’s Rails and Asterisk talk wasn’t particularly relevant to the things that I’m currently working on, but does provide a nice overview of a different usage pattern for Rails than I’m used to seeing. It’ll be nice to see if other usability enhancement solutions like this begin to surface.
• It doesn’t seem nearly ready for prime time to me yet, but Kiran Dandekar’s presentation on OpenID has me somewhat interested in the possibilities for this if some of the major goals can be achieved. Also had an interesting side conversation about identity issues and the consequences of the coming generation where “real” and “digital” aspects of the world don’t delineate as comfortably as in the past.
• In the realm of demos, there were definitely a number of interesting projects and it was good to see the directions people are taking Rails apps, but the show stopper was almost certainly the interface work done by FiveRuns. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing their beta.
• Martin Fowler gave an excellent keynote on what he considers to be the advantages of Rails, and Ruby in the broader sense. In summary:
  • Opinionated software is important. By experience, we know that building the “One True Solution” just doesn’t work.
  • Our paradigm allows for a stronger transition toward developing conversational software. This is Good for us and for our collaborators.
  • At the heart of Ruby and Rails is a community motivated by agility. This places people over tools and is a Good Thing.
• Paul Graham spoke about the “Power of the Marginal” reminding us that, by choosing to live at the margin, there are freedoms to take risk and innovate that are simply not accepted among “insiders”. Graham also tells the cautionary tale of how to be careful if you suddenly find yourself among the “eminent”. Some thoughts:
  • Great ideas come from the margins - but - everyone who has them looks down on them, including those who have them.
  • Don’t learn things from people who are bad at them.
  • Not having enough ridiculous ideas means that you’re thinking too conservatively.
  • The rise to eminence is like the yeast which is killed by the alcohol generated by its success.
• And Why the Lucky Stiff performed in the evening. I’ll have to admit, I left the show a little early, but I’m just not sure that Why is my thing.
• Spoke with DHH for a few minutes before the dinner break, and I’m impressed. He still seems to be in a bit of shock about the rapid growth of Rails but seems to be keeping himself very much accessible and real. I look forward to his keynote tomorrow night.
• Jay Zimmerman was also great to meet and speak with for a while. He’s been handling the challenges of pulling this conference off incredibly. As it turns out, 550+ may be taxing the abilities of the site a bit (I was in three sessions today that required several dozen more seats and ended with many people standing or on the floor—PragDave has photos) That combined with the presence of too many good sessions means I’ll probably be ordering the slides and video tomorrow.