- Data Mining Music - Paul Lemere
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7XN3RuDzmc
- Awesome presentation of what he and Spotify have done using the huge amount of data they have. Cool, fun, inspirational.
- Succession - Katrina Owens
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59YClXmkCVM
- Refactoring approaches and philosophies. Resist the temptation to reduce sameness. Identify the smallest differences and make them go away. Once the differences are gone, the sameness naturally collapses.
- Rspec and Rails 5/Make Ruby Great Again - Justin Searls
- No Confreaks link yet - https://vimeo.com/165527044
- Make Ruby Great Again talk starts about 27 minutes in.
- Discussion about Ruby/Rails as it becomes mature and is no longer the new cool thing. (And a couple comments about testing)
- Skunk Works - Nickolas Means
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggPE-JHzfAM
- Overview of the history of Skunk Works, the team that developed the U2, SR-71, and F-117. Highlights the problems they faced and how they overcame them. Great teams are often small with flexible processes that work toward one, specific goal.
- Get a Whiff of This - Sandi Metz
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJjHfa5yxlU
- Identifying code smells and the refactoring methods that combat them. Refactoring is not a subjective thing. Refactorings have specific names with specific recipes. Learn them.
- UX, Rails, and Awesomeness - Chanelle Henry
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3RcrToGIEQ
- Overview of how development and UX intersect and support each other. She also talks about what it takes to feel good about yourself and your work.
- …But Doesn't Rails Take Care of Security For Me? - Justin Collins
- Stuck in the Middle - Amy Unger
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeXpka50tHY
- Introduction to writing and using custom middleware in your app.
- ActionCable for Not-Another-Chat-App-Please - Jesse Wolgamott
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeYGfM32Iqs
- Overview of the ActionCable API and what it's capable of.
- Saving Sprockets - Richard Schneeman
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imE397wVWgY
- Discussion about what it takes to maintain open source software. Tips for maintainers and suggestions for users. If you're submitting an issue, an example app reproducing the bug is invaluable.
- The Guest: A Guide to Code Hospitality - Nadia Odunayo
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHzWG1FltaE
- Your codebase is like your home. You will have guests. When someone visits, you should prepare the codebase, orient the guest, work together, then have a good followup/retrospective.
- Feedback For Frameworks - Rebecca Miller-Webster
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8K_66PA2qw
- Soft talk about fostering a positive environment through nonviolent communication. Highlights four specific frameworks that can help effective communication.
- How to Build a Skyscraper - Ernie Miller
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8mSR9iAm74
- I've seen it before, it's good.
- Rails to Phoenix - Brian Cardarella
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxhTQdcieQE
- He gave a preview at a Kansas City Elixir meetup that Jesse and I went to. He presents a number of convincing arguments that were presented in a tactful enough way that it was accepted at Rails Conf.
- Precompiling Ruby Scripts: Myth and Fact - Koichi Sasada
- Rails 5 Features You Haven't Heard About - Sean Griffin
- Surviving the Framework Hype Cycle - Brandon Hays
- The State of Web Security - Mike Milner
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfvkC-L69xc
- Just Collins said that it complements his "Doesn't Rails Take Care Of Security" talk.
Justin Searls accurately describes the situation in his talk "Rspec and Rails 5/Make Ruby Great Again." It's exciting to be at a point where the language is stable, the tooling is mature, and the framework is pretty much feature-complete, but this also creates an opportunity for stagnation. The "new stuff" is inherently more exciting and it is, as highlighted by Brian Cardarella in "Rails to Phoenix", objectively better in number of ways. Personally, I feel conflicted. I want to buy into Searls solution and support the endeavor to make the Ruby community known for getting things done but I don't find it entirely convincing. "Telling stories that help people solve problems" seems too vague a proposition to drive a significant change from the status quo. That said, I hope to be more active in the greater Ruby community and find a way to contribute that will help it retain relevancy.
Regardless of whether I write Ruby for the rest of my career or branch out into something else, I love the communities that I've found and I look forward to whats to come.
In the future, I think I'm going to focus on smaller, one- or two-track conferences. Rails Conf had TONS of stuff happening. Five talks and two workshops for every time slot. That's great but also a little overwhelming. I felt like I was missing out on things (I chose not to do any workshops), especially when I was sitting through a less than stellar talk, which happened at least four times. Last year, I went to Keep Ruby Weird and React Rally. I preferred the more curated approach to selecting talks and the smaller, more intimate environment.
Also, the AV at Rails Conf was terrible. Projectors were broken, microphone audio was being routed into incorrect rooms, and AV techs were few and far between.
My experience in Kansas City leads me to believe it is a weird and interesting place. It's a real city in that we were staying down town and there were skyscrapers but during the day, there was very little traffic and not a lot of people out and about. At night, the majority of people walking around and at restaurants appeared to be Rails Conf attendees. This all changed on Friday night, which happened to be First Friday. The streets were so packed that a couple of them had been closed. There was live music all over the place.
If you ever find yourself there, I recommend BRGR. I don't recommend Belfry. Don't wear a t-shirt to The Capital Grille.
