Back from the first real day of RailsConf after yesterday's tutorial day.
DHH's talk mainly covered Rails 2.0. I like the way he presents because he goes fast. No dilly-dallying. If you can't keep up, you probably wouldn't find it interesting anyway.
Best session of the day was Dan Benjamin's story about his experience building a successful community-driven web property, Corkd. I've followed the Corkd story from the day it launched (to recently when he sold it). Dan is a fantastic speaker: extremely well prepared and covered ground that I was eager to hear about. Something tells me he has a prosperous career as a conference speaker ahead of him.
The clear highlight of the day was Ze Frank's keynote in the evening... he killed. This was a great choice by the organizers. I watched a lot of Ze over his year-long The Show. And I'm sure I managed to weird him out with the number of pictures I was taking -- I took the opportunity to use the evening keynotes as a photography project. It was great practice and I wound up with some nice pictures. When taking shots of speakers like this, about 80% end up with goofy faces, lazy eyes, blurry hands, etc., so you have to take a whole bunch just to get a few good ones. I'll try to get those up on Flickr soon.
Today's random observations:
- Many Portland residents use light rail like the environment depends on it or something.
- All clinically insane Portland residents use light rail, and they were all on my train this afternoon.
- "Portland has more hybrids per household than any other US city" -- The Oregonian
- Best beers I've had (in order): Bridgeport IPA, Deschutes Cascade Ale, Deschutes Obsidian Stout.