From the archive. Written in 2007, when this site ran on Rails. Links may have drifted.
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.