Rails World happened this week in Austin, and I wasn't there.
I've never been to Rails World, or RailsConf for that matter. This year the timing just didn't line up. I'm speaking at Rocky Mountain Ruby right after, a few of my coworkers were already headed to Austin, and we have project deadlines coming up. Two conferences back to back felt like a lot of time out of the office.
So Tuesday and Wednesday looked like a normal week. Coding, quite a bit of it. Getting ready for product demos on Wednesday. Working through code reviews so work kept flowing while part of the team was away. And in between, watching the Rails World posts roll in on Mastodon and in our work Slack.
The FOMO is real
What got me was the photos from my coworkers. The stage looked pretty sweet. There were also so many people in that room, 1,200 or more.
The opening keynote was livestreamed this year, the first time Rails World has done that, so I watched some of it. It was pretty depressing. An opening keynote usually sets the tone for a conference. It lifts the room up, and at its best it brings a community together around where things are headed. This one didn't do that. It opened a Rails conference with how little Ruby the speaker writes these days. My favorite comment on the stream, from @stefanlindbohm, summed it up: "This is the most confusing funeral I've ever experienced."
I have very mixed feelings about DHH as a person, and I'm not alone in that. Jake Lazaroff, The Libre News, Brennan Day, and David Celis have all written about it in more depth than I will here, as well as many, many others. One line from David Celis' post came right back to me while I watched: "Because DHH is the Fox News of Ruby. He's noisy, he's reactionary, he's anti-intellectual, he's very sure that he is right, and he enjoys being rude."
Compare that with the first opening keynote I ever saw. RubyConf 2018 opened with Matz. I had just switched over from Java, and hearing the person who created the language talk about where it was going made me excited to get started in this Ruby world.
So did I miss anything? Right now, I honestly don't know.
What big conferences are good for
I want to be fair to the big ones, because they do things small conferences can't.
You get so many talks. Multiple tracks mean you can specialize hard in whatever you care about right now. There are more vendors, more job listings, and a lot more people to meet.
At my first conference I didn't know what to expect, so I tried to do everything. I'm much better at pacing myself now. Meeting people is still the best part. Talking in person is so underrated. You read about someone in the community, and then you're having lunch with them, and maybe drinks later.
My secret conference superpower
A big conference is a lot easier if you walk in with a group. At RubyConf 2018 I had a couple of coworkers there, and I got to hang out with the RubyConf scholar cohort.
I had applied to the scholar program and wasn't accepted. I really liked the idea of having a mentor for my first conference, though, so I reached out to the organizers and asked if they had room for me if my company paid my way. They did. Catherine Meyers was my mentor, and she was amazing.
That gave me a safe home base, and from there it was easy to reach out. Meeting the cohort led to meeting more people, who I then hung out with at the social events, and the whole conference got easier and more fun.
That's also where I found out I have a skill I didn't know about. I'm really good at conferences. I can talk with just about anyone, and I'm good at meeting people and making friends.
I found this out on a walk to an offsite social event. A couple of people called out greetings to me, and a couple more joined us along the way. One of my coworkers, who was a speaker and had been to plenty of Ruby and Rails conferences, asked me how I knew so many people. I was confused, because I hadn't known any of them before the conference. They were people I had met a day or two earlier. To him it looked like I already knew everyone. Nope, they were just new friends.
What small conferences give you
Since then I've gone to a lot of single-track conferences: 200OK in Oklahoma, Rocky Mountain Ruby in 2025 (and I'm going back for 2026), and Blue Ridge Ruby this spring. At Blue Ridge Ruby there were about 100 people, and I got to talk with almost everyone.
I've also done smaller general tech conferences like NebraskaCode, Prairie Code, and Heartland Developers Conference. They're good conferences, but because they cover everything, the community isn't always there in the same way. There's less of a common thread holding the room together. A small Ruby conference has both: the size that makes it easy to meet people, and a shared language and set of people you'll keep seeing.
Attending as a speaker
Having a talk on the schedule is both a pro and a con.
The big pro is the speaker dinner. I love speaker dinners. You meet people before the conference even starts, so you walk in on day one with a group or at least a person to hang out with. It's the same built-in social network the scholar cohort gave me in 2018, and it really is the best. Plus, well, dinner. I love food, and a lot of these dinners are at good, interesting restaurants.
The con is that you have to present. I have a lot more experience with this now, but it's still a bit nerve-wracking until my talk is done, especially if it's a new one. It can be hard to focus on the talks before mine, because I'm worrying more about my own than listening to what's on stage.
At Rocky Mountain Ruby I'm on day 2, Tuesday, September 29, giving Optimize Your Mindset (Without Overclocking), the same talk I gave at Blue Ridge Ruby in the spring. It's a no-code talk about making yourself a better developer through things other than code: mindfulness for breaking thought loops, growth mindset, habit building, and deep work for keeping focus in a distracted world.
What I want out of a technical conference now
As a staff engineer, here's what I'm looking for:
- People. Having lunch with someone whose blog I've been reading for years.
- New ideas and concepts, and honestly, how anyone is getting stuff done with AI. I want to see other developers' workflows.
- Recharging. A conference is different from what I do every day in my role, and that alone helps.
- WNB.rb. I love telling people about WNB.rb, talking with folks who could benefit from the group, and meeting members in person.
Sometimes a conference changes how you work for years. At RubyConf 2018 I saw Tekin Süleyman's talk Branch in Time, and I still recommend it. One slide in an earlier version said "Help each other get better," and I tweeted at him that it should be "Help each other Git better." He used it. That talk changed how I think about Git history and how much you can learn from reading other people's commit messages. I still do that, and I think it matters even more now that you may not be writing every commit yourself.
So would I go to Rails World someday? Probably not. For a bigger conference, I'd pick RubyConf or RubyKaigi, as an attendee or a speaker. Beyond that, where I go doesn't follow much of a system. Geography is a big part of it. I usually speak at conferences around Nebraska and Iowa because they're easy for me to get to.
If you're picking your first conference, my advice is to start small and easy, especially if you're going solo or you're nervous about it. Otherwise, go where your people are. As a Rubyist, RubyConf and the regional Ruby conferences have been great for me.
So, did I miss anything?
The Rails World talks will be on the Rails YouTube channel in a couple of weeks, and I'll ask my coworkers which ones stood out. I've always liked getting their recommendations, and that's how I found Tekin's talk in the first place.
What I can't catch up on later is the people. Next week in Boulder, I'm looking forward to seeing old friends (conference friends, who may or may not actually be old) and meeting some people in person for the first time, like Marco Roth. I've read his blog, watched his talks online, and really enjoyed his work on RubyEvents.
So did I miss anything this week? Maybe a few good talks, and I'll watch those. The people part I'll get next week in Boulder, at a speaker dinner or on a walk to an offsite, with people I met a day or two earlier.
