RailsConf Europe: Done and Dusted

RailsConf Europe Speaker I’m lying on the sofa slightly crippled and recovering from RailsConf Europe. It’s been a hectic couple of days but extremely worthwhile and I have to say, having been to both RailsConfs this year, I think the European version really kicked the American version’s arse. The selection of presentations was outstanding on the whole and covered a massive a really wide range of interesting topics. Also, while RailsConf had a slightly self-cngratulatory tone (I put that in a much cruder way after a few pints last night), RailsConf Europe had a real ‘down to business’ kind of feel. The energy and excitement was directed towards improving and moving forward rather than just slapping each other on the back cos we are smarter than those other people who don’t use Rails yet. So, without future ado, on to details…

The Highlights

The first highlight was definitely seeing ActiveResource actually working and being introduced to Simply Helpful during DHH’s keynote. I must admit, when he starting saying he was starting to say he was introducing more automation in views, I thought ‘Oh shit…this isn’t looking good. Time to find a new framework.’ but as he explained more I actually love the idea. In fact, what I’m really excited about is what implications it will have on the UJS Plugin but more on that in a future blog post. Check the brief overview of SImply Helpful for more details.

The second highlight was Hampton’s absolutely inspiring presentation style. Swearing like a trooper with a can of Stella in his hand throughout. Rock and roll! The fact that we have people like this in the Rails community is one of the things I love about it. Also, the social aspects were damn good although my liver probably doesn’t agree after three nights of hard drinking. I can’t believe the amount of wicked people I met over the past few days, an excellent crowd. Also got a chance to meet some more Caboosers and put some faces to IRC nicks.

Simon did a cool presentation about what Rails could learn from Django and it was good to see it was met with open minds rather than sniggering at the back and jokes about indentation. Django is a great project and does have lots of great features that Rails could use. I might try to implement some myself.

Favourite quote: “If you can’t change your organisation, change your organisation.”

Unobtrusive Ajax For Rails: My Presentation

I was really pleased with the reception my presentation got. In fact, I ended up doing it twice. Extra dates on the Unobtrusive JavaScript tour! My scheduled time was straight after DHH and Kathy Sierra’s keynotes and was in one of the smaller rooms which I was actually quite pleased about as it was alot less scary than I envisioned it being but, athough I didn’t notice at the time, there were loads of people who couldn’t get in. I’d sold out which was really quite amazing. After this David Black asked if I’d do a repeat in the main room so everyone else could see it. Now that was scary.

From the feedback I got and browsing around Technorati it seems that alot of people are really into the idea. Even DHH seemed to like it. I’d not really expected this at all. Up until recently I’d got the impression that most of the Rails community where happy doing things the old school way but it seems this is not the case. I got some excellent questions in both sessions as well but you can check those out on the recordings when thery come out. Big ups to Rabble though, he pointed out that he’d implemented all the JS stuff on Odeo unobtrusively and once forgot to deploy the scripts but didn’t notice the JS wasn’t there for quite a while because the site worked so well without it. Excellent! I also got to vent a bit about my new obsession with trainers with my example application. It even inspired Geoffrey Grosenbach to hit the Bathing Ape store and buy some new Bapesta’s. Excellent.

When I get back to my Mac on monday I’ll post the slides and my example application. Also, over the next few weeks we’ll be working on the next major release of UJS which will include a load of helpers for testing and debugging including a new debugger tool for Low Pro. Keep and eye out for that. So yes, hopefully this exposure really should get alot more people trying out the plugin. If you do please be sure to post bugs and feature suggestions to the UJS Trac – we’d love the help.

Finally, Luke has written up a load of stuff from the conference including a run down of my presentation with some of his own comments on the subject so definitely check that out.

Next stop Boston for The Ajax Experience where I’ll be doing an extended version of the presentation with extra hardcore JavaScript action. Hopefully I’ll be able to present at next year’s RailsConfs too, I’ll definitely be attending them either way.

1 Comment (Closed)

Having attended the second run of your presentation at RailsConf Europe I was suitably impressed. Just a quick wibble to say thanks!

It was informative, constructive and useful. And refreshing not to just hear ‘AJAX FTW! Watch Me Drag And Drop! Kapow!’ This, and Thomas Fuchs’ talk, really gave me confidence that JavaScript is ready to be used in a sane, well tested, semantically meaningful way.

Thankyou!

DomCDomC at 19.09.06 / 14PM

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