has_many :through

We're finally getting all our after-conference activities completed. The most exciting thing is that we just got our conference media online. We have video and audio recordings of the Golden Gate Ruby Conference technical sessions! Pivotal Labs sponsored the recordings, and is hosting them at pivotallabs.com/gogaruco - you can watch them there or download the files to watch later, or get them from the iTunes podcasts.

We also are trying something new (for Ruby confs, at least). We have put together a 42 page PDF zine, the Golden Gate Ruby Wrap, in order to document the conference, the speakers, the sessions, and the attendees. There are a lot of photos of the event, speaker bios, talk write-ups, and even interviews with attendees. It's the official record of the conference (as official as we get, anyway), and it's free.

Just because people have been asking, I'll say that Matt Aimonetti's talk on CouchDB is not included in the talk videos. Matt didn't want to offend anyone else, so he asked the talk recording not be released. Please don't ask for a copy privately, as I can't help you out. However, there is a great write-up of Matt's talk in the Wrap.

I'd also encourage you to check out the gogaruco blog posts at Pivotal Labs - there are articles for every session at the conference. Sarah Allen also blogged many of the sessions at her site. Know of any other good posts about sessions? Let us know in the comments.

And if you want to see how things looked, there are a lot of good photos up on flickr.

This is not the post I wanted to write. The post that I wanted to write, that I in fact have mostly written and would have posted days ago if not for this distraction, was about what a great success Golden Gate Ruby Conference was and how proud we are of putting on a top-notch conference that raised the bar in many ways. But I'm the person who is responsible for the technical program at the conference, and with the astounding level of distress over the presentation Matt Aimonetti gave at my conference, it's clear I need to do something.

First off, I want to apologize. The technical program at GoGaRuCo was my responsibility. I could have done a better job and prevented this from happening. Everyone had the best of intentions and there are good reasons why things happened the way they did, but that doesn't excuse the lapse. As a first-time conference organizer there was a lot that I had to learn as I went, and this is definitely an important lesson. I haven't yet figured out the best way to prevent this from happening again, but I'm determined to find a way to do better next time.

And to be clear, I don't think Matt's talk was appropriate for a professional conference. If an employee of Google or Apple or Microsoft gave that presentation at a company event, he likely would be fired. I know that many people found the talk informative, creative and entertaining, and I'm not arguing against that. But there were people who found the sexual imagery in the talk objectionable or felt alienated by the atmosphere it created, and that's not okay. I think there are ways a talk with that title could have been given that would have worked, but the talk that was delivered didn't.

Continue reading...

Here we are, the week of Golden Gate Ruby Conference 2009. Everything is in good shape, and we're looking forward to having an awesome time. So here is some last-minute information about the conference.

We've got a great program. Really, this is the conference I've always wanted to attend. Check out our schedule and the amazing assemblage of speakers. I want to thank everyone who submitted talk proposals, and also everyone who voted for selecting talks. We couldn't have done it without you.

Our tickets sold out in just four weeks. We'll have a full house of 200 people, and we'll do our best to take care of you so you can get the most out of the conference. We'll be emailing attendees soon with some info about things like parking, the after-hours party and such, so keep an eye on your inbox.

If you're not coming to the conference, we've still got you covered. Pivotal Labs has generously sponsored full video recording of all the sessions, so all our talks will be available for viewing or download soon after the conference. And if you can't wait, justin.tv is going to be at the conf streaming video of the sessions live. We'll also have a small team of live bloggers chronicling the presentations as they go, and we'll have an IRC channel going on freenode at #gogaruco so it's almost like being there but without the swag. The place to go to find the videos and blog posts is pivotallabs.com/gogaruco

Rails used to be about simplicity. I just started a new project in Rails 2.3. Here's all the choices I'm now faced with:

• Database: MySQL, PostgreSQL
• Testing: Test/Unit, RSpec, Shoulda, Context/Matchy, minitest
• Mocking: Mocha, FlexMock, RR
• Templates: HTML/ERb, Markaby, HAML, Erector
• Authentication: restful_authentication, Clearance
• Web Server: Apache, Nginx
• App Server: Mongrel, Thin, Passenger

It's been about a year since I rolled out a greenfield project. Options are nice, but this feels like Java! And those options are just off the top of my head - I wrote them down in less than a minute without even thinking about it.

Admittedly, it's pretty easy for me to make choices for all these things. I have enough experience that I don't have to spend much time pondering. But for someone new to Rails this all must seem pretty intimidating.

I guess this is why Rails 2.3 has app templates now. Just in time!

Now who has a good template for a quicky open-source app?

This has been a long time coming, and I'm very happy to finally be able to announce the first ever Golden Gate Ruby Conference, here in San Francisco on April 17 and 18. There's so much interest in Ruby here in SF, and tons of Ruby mojo too, so it's about time we had our own conference! We'll be bringing in some great speakers from all over so locals who don't get to travel to conferences can get exposed to stuff they can't usually see. And we'll also have some of our high-powered local talent showing off their stuff too.

While this has been in the works for a while, there are still a few details to work out before we can talk about things like registration, price, our speaker lineup, etc. But we wanted to get the word out as soon as we had firm dates so people could get it on their calendars. And there's still a lot we can talk about...

The organizers of the conference are yours truly, Josh Susser ("the has_many :through guy"), and Leah Silber, conference addict and the woman Yehuda Katz was lucky enough to marry. Yehuda is going to be helping me with the technical program too. Our employers, Pivotal Labs and Engine Yard are already committed to sponsor the conference, so we know we have plenty of support to make it happen. There are still a lot of opportunities to get involved as a volunteer or a sponsor, and we're actively looking for both.

Our approach to this conference is not to take anything as a given. We're rebels, we're bucking the system, we're using instance_eval to leave out explicit receivers! For starters, there will be no call for proposals for talks. The program will consist of invited talks, and talks selected by attendee voting. We'll be setting up a site soon where talks can be proposed and voted on.

We've also got a GitHub account set up as a one-stop place where you can find all the code talked about at the conference, and a place to put stuff we may be hacking on over the weekend. Of course you can follow the conference on twitter, and we'll have a blog set up soon enough.

We're shooting for 150-200 people, single track, about a dozen talks, plenty of "hallway track" time, and a few surprises.

If you want to get involved, volunteer or sponsor, the email addresses on gogaruco.com are the best way to contact us.

Looking forward to this. You have no idea...