I'm back in Hawaii, having just returned from
RailsConf07 in Portland. All in all it was a great time.
CD Baby covered the conference fee and hotel room (at the
Jupiter Hotel, very cool if you want a bar and night club just foot steps away) because I was a winner in the
Rails Hackfest 2007 contest. So hat's off to CD Baby!
Some closing thoughts:
* As always, choose sessions based on the speaker, not the topic.
* The tutorial sessions, common with O'Reilly conferences, just don't seem to be worth it. They aren't enough like a true class to really learn anything, and four hours is quite a long time to listen to a presentation.
* The best session that I attended, was
The Business of Rails. The session had a great line up, was not a technical session, had no slides, was full of great Q&A, and generally was full of interesting, candid, and honest information. (I think too many presenters rely on their slides too much.)
* The quality of the sessions was very mixed. …