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 ver...