Ode to RailsConf
RailsConf 2025 will be the final RailsConf. Let's talk and share our experiences from attending RailsConf over the years and being part of the Ruby on Rails community.
Ode to RailsConf
Nadia Odunayo
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David chats with Nadia, the CEO of The StoryGraph, about her experiences at RailsConf
Reflections on RailsConf Speaker Experiences
DavidShout out to GoRails for sponsoring Ode to RailsConf . If you or your team wants to learn the latest Ruby on Rails features Hotwire Ruby and more check out GoRailscom . Use code ODETORAILSCONF at checkout to get 10% off . Y
DavidYou're listening to the Ode to RailsConf podcast , where we reminisce about our experiences at RailsConf over the years . I'm your host , david Hill , and my guest today is Nadia . I hope I don't murder your last name , oduwayo .
NadiaNot bad Oduwayo .
DavidOduwayo .
NadiaIt's like Oduwayo , but the N is kind of silent .
DavidOkay , Oduwayo .
NadiaYeah , there we go .
DavidNadia Oduwayo . Thanks for joining me today , Nadia , and putting up with my terrible pronunciation of your last name .
NadiaOh , it's completely fine .
DavidApparently , I don't know how to pronounce it myself . My dad says so .
NadiaIt's fine , the things that we have to just kind of bear in life . Yeah , no , I'm doing good , I'm doing well . I'm really excited to talk with you . As we discovered , we've been chatting on Twitter over the years , but we finally met for the first time at RailsConf in Detroit some months ago .
DavidWell , that's not entirely true . We did meet briefly in 2016 in Kansas City .
NadiaDid we ?
DavidYeah .
NadiaYou didn't bring this up .
DavidI think I did tangentially because 2016 , kansas City , was when I first met you . I had a very brief interaction with you because I was talking with some other guys where we were trying to organize a board game night at the conference and I had a brief conversation with you and you expressed basically that you would love to go to that . But you had another engagement that night already . From that very brief conversation , I just thought you were a fascinating person to talk to . I think you would give in a talk that year . I was just really impressed by you . That's when I started following you on Twitter , which led to our various Twitter interactions .
NadiaOkay , because I have always wondered where you cropped up from . When I saw you in 2024 , I said your face is familiar and I knew immediately the twitter profile that I matched your face to and I went to check and I always been like aware of you as a twitter personality and I have always wondered when did david crop up in my Twitter sphere ? So that's the origin story . In 2016 , kansas City , and I love board games . So what you said , I can imagine that happening me wanting to go to a board game night but unfortunately being otherwise committed .
DavidNot like . You're a busy person .
NadiaNo , it's important to make time for board games and video games .
DavidRight , and board games for me have , because I am an introverted person like we were talking about before . I have a really hard time meeting new people and making small talk and having those types of conversations when I really don't know that person well yet . But put me with a whole bunch of people that I've never met before and I'm teaching them a board game or playing a board game with them , and all of those inhibitions that I have in my head just completely drop away , because now I'm in this very structured social situation where there are rules to the game and how it works and it's so much easier for me to relax and meet new people and have these kind of fun encounters . And and so , yeah , board games have a very special place in my heart because it helps me interact with people better .
NadiaI love that . Yeah , you've got the safe space at the very minimum . You've got the safe space of just following the rules . And then there are all those side conversations that crop up . Different people's humor can come out . Someone is trying to teach somebody something or explain something in a different way . It's such a great framework or apparatus to meet a bunch of strangers .
DavidYep , 100% agree . So yeah , I didn't just meet you in 2024 . I met you once a little bit earlier .
NadiaWhat a surprise . I love how you just surprised me with that on the podcast .
DavidWell , that wasn't the intent . I thought I had mentioned that before , but in our various other conversations that probably got lost in the shuffle . It did . So we're here to talk about RailsConf . Yay , You've spoken several times at RailsConf , haven't you ?
NadiaThree times . There's a big gap between the first two times and the last time , which was a few months ago in Detroit , so I spoke this year . I was the opening keynote , which was really awesome .
DavidWhich was really awesome .
NadiaOh , thank you . I was saying it was awesome being the opening keynote , but I think you were saying my talk was really awesome , so thank you .
DavidYeah , it was great . I'm hearing kind of the history of I keep wanting to say speaker lines , since that's the thing I worked on .
NadiaThat's not speaker line .
DavidIt's the other one Storygraph .
DavidYeah , having you just kind of go through your experiences with Storygraph and kind of how it evolved over time and the things that you needed to discover to kind of pivot to make it better , I was super fascinating . Not just because it was fascinating and railsy , but also just because there were moments where I was , oh , it would have been so easy to like , oh , I failed because this didn't work and call it done . At every step of the way you had these learning moments where you're like , okay , well , I just need to pivot it and go in this slightly different direction . And you kept working on it to the point where at no point was it a failure , it was all just learning experience .
NadiaYes , I love that . I think at the times when I was most uncertain about the future of the product , I always said to myself do I have a next action to take ? And as long as I've got a next action to take , I can take that next action . Whether that's building a feature , doing some customer research , I can take that next action and delay any decision of should I stop doing this ? Is this working ?
NadiaSo , yes , it was really awesome to share that story at RailsConf , especially because the product is built on Rails and I'm a one-woman dev team . I have my co-founder , but I'm a one-woman dev team . I have my co-founder , but I'm a one-woman dev team , and the whole thing behind Rails is the one-person framework . So it was really really cool to show people hey , it works . You can build an app a B2C app no less , used by millions of people around the world and do it by yourself and by yourself in inverted commas because , yes , I've got a team of two other people someone doing support , rob doing infrastructure and ai but in terms of the product itself , it's just me , in terms of the web app and the mobile app .
Nadiaso that's really cool yeah and then it would have been really cool to speak as the keto on 2025 , because 2015 , atlanta was the first time and it was really my first tech conference . And then the second time I spoke was 2016 , kansas city , which is also where I met you . I'm now learning and so , yeah , I spoke 2015 , 2016 , and then there was an eight-year gap of any form of RailsConf involvement and then 2024 .
DavidWow , I have here in my notes . There's a bit of a story about how you came to apply . I'm assuming that's for the first time you spoke at RailsConf , or was that a different time ?
NadiaYes , yes , that the first time I gave a tech talk and also a tech talk at a conference and also , therefore , the first RailsConf as well , they were the same thing . So what happened was I was working at Pivotal in London , I'd done bootcamp and after doing the bootcamp , I got a job at Pivotal , or I had already lined up a job at Pivotal before graduating , and that's another story for another time .
From Lightning Talks to RailsConf
NadiaAnyway , when I started at Pivotal , this was the beginning of 2014 . I remember I think it was the beginning of 2014 . Yes , that makes sense Because during 2014 , andy Kroll has started Brighton Ruby and one of my colleagues was sent there to speak , and I think a few other people went , and Pivotal had this policy that said you get $2,500 to spend on personal development , which could include budget for conferences or other learning materials , but you have to have been at the company for a year or a year and a half .
NadiaBut if you were invited to speak at this very long list of approved conferences , then you could start going whenever . There was no time limit on how long you needed to have been at the company . So I , having done little bits of public speaking at high school or university , I thought , okay , I want to get into speaking at these tech conferences and the other thing was that I was organizing a lot of lunch and learns and pivot tools and things like that , and people have said to me oh , are you going to do talks too ? But I couldn't think of a topic to speak about and I didn't want to do the . Here's what being a junior dev is like talk . I wanted to do something different , but I just felt like I didn't know enough about anything else to be interesting to a room of more knowledgeable developers than I .
DavidThat is the forever problem . I always feel like I'm a year behind everybody else at RailsConf , and so yeah it's more than I do . I know that's not actually the case , but that's how I feel about it .
NadiaYes , and so I started thinking , okay , maybe I can combine something technical with something that I know a lot about that maybe other people won't know a lot about . So , being a recent university graduate , I looked to my degree and my degree was philosophy , politics and economics , with a heavy focus on the economics , and my favorite aspect of economics was game theory , and at the time I was on Cloud Foundry , which was Pivotal's platform as a service , and we'd been talking a lot about distributed systems . So I immediately started looking into , ooh , computers . When they're in a distributed system , you can almost view it as if they're playing games in terms of distributing load and work and tasks and resources . And so I started to explore that and I came up with this talk called Playing Games in the Clouds .
NadiaIt was just a lightning talk that I put on for a pivotal meetup one evening . Anyway , I do this lightning talk and I get generally decent feedback . And then one evening I'm in the office late and my boss , jb Stedman , comes up to me and he says oh , I'm going out for dinner with my friend who's sitting over there . You should go talk to her about fleshing out the lightning talk you did into a fully fledged conference talk and submitting to conferences . And I thought , oh , okay , sure he didn't say anything about who this woman was . I don't think he even told me her name . He might've said her first name , but that was it .
NadiaSo I go and sit opposite this woman and she says to me oh so I hear that you're trying to get into speaking at conferences . Tell me about this talk you just put together . So I told her about , okay , I did this talk on game theory and distributed systems and this is how it went . And she listened to me and she said that sounds great , you should submit that to RailsConf . And I just thought does this woman know what she's talking about ? This talk is about game theory and distributed systems . It's got nothing to do with Rails . Was she listening to me ? I don't think so . So I just said okay , and she kind of spoke to me about it a little bit more . Later on in the conversation she'd say little bit more later one of the conversations , she'd say , oh , I'm one of the organizers of the conference , so that's why I'm saying this . I thought , okay , maybe she doesn't know a little bit , but maybe she's also just kind of saying that because she's talking to me .
DavidBut I'll go home and investigate so I go home , just being nice maybe just being nice .
NadiaSo I go home and I want to email her just to thank her for spending that time with me . So I messaged JB and I say what was the name of your friend again , and he just replies probably like just her name , sarah May . And I go because the name is familiar to me , because I had already read this super popular blog post that Sarah May had written . That was how to get your conference proposal accepted , or something like that . There's this speaking blog post that she has .
NadiaI think it was about writing a good proposal or putting on a good talk or both , and I was like huh . And then I did some more Googling and I was like oh , she's not just one of the organizers , she's on the Ruby Central board , she's a super accomplished speaker , very well known in the Ruby world . I better submit , I better submit , and so I put together my proposal . Long story short , it got accepted and so my first ever tech conference talk was at RailsConf in Atlanta and that was such a big gig to have for your first conference talk and it just set everything off for me as being part of the Ruby Rails community , particularly as a speaker .
DavidWow . So I think I was incorrect in my timing of things , because I think I remember that talk and so the first time I saw you was probably 2015 .
NadiaYou think , as in , there weren't many people in the room for that talk . It was my lightest attenders talk ever . It was a smattering of people in the room , but maybe you were there . Actually there were a fair amount of people . There was one person who got up near the front of the talk and left and then I later saw him at an after party or something and he said by the way , I left not because I wasn't enjoying your talk but because I had to take a work call . But that wasn't you .
DavidNo , that was not me . No , yours was board games Okay . I was at RailsConf 2015 . Right before you started talking about game theory , that clicked in my head as oh yeah , she gave that amazing talk about game theory .
NadiaI'm pretty sure I was there in the room oh my gosh , that's awesome , but did we speak in 2015 ?
DavidI don't think we spoke until 2016 , okay , but yeah awesome wow , a fun memory , remembering things on the spot . I love it . So you get this amazing talk at RailsConf on . Bigquery , which from my admittedly apparently spotty memory , I remember just being really impressed with that talk . How did that go for you ? How did you feel it went giving your first big tech talk at RailsConf .
NadiaIt's funny looking back at it now . Obviously I'm a lot more of a confident speaker now and I still think it's pretty good when I look back , but I was really nervous . I think when you watch it you don't see that I'm necessarily nervous , but I was . But anyway
RubyConf Speaker Experiences and Mentorship
Nadia. So Andy Kroll , who runs Brighton Ruby he was in the room and he sat at the back and I had submitted to his conference later that year .
NadiaI applied , put my thing for the CFP , so I gave this talk I don't know if you remember I have this opening about the exam and the students and I just love that opening and I gave this talk and I go to Andy sitting at the back of the room and when I'm done I go to the back and Andy's like it was good , you really . And he's like , yeah , you're in , you're in for Brighton Ruby . And I was what really ? And then I said're in for Brighton Ruby and I was like what Really ? And then I said wait , is that allowed ? Because I felt like I was cheating . But then I realized wait a minute . I've done more than anybody else ever has to do to get accepted for a CFP because I've essentially delivered the talk .
NadiaSo , at first I thought I'd gotten a secret push through the back door , skipped the line , but then I realized no way I've actually got the talk and I've delivered it . Now , knowing a lot more about conference organizing and CFPs and having been on program committees I've been on program committee for RubyConf a couple of times Now I know what gift it is for a conference organizer to be able to see a talk , because the promise of the CFP , the potential of the proposal , sometimes the real talk does not live up to it and sometimes vice versa . Maybe the proposal isn't all that , but the talk is amazing . So now I see why Andy was like yep , check .
DavidYou're in . It was a live audition .
NadiaLive audition Right , so that was awesome for me . So I guess it went well , because I booked another speaking gig for later on that same year .
DavidNice .
NadiaAnd I also spoke at Goruco with that same talk . My first year of speaking , 2015 , was great , but anyway , we're focusing on RailsConf .
DavidOne of the things I love about RailsConf is how it kind of branches out and bleeds out into other things , and so we can talk about how bleeds out into other things , and so we can talk about how it has led to other things . That's totally fine .
NadiaThe main thing is I was invited . I got an email from Sarah I think not too long after Atlanta saying we want you to be on the program committee for RubyConf for San Antonio , and I remember again feeling am I qualified for this ? I've just started , but I was like sure . So 2015 was amazing for me in terms of the Ruby central events , because I spoke at RailsConf , I was on program committee for RubyConf and because of my game theory talk , I chose a track that I think was called Weird Ruby or something like that no , sorry , not Weird Ruby Outside Ruby or something like that . Basically , it was a whole track of talks that didn't directly relate to Ruby , inspired by my game theory talk at RailsConf earlier that year . So that year , really , that first RailsConf experience , really set me up in the Ruby Central community , both as a speaker and as being someone who kind of helps to organize or be part of the putting on of these conferences .
DavidOh , that's fantastic . Wow , We've talked a bit about your first experiences speaking at RailsConf . One of the other big experiences at RailsConf they have the mentor guide scholar program . Have you ever volunteered as a guide before ?
NadiaI have . I've done it a couple of times . Well , actually one of those times was at RubyConf , but I was a guide for RailsConf , and that was at the 2016 one where we spoke for the first time .
NadiaSo for the first time that I was speaking at Atlanta , I definitely wasn't trying to be a guide , I was just going myself Let me just go and see what's what . And then I was on program committee and I think I was just focusing on being on program committee for RubyConf . But when 2016 RailsConf came around , even though I was speaking , I felt comfortable enough to be somebody's guide and so I applied to be a guide . I got accepted and I was paired up with a scholar named Stephanie Nemeth . She was a Ruby on Rails developer living in Amsterdam and I just remember our first emails back and forth . They send an email like Kinsey Ann Durham amazing woman , she ran that program for years .
NadiaShe sent the intro email and Stephanie and I exchanged a couple of emails and I remember her saying that she loves meeting new people , but she's reserved and quiet . And I remember saying , off the back of my 2015 debut on the scene , I said I've met a few people and I can help you meet whoever you want to meet . I think she mentioned Sandy Metz or something and I was like , well , I know Sandy . Now , I know Sandy , I can intro you if she's there and so , yeah , that was the first time . It was a wonderful time .
NadiaI had a great experience being a guide for Stephanie . She had mentioned maybe wanting to get into speaking a little bit and so we spoke about her maybe doing a lightning talk at the conference and she did it and it was awesome . We've been friends since . I haven't spoken to her in a while . I'm not sure what she's up to right now , but I think the last time I spoke to her was a few years ago and , yeah , she's just been going from strength to strength and making whole programming hardware that she wears like fashion hardware and doing really cool projects . It was a fantastic experience .
DavidThat's really cool . I've been a guide once . It's one of those things . I have mixed memories about it . I look back and I think I wonder if I was really the right person to be a guide . At that point I was very kind of deeply introverted and having a hard time meeting new people . I didn't know a whole bunch of people in the Ruby community , but my assigned scholar .
NadiaHer name was Ashley Ellis Pierce . She's amazing , the talk her . Get driven , something talk .
DavidYeah , I was her guide in the 2016 Kansas City RailsConf and I had a great time kind of meeting her and just kind of trying to answer whatever questions she had . I was not aware enough to introduce her to people , since I didn't know people very well yet . I wasn't aware enough to try to encourage her to do things like a lightning talk or anything like that . But she's worked at GitHub and Shopify and spoken at RailsConf . Yes , I think it was 2022 . I was kind of wandering around the exhibit hall whatever we call it at RailsConf . Yes , I think it was 2022 . I was kind of wandering around the exhibit hall whatever we call it at RailsConf . I was wandering around the exhibit hall a little bit and I came over and I was kind of looking at the Shopify table . Someone comes over and kind of taps me on the shoulder and I turn and she's like hi , do you remember me ? And I'm like of course I remember you .
DavidI had a fantastic experience being a guide the one time I've done it , and it was just oh , I need to try and do that again someday , because it was such a positive experience , even though I look back at it and I go , oh , I could have done so much better .
NadiaThe amazing thing about the scholar guide is that everyone has a different experience and all the guides help in whatever way they can , so you were able to be a friendly face at the conference , answer questions . I don't think necessarily having someone who can introduce you to other people is necessarily like something that has to happen or makes the whole thing valuable . I think the main thing is just having a friend having a safe space and it sounds like you were that for her and the fact that she came up to you as soon as she saw you and said do you remember me ? I think it's testament to that .
DavidI try to remind myself to look at it that way , because I feel like oh sometimes I feel like I'm kind of heavy on myself and this is like , oh , I think I might have let her down at points or whatever , and that experience is like okay , I feel like it was a more positive experience now .
NadiaIt definitely , definitely was , and probably you know how you said you were deeply introverted . That was probably really good for you , too . Right To do something like that .
DavidOh , it absolutely was . Right , yeah , what made you go for it , given that you were deeply introverted at that point for six or seven years .
NadiaAnd so .
DavidI felt like from a purely programming perspective , I felt like I was justified in saying I had the experience to be able to like okay , I'm a fairly experienced Rails dev at this point even though that has nothing to do with being a scholar , because you're not actually doing the programming right but I had been to multiple Rails cons . At that point I had a good amount of experience as a Rails dev . So I was like I want to try to get out of my introverted bubble a little bit more . Maybe this will help push me in that direction . And so that was my thought process behind it at least .
DavidAnd then , for reasons I applied to be a guide the following year and didn't get in I don't know if there were just weren't enough scholars for all the guides that applied that year or something . I don't know why . It's just one of those things where I was like I didn't get in that next year and then I think I had a gap where I didn't attend a few Rails comps and just never got back into it . So you had this wonderful experience with Stephanie as your scholar . How does that dovetail into your other open source project ? Speaker line .
NadiaSo , on the Slack for the 2016 Kansas City I'm pretty sure it was in the scholars and guides Slack channel Someone asked to see if any of the speakers would be open to sharing their proposal because they wanted to get into speaking . I think that's what happened , and a lot of the speakers were like , yes , of course . And then a lot of the other guides were also saying actually , yes , please , I want to get into speaking too . That would be amazing . And I realized a few things . I realized , okay , there should be a place where people can just share them because they want to . But I also , from my experience of having submitted proposals that did well , but also knowing the help I had to get them to the point , that they were high quality .
NadiaAlso , knowing the journey from proposal to the actual talk , because you can pitch a talk and then when you come to write the talk , sometimes the reality is not 100% aligned . Also , having been on committee and seeing it happen the other way too the promise of a proposal and the talk being a bit of a letdown and were there signs in the proposal all of this gray area and this realm in between from getting to the proposal but also getting the proposal to talk made me see that there needs to be some form of context shown , even just to show that , hey , someone might have seen me speak and think her talk is great , but my proposals get rejected sometimes too . Or sometimes a proposal can be rejected because they were looking for one talk on go and that slot was already taken . So it's not that your proposal was bad , but look at that same year this talk on go was already accepted . So it's not that your proposal was bad , but look at that same year this talk on go was already accepted .
NadiaSo I thought this open source project that I have , speaker , it was born because I had this vision of this platform or this directory of proposals with extra added context and seeing . You can look at a speaker and see over the years where they've submitted , where they've been accepted , rejected Because sometimes a proposal might have been rejected but the speaker had another proposal accepted at that conference , so they were only ever going to get one acceptance all these things . So I started that and it started off . I spent a lot of time on it . Then , over the years , my work and StoryGraph picked up .
NadiaI have not touched it for ages , so it's still in a very basic form of essentially just a list of proposals , with acceptances and rejections and waitlist status . However , there was a bit of life injected into it recently , which was this is an awesome addition to RailsConf and extra shame that RailsConf is not going to be happening after 2025 . But I hope that they're going to keep
Building Community at RubyConf Hack Day
Nadiadoing it . Rubyconf that's the hack day , because they had the hack day and they set up tables for each of the different open source projects that signed up and I kind of did it as a I haven't touched speaker line in years , but this would be a great opportunity to get some longstanding tickets crossed off and to inject some life into it again , and I wasn't even sure if many people would turn up .
NadiaThen we had the and then you had a full table the whole time no , I had a full table the whole time and I think no one went over to rails core and I think people were saying , because there was a lot of them at the table some . I spoke to Andy afterwards and he said maybe some people felt intimidated to go over but it was just so awesome because I had a whole table , including you . You actually spilled over to the second table originally and I thought is David just sitting there just to have a spare table ? You came over and it was wonderful that was just my introverted tendency .
DavidYeah , over momentarily , and then , as soon as you sat down at the other table , I was like , okay , well , that's what I'm here for , so let's go to the other .
NadiaAnd I guess , similar to how we spoke about the board game thing earlier . That's kind of a safe space of we're here to work on this project , so it gives people a framework , because by the end of the day you were laughing and joking with everybody . You found some interesting bugs Right . The whole table suddenly like made friends . It was awesome .
DavidThat was a wonderful experience and , like you said , fantastic addition to RailsConf . The only regret I have about it is I wish it had been added to RailsConf earlier . Yes , tools that we use for our jobs . It's really hard to do that once you leave the conference , and it's okay . Where do I even start ? Where do I find something that I can dig into and try to contribute back to ? And having a spot at the conference with projects that are like we could use some help , why don't you come over here and we'll work on something ? I thought that was just such a fantastic way of helping people like me take our first steps into actually trying to contribute back on something .
NadiaAnd you sure did , because you picked up the biggest longstanding issue that I had on SpeakLine and I think maybe about a week or two ago you finished it off or at least you got to a decent checkpoint and it's sitting in my inbox and I need to address it . But thank you so much because , yeah , you took on one of the biggest challenges that I was struggling to find the headspace to even tackle . You handled that and that's awesome . And so what was really cool is it didn't click at the time , but SpeakerLine was born out of my experience at 2016 RailsConf and then eight years later at 2024 RailsConf .
NadiaI've got a whole table of people contributing to it and we had someone come up to us just when we were getting started and say Yusuf , and he said , oh , not sorry to interrupt , but Speak . Align is the reason I'm here , because I heard it mentioned on a podcast that Andy Crow was on when he was talking about trying to get people to come to RailsConf , and he mentioned it and Yusuf had gone through it , looked at different proposals , then written up his own proposal and got accepted to come speak and that was his first time speaking . The whole thing is just fantastic .
DavidThat was the whole dream for SpeakerLine right . Literally see it happen in front of you .
NadiaYeah , I was even joking with the table that I didn't pay this man to come and say this at this time , because this seems too good to be true , that's awesome .
DavidI love that .
Memorable Moments From RubyConf and RailsConf
DavidWere there any other memorable or specific experiences from RailsConf that you wanted to talk about before we close things out here ?
NadiaI think , probably from each of the three I've been to there will be a memorable thing . So 2024 , the one we just had a few months ago , I think being the opening keynote , this is the biggest Rails conference historically , the biggest Rails conference in the world . It was where I kicked off my speaking career and now I'm standing there , like opening the conference , saying look what I've done as a one woman dev team . So that was obviously special . And then the speaker line full table was also special as well , because it's my private work and then my public open source project . If we go backwards , 2016 , the first time I spoke to you , the first time I met Saron's husband , rob Freelo , who would later become , or who is now , my co-founder at Storygraph , and the great thing about that meeting is I'd only ever really heard Rob's voice while talking to Saron when we were doing podcast recordings for the Ruby Book Club podcast , and he always came across as quite harsh or cold because , looking back now , if I think about it , saron was often asking him about technical , difficult issues that we needed help with . And also I was an unfamiliar name because I just suddenly cropped top and now we're doing a podcast . That's very me and someone energy , you know , just became friends and now we're starting a podcast . So he would often say things like who's this person and what is this project ? And he just sounded not very warm . And if you know Rob now he's such a lovely , fantastic , friendly , fun man and so I first met him then and we even had a funny moment in 2016 where it was quite funny .
NadiaI went to their room to prep for my lightning talk with Saron , because we were doing a lightning talk for the Ruby Book Club podcast . Saron was in the bathroom or something when I first turned up , so Rob opened the door and he said where do you want to sit at this desk ? And he had a computer at the desk , or do you want to sit at the couch ? And I hesitated because I wasn't sure and he said don't worry about me , you know I'm going for a run , oh , ok . Well , I want to sit at the couch anyways . Ok .
Nadia15 , 20 minutes into me and Saron talking , I noticed Rob is still there and I say to Saron , kind of quietly , but he can hear me , wasn't he going for a run ? Saron says Rob , you were going to go for a run . And he looks right at Saron and says oh no , I just told her that so she'd honestly choose where she wanted to sit . I just sat there like how dare this man ? Just our origin story of our friendship and the first few encounters I had with him , I was like who is this man ? So that's memorable . 2015 was just a real , real special time because I met a lot of my oldest , closest conference buddies . Then Turns out , you were there . I didn't talk to you , but you are one of my oldest conference friends now .
NadiaIt's like , even though we didn't know of that time , the fact that we met . Well , you saw me in 2015 and then we spoke in 2016, . You are naturally now one of my oldest conference friends , even though we really bonded in 2024 . So but yeah , I met Andy Kroll . I met Andy Kroll in London , but we bonded because we each spent the whole conference having Americans tell us there's another British person here and then when when we finally like met , we were like , oh , it's you , because we met before and then we just kind of hung out the whole time .
NadiaAnd so Andy Cole , adam Coppy , justin Searles , ayni Ushatel , barrett Clark , so many others . I met all these people who are like good friends . Now Adam is friends with Kent Beck , so I remember he invited me to this group dinner and Kent Beck was there and I just read the book and that's felt really cool , like wow , I get to meet these greats in the industry . I met a guy called Pete Holliday great guy and he worked at Mailchimp at the time and one morning he said to me and a couple other people do you want to go to the Mailchimp offices ? And back then that was , I think , at this time , serial . The podcast had already come out and I'd loved listening to it and Mailchimp were the main sponsors , so there was this whole Mailchimp advert . So this was just very cool for me to go on a behind the scenes . Mailchimp tour 2015 was a real , real , special , real formative for my whole Ruby Rails career and so , yeah , I love RailsConf . That's awesome .
DavidYou're going to miss it . I'm going to miss it too . I'm hoping that kind of RubyConf grows and becomes a little bit bigger , since Ruby Central won't have to spend half the year prepping for RailsConf .
NadiaYeah , I hope so too . It's funny because even thinking about this getting ready for this interview , I just see the Ruby Central conferences as one big pot . It sounds like I haven't really been to that many Rails comps because it's basically three , with two 10 years ago , eight , nine years ago , but because most years either a Ruby comp or a Rails comp or involved , somehow it feels like I'm part of it every year . Right . But it was interesting looking back and realizing I've done more with RubyConf than with RailsConf .
DavidBut I have yet to attend a single RubyConf , and so I want to correct that in the near future , it's just probably not going to be this year .
NadiaI would have been great if it was this year , because I might be there .
DavidThe timing on RubyConf is always a trouble spot for me , because November is such a bad month in terms of just the holidays are coming up . It's also my birthday month . There's always so many things going on in November , but I don't know .
NadiaMay I ask when in November your birthday is ?
DavidThe 29th .
NadiaOkay , I was wondering if it was near the middle , because I know that RubyConf is often near the middle , so I want to know how close it was . Maybe you celebrate the whole month . That's completely fine as well , but I understand the idea of like it's my birthday month as well , but I just wanted to check if often the conference overlapped with your birthday as well .
DavidNo , that was never really a threat . Just because my birthday , like every other year or so , falls within the thanksgiving break , where it's like the day after thanksgiving , there's so many things that have to happen in november on top of the fact that , well , my birthday's in here and the holidays are in here , and the thing for christmas is in here , and it's just a lot . There have been times where I was like thought about trying to do .
NadiaIf you've ever heard of nano raimo yes , I've wanted to do that one year .
DavidEvery year I'm like , okay , I'm going to do it this year , but it's November . Nope , I didn't do it this year because too many other things always happen in November . Yeah .
NadiaBut that sounds like a really nice time . Thanksgiving and your birthday , that sounds like a really nice . We don't have Thanksgiving . It's a holiday I'm jealous of or envious of , rather .
DavidIt's not something that I would say is something to be envied For years growing up in school and everything everybody else in my class is and today is so-and-so's birthday . I never get that because my birthday always falls within like we're off for Thanksgiving break , so Dave doesn't have a birthday .
NadiaOh , I'm not envious of your birthday being near a public holiday , no , but it just feels like , especially being older now it feels like it's a nice time with family , but I'm envious of Thanksgiving . It seems like such a nice thing Everyone's just being thankful and eating nice food . Yeah , it seems like a nice holiday and I love Christmas . Wow , if I had Thanksgiving the month before it . Yeah , it seems like a nice holiday and I love .
DavidChristmas . Wow , if I had Thanksgiving the month before . It's amazing . Thanksgiving is a fun big family get together with my wife's family .
NadiaSo I love it .
DavidI think that's
Farewell From Ode to RailsConf
Davidit . I don't have any other questions for you . Is there anything else ? You'd like to leave our listeners with Nadia ?
NadiaNo , I've had such a wonderful time RailsConf over the three times I was there and if I met you there , I hope we had a great conversation and I hope to see you at some other conference in the future .
DavidAll right . Thank you everyone for listening . This is the Ode to RailsConf podcast .
NadiaThank you .
