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David: You'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 John Sowers.

John, would you introduce yourself?

John: Thank you, David.

I am right now the Associate Director of Product Engineering at Privia Health.

I'm also a speaker who's spoken at RailsConf as well as other conferences.

And I think that covers all the basics that I wanted to introduce.

So that's me.

David: All right.  So speaking of RailsConf and speaking at RailsConf, since you included that in your introduction, let's start there.

Let's talk about your experiences giving presentations at RailsConf.

What was that like for you?

John: So it's actually kind of a really interesting bookend around my speaking experience, because I started speaking in 2016.

And the way I started was by taking the idea that I had and scaling it down into a lightning talk.

And so I did a lightning talk at the RailsConf in Kansas City in 2016.

That went really well, sort of proved that the idea was a good one.

Then I went on to give that talk at 14 other conferences.

And then last year, 2023, I gave that talk, a much modified version of that talk at RailsConf in Atlanta.

So it was sort of two ends of the same thing.

And I've been mostly giving that one talk.

And I've finally written a second talk that I just started giving.

But that was the RailsConf connection there.

David: Interesting. I'm curious what this talk is now, because I was in Kansas City.

I wonder if I heard that lightning talk.

John: It was called Hacking Your Emotional API.  And so I take the metaphor, we all understand how APIs work.

And you get requests and responses and things that are happening.

But what if we use that as a way to understand how feelings work?

By imagining that things happen out in the world are an API request that comes into us.

And then we have middleware that figures out what kind of emotional response we send to that event happening to us.

And then once we do that, we can start looking at what kind of code might be in there.

And you can use that to understand our feelings.

David: Interesting. I like that. That's an interesting metaphor for figuring out how to kind of cope with events around you.

I would have to go look up, see if there are recordings of that talk somewhere that I can go peruse.

John: You can go to emotionalapi.com.  And I've got all the recorded versions of that.

David: Even better.  I'm going to have to go take a peek at that after I'm done here.

So that's your speaking experience for RailsConf.  Have you been involved with RailsConf in other capacities beyond just as a speaker?

John: Yeah, I started out doing the guide program, I think it was 2014 or 15, fairly soon after I started coming to the conferences.

I sort of lucked into a company that would send our whole team to RailsConf and RubyConf every year.

So I pretty quickly got comfortable at the conference.

And the scholar and guide program looked really cool.

So I was a guide for a couple of years.

And then in 2017, I was sort of feeling like I wanted to do more for that program and see what could go on there.

And so I just reached out on Twitter and said, hey, what can I help with?

And it was right when Allie was going on maternity leave.

And so they were like, yeah, come on in.

You can just take over her slot for a while.

So I got to join the scholarship committee and have been a part of that ever since then.

So really, really love that program.

David: That breaks my brain a little bit, honestly.

As a self-diagnosed introvert, I've kind of felt the same thing.

I've wanted to be more involved in the community and in these programs with conferences for a long time.

But it's hard to kind of get in that door, I guess, because I don't know that many people and I don't feel super comfortable hyping up and asking like you did.

So it breaks my brain a little bit.

That's basically what you did is you just, can I help with anything?

And they're like, yeah, sure.

Come on, let's go.

John: I've always found that the folks that run Ruby Central, over the years, a lot of people have come and gone, but they've all been the sort of people that are so unbelievably friendly and approachable and easy to work with.

And so I got to that level of comfort.  I was just, hey, yeah, let's find out what y'all are doing and what I can do.

And it was an easy process.

David: Okay. So you said you're part of the committee that kind of governs the Scholar Guide program now?  What do you do for that?  What does that actually entail?  What are you doing for that?

John: So we have three people on the committee at the moment.  Generally, it's about three people.

Sometimes we add one or move one here and there as people come and go.

Generally, what we do is figure out the schedule, right?  We know when RubyConf starts.

So we sort of work up from that for like, okay, we're going to open applications on this date and then close them on this date.

And then we'll send the emails out on this date, that sort of thing.

Make sure we're asking the right questions on the application form.  Review all the applications, both the scholars and the guides.

Figure out who would be a good guide for what scholar.  Send out the emails, pair them up.

We usually do some sort of prep meetings with the scholars and some of the guides to just sort of a, here's some tips for getting to the conference, how to find us.

We often do a reception with the scholars and guides the night before the conference, get comfortable a little bit, start to meet some people, have some friendly faces so that next time when they show up with everybody, it's a little bit less overwhelming because you already know 20 or 30 people there.

And we usually get someone to talk about just conference tips and tricks.

Like you don't need to have your laptop the whole time, but you might want to take notes.

Make sure you drink enough water and here's how to find people to go to dinner with and all the little things that maybe it could take you a couple of years to learn.

We try and front load that for everybody.

David: I'm pretty sure some of the lessons you just rattled off are things that I still haven't learned.

One of the points that you mentioned of figuring out who would potentially be a good guide for which scholar, I'm curious what kind of things you look at for that kind of pairing process.

I was a guide once and I applied one other time and didn't get accepted as a guide that other time.

I'm just kind of curious what kinds of things you're looking at when you try to figure out a good pairing up of people.

John:  Yeah, that's sort of one of the keys to the guide selection process is it's driven by who we match to. 

So it's not about your quality as a guide, whether there's someone there that can benefit from your strengths.

And generally there are sort of broad categories that are easier for matching, such as if you're both POC and maybe it would be great to see someone from a POC and to be your guide and help your entree to the community.

Or if you're super technical and in your application, you keep talking about all the deep questions you want to ask about Postgres performance or deep dive in that, then we're going to look for a guy that's much more technical, who's maybe a staff engineer or even just a senior engineer who's been around a long time, who's clearly got that technical mindset and maybe willing to sit down and pair on some code together.

Or if it's they're interested in open source, I know like Andre Arco was a guide for a long time. So he's a great person to pair with that person because he does so much stuff with Ruby Together and RubyGems and all that.

So then there's the social angle, right?  Some people are like, I'm here to meet people.  I really want to make a big network.

So we find those guides that we know are super connectors that know a lot of people and are just so comfortable walking up to a group and saying, hey, what's going on? Who are you?  I'm so-and-so, which can be a bit of a challenge for some people.

David: For some people, yep.  Okay, that's really cool.

I guess I probably haven't ever looked very deeply at the scholar application form.

By the time I heard about that program, I had been to enough RailsConfs and had been in a professional Ruby programmer capacity long enough, I felt like applying to that was disingenuous.

So yeah, that's a lot more interesting looking at it from that perspective of trying to give someone an immediate connection to someone that can fill some of those needs that they've expressed.

Okay, you have given some presentations at Rails Conf.

You're part of the committee that helps guide the Scholar Guide program from a more just kind of attendee perspective.

Are there any kind of stories or experiences that you'd be willing to share of just connections that you've made or whatever that kind of highlight why you've continued to be active and engaged in Rails Conf for so long?

John: Overall, and I'm sure you've heard this from the other people on the podcast, the vibe at the conference is so great.  The people are so great.

Even if it is a big intimidating crowd, you generally know people are going to be friendly, and it makes it a lot easier to move through that space and introduce yourself to people, which can be a challenge.

I was thinking about stories to tell.

Like the one thing that jumped out at me is, I'm not sure how it happened, but at most of the RailsConfs and RubyConfs over the earlier years, I would end up at some point at a table with Marty Haught, who was one of the organizers until just the last couple of years.

I really enjoyed talking to him because he would start dishing on the behind-the-scenes organizing process that they sometimes went to.

And so I always really enjoyed finding out about some of that stuff because I've never organized a conference, so I don't know anything about it, but it's sort of interesting to hear what goes on there.

And the tidbit that always stuck with me is that he talked about how they can pretty much tell exactly how much the conference was going to cost to put on if they found out how much a gallon of coffee cost at the hotel.

So the hotel is going to make you buy X amount of coffee with your whole package, and they charge you per gallon, so 200 gallons or whatever for the weekend.

But that number scales kind of linearly with the conference.  So 800 people means the facilities are going to cost this much, boom.

So you could just take that one number and be like, yeah, we can do it at that facility.  No, we can't do it at this other one because it would just correlate perfectly.  This is fascinating to me.

David: That's funny. I would never have thought that.

John: Yeah, yeah.

David: Oh, I love that.  I have a conversation coming up with Marty scheduled in the near future.

But yeah, getting to peek behind the curtain, as it were, in terms of how conferences get organized, I would love to have more visibility into that.

With the end of RailsConf kind of coming in the near future and Ruby Central saying that once that's done, they want to try and provide more support to smaller regional conferences to help those kind of flourish a bit more.

I would love to kind of dip my toe into it.

I have no idea how to organize a conference, how to even start organizing a conference.

Maybe if there was some step-by-step guidance through at least the initial parts of the process, that would be really helpful.

John: Yeah, definitely.

And I imagine there's so much accumulated wisdom from all the people who've been doing it for so long that you could put together a pretty good guide for, here's the pitfalls, here's the things to look out for.

David: Yeah, that would be really handy.  Awesome.

So are there any kind of final or closing thoughts you'd like to leave with people as we are coming up on the final RailsConf?

John: One other item that occurred to me as you were talking about struggling with extroversion versus introversion, most of my life I've been a pretty introverted type person.

But something unique about the RailsConf/RubyConf environment has allowed me to learn how to be extroverted for the days that there's a conference happening.

So I was able to learn how to turn on that ability for a limited time, and then I got to go back to my house and be quiet for a while.

But feeling comfortable enough to be the kind of person who just walks up to a group that's sitting at the lunch table and sit down and say, hey, I'm John.

It took a while to get there, but I definitely learned it.  And it's a nice skill to have.

And I also wanted to point out that being a guide gives you a little bit of extra oomph in that area because you can sort of use the scholar as an excuse to be more outgoing.

So for example, talking to a speaker after they come down off stage after giving their talk, if your scholar wants to go say hi to them, that's your excuse to be like, hi, you know, Mr. Speaker, I have a scholar here who really wanted to meet you.

Here you go.  And you can just sort of use it to sort of push yourself slightly in that direction.

David: Yeah.

The idea that you mentioned at the beginning there of figuring out how to be extroverted temporarily.  It's one of those things.

I don't think I've quite figured out how to turn it on when I need it yet with reliability.  But yeah, there have been times where I have been able to kind of get into that zone.  And usually it's at RailsConf.

For me, at least my introversion manifests most strongly when I'm in a situation that I'm not comfortable in with people that I'm not familiar with.

Over time, as I became more comfortable in the RailsConf environment, even though the location itself is not necessarily the same and started to get to know more people and get the general sense of the tone of how the community tends to react with people in RailsConf, it's become easier and easier to be more extroverted in that environment.

It's definitely one of those things where I'm interested in hacking your emotional API stuff.

I've gotten better at it, but all that says to me is I can get better still to hacking this when I need it to be able to have a better experience in these sometimes uncomfortable environments.

John: Yeah.  And I think you're absolutely right about it, especially the more you go to the conference, the more you see people that you may not know particularly well, you might not even remember their name, but they're familiar enough.

You've probably seen them at a couple of conferences and all of a sudden it's a less alien world because you kind of know 20% of the people there.

David: I've seen you multiple times there, but I don't think I'd ever interacted with you or knew your name even.  So like when you popped up on my screen, it was like, oh yeah, I've seen him.  Oh, that guy, yeah.  Totally.

John: I don't have a ton of super specific memories that I just want to trot out with specificity because there's just this big basket of wonderful dinners I've had where you just sit down next to somebody and you're like, oh, hey, let's have a conversation.  What are you working on?

And it goes off into the evening and you do your thing.  And then there's another one.

And just collectively, there's this big, warm, fuzzy set of memories, friends that I've made over the years that I think back on fondly.

David: I say this almost every episode now.

So I'm sure there are some people listening who might be tired of hearing it by now, but that's been pretty much the consistent through line with everyone I've talked to about RailsConf is that specific memories or stories aside, the big thing that's kept them coming back was the community that is kind of built up around RailsConf and just the friendships that they've made and just how welcoming and open the Rails community is to anyone who wants to be there..

John: Yeah, that's definitely it.

David: Well, thank you for chatting with me today, John.

It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast.

John: Oh, you're welcome, Dave.  This was a lot of fun.  It's a fun subject to talk about.

And I thank you for putting this whole podcast together.  I think it's a great idea.

David: Thanks.