
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
Ben Greenberg
Ever taken a detour to Costco during a tech conference? In our latest episode, join me and special guest Ben Greenberg as we recount such quirky adventures and the profound impacts of RailsConf on our personal and professional lives. We dive into Ben's serendipitous entry into the Ruby community, from his educational roots at the Flatiron School to his influential role on the Ruby Central board. His stories highlight the unexpected reach of the community and how shared experiences at events like RailsConf and RubyConf have shaped us.
We also delve into the contrasting vibes of RailsConf and RubyConf, offering insights into what makes each unique. RailsConf is where your professional aspirations get a boost with its focus on growth and product demos, while RubyConf captivates the true language enthusiasts with deep dives into Ruby's mechanics. Our candid reflections, sprinkled with personal anecdotes like a spontaneous Costco run, illustrate the lighter side of these gatherings and the substantial value they bring to attendees and companies alike.
The conversation takes a heartfelt turn as we explore the significance of community involvement in Ruby Central and the broader Ruby ecosystem. We emphasize the power of grassroots efforts and the importance of both financial and personal contributions to sustain open-source initiatives. My journey within the Ruby community is a testament to its generous spirit and collective passion, inspiring others to give back through time, money, or committee work. Join us in celebrating the vibrant culture of Ruby and the remarkable people who make it thrive.
Shout 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 ODE2RAILSCONF at checkout to get 10% off.
David Hill: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 joining me today is Ben Greenberg. Ben, would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners?
Ben Greenberg:Hi David, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, so I'm Ben and I've been involved in the Ruby community since around 2017, when I finished a bootcamp called the Flatiron School, which is famously a Ruby-first bootcamp. So my first introduction to programming or my reintroduction, I should say it was a while since, before I went to the bootcamp again and learned development again was Ruby, and I found in Ruby and in the Rails communities a place that I call one of my homes and have been involved since then, and currently I'm privileged to be on the board of Ruby Central, which puts on RubyConf and RailsConf, and just really, really excited to join you to reminisce and to talk about all the good things.
David Hill:Before we dive into your reminiscing, I want to do a special shout out to Marco Roth, since he's essentially the one that connected us. You mentioned on Twitter at one point the sadness about RailsConf coming to an end and Marco replied on Twitter as hey, you should go on this podcast to talk about it. So special thank you to Marco, because this is the first time I actually got a referral like this to bring someone on the show. I have enjoyed the experience so far.
Ben Greenberg:It's both a serendipity of it, of those connections, but also, david, I think you've really created a much needed space for everyone in the community to think, to reflect, to process, to share laughs and memories, and it's a testament to you to offer these testimonies and these conversations for now, but also for the future.
David Hill:I was actually thinking earlier today that getting feedback on this type of project can be really difficult and I know some people are listening but I have no idea what they think or feel about it or anything like that. So it's nice to hear that type of feedback, that someone is listening and hearing and appreciating this kind of conversation. So that's wonderful.
Ben Greenberg:I totally get that idea. You put things out in the ether and you're like I hope somebody is watching or listening or activates with this or finds interesting. Or what am I doing with my life at this point? I just throw things on the internet with domain names for it. Just throw things on the internet with domain names.
David Hill:Part of the really weird bit about this experience was that when I came up with the idea, I've wanted to do a podcast for a long time, but I wanted to have some kind of central idea that it was built around that differentiated it from yet another Ruby on Rails podcast. And so I came up with this idea after the announcement that RailsConf was coming to a close. I was like okay, having an excuse to go talk to these people, to talk to some people that I've really looked up to and admired in the Ruby community, and to have an excuse to be like let's talk about RailsConf, let's talk about your experiences speaking or being a guest or just as an attendee first-time attendees, veteran attendees having a chance to have those conversations and see what their experiences were like and to share stories. It really resonated with me. So I was like okay, I want to do this project because it's something that I'm excited about for me, just to have, as an introverted person, an excuse to go talk to these people that I have sometimes had difficulty going to talk to.
David Hill:So much of this project was mostly just around okay, I'm doing this because I'm doing it for me. But at a certain point there's also is like well, I'm also like putting it online and hoping other people hear it and listen to it and resonate with it. That'd be nice if I could get that, but at the same time, I'm still going to keep doing this until the next RailsConf comes up, because this is for me and I really like having these experiences.
Ben Greenberg:Sometimes the most meaningful things we do, their origination is this is meaningful to me, this solves a problem for me, this addresses an issue for me, and we solve it, we create it and lo and behold, wait, the audience of this is larger than just me. Or the problem set that it's solving audience of this is larger than just me, or the problem set that it's solving is not only solving it for just me. Sometimes entire sasses are created because of that right, entire businesses spawn because of that problem you solved for yourself. And I think this is just another example of that. Yet to say, yet another Ruby on Rails podcast sounds like some derivation of YAML. The Ruby on Rails podcast sounds like some derivation of YAML. So the idea that we could create a YAML-like podcast in a Rails context does sound a little appealing. Just throwing that out there.
David Hill:I mean, I did phrase it that way because the language and use there I got the pun.
Ben Greenberg:I just wanted to make it explicit for everyone that was listening.
David Hill:Fair enough. All right To the topic at hand your experiences at RailsConf. When was your first RailsConf?
Ben Greenberg:So I was thinking about that for a while. Honestly, since the whole conversation began around we're entering into the also RailsConf and memories and I think back and I think for me, I often conflate in my head the two conferences and I don't know if you've done that yourself as well over time. The Ruby comps and the Rails comps they're very distinct and they're different, but for somebody who had entered into the field feels like a long time ago now, but not that long ago, back in 2017, I was putting them in my head, but actually my first Rails comp, my first actual RailsConf, was in 2019. And it was the one that happened in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, and I came as part of a sponsor with a company. I was working at the company at the time. Every single time I've had the chance to be part of conversations and companies of what events should we sponsor, what community should we attend, where should we put our sponsorship funds this quarter or this half a year or this year. I am always that voice in that room, whether it's virtual or otherwise. There is this Ruby event, there is this Rails event, there is this Ruby event, there is this Rails event, and that year we ended up being able to successfully get some sponsorship funds to come to RailsConf in 2019. It was remarkable. I had so much interaction, so much good experiences, and then it ended up being in 2020, which was a year that was odd in every way shape and form 2020 through 2021.
Ben Greenberg:That RailsConf on the couch, I think we called it, and then RailsConf on the couch 2.0. I forgot exactly the language we used. There was another on the couch that I ended up giving. My first RailsConf talk was, I think, in 2020 around that time, and it was from my room in my little study in my office, and I was actually just rewatched it again this weekend to refresh myself and what I talked about and it was so COVID, specific. But yeah, so 20, we'll get into that as well.
Ben Greenberg:But 2019 was my first RailsConf. My first RubyConf was back in 2017. My first RailsConf was in 2019. And I would love to actually talk about some of the differences from my perspective as well, as somebody who's really been part of this community for 2017. We're in 2024, so not yet a decade going on there and how I see some of the distinctions between the two events and how companies that I worked at and continue to work at see some of the distinctions between those events and why they come to one or the other, what value they got from one or the other. Why did we come to Rails, come to Minneapolis? What did we try to achieve there? All the different sorts of things.
David Hill:So I have never really had a hard time differentiating between the two. So as we record this, it's late October, so RubyConf is coming up in two or three weeks. Now that will be my first RubyConf. I have never been to RubyConf before 2024, even though I've been to RailsConf since 2012 or 13.
Ben Greenberg:So I've been to multiple Even. We're going to meet in person in a couple of weeks. Yeah, that's exciting.
David Hill:I'm excited to meet a bunch of people that I've only seen online or talked to online on Zoom here. But yeah, so I've attended multiple RailsConf and this will be my first RubyConf. So, yes, I would love to hear your thoughts on the differences between the events and, organizationally or personally, the different things that people pull from those different events. I would love to hear that.
Ben Greenberg:So now I want to hear your perspective as well, because it's so different.
David Hill:I don't have a perspective because I've never been to RubyConf before, that's right, but you must have images in your head.
Ben Greenberg:But we'll get there in a second. For me, the reason why in 2017, and only in the past few days as I prepared and thought about this conversation we're going to have that I started really mentally mapping the differences. Obviously, as part of the board of Recentral, there's a lot of thought about the differences and I've been part of a lot of the conversations, the differences and I've been part of a lot of the conversations but for me personally, as a participant, as an individual, to mentally map out and to provide some kind of mental framework for how I perceived the two throughout the years, that was an interesting intellectual exercise that I did for the past few days trying to think through this, and I think it comes down to the dichotomy between enthusiasts and more professionals, and that's the way that a lot of the companies I've worked at have also perceived the difference, and I don't think it holds true entirely, but there is at least a layer of which it holds true, at of which RubyConf is more the event that I perceived it to be where you love the language, you are in love with the language, you are an enthusiast of the language, you want to talk about the mechanics of the language. You want to go under the hood, you want to explore the quirks and the idiosyncrasies and the particularities of Ruby as a language. What can you do with Ruby Ruby on the web, ruby on AI, ruby on a toaster, ruby on a train, Ruby on a plane of somebody who works in the developer advocacy space, for thinking about conferences and events and communities.
Ben Greenberg:Railsconf was a place where we want to launch a new product, we want to talk about a new open source gem that's for businesses, or we want to focus on developer productivity, developer experience, and it had a lot more of a seriousness to it, a lot more of a gravity to it than RubyConf, although my first memory of going to RailsConf was getting in the car with my colleagues because we forgot to get some last minute supplies, and coming into a Costco somewhere in suburban Minnesota and I'd already now had that point for a few years, lived abroad and had not been in a Costco for a while and just the jaw dropping experience of having to and then rushing through the aisles with my colleagues of what can I buy for my wife to bring back to where we live, the monster size quantities of things and how much can I fit in my suitcase. So I'm saying it's a professional event and yet my memory of it is also clouded. Quantities of things and how much can I fit in my suitcase. So I'm saying it's a professional event and yet my memory of it is also clouded with experiences of being in awe of Costco, of coming to a Rails conference, having to go jump into a car to drive a god-awful distance I forgot how far we drove because everything is so far in America.
Ben Greenberg:I was like I'm going to a Costco to buy monster-sized quantities of jelly beans, I think, to hand out at the booth or something along those lines. I don't remember what we were handing out, but we needed jelly beans at our booth. I don't know why, but we needed jelly beans and the only place to go for them was, like Costco, but that's neither here nor there. But yeah, so I think that's one way, one dichotomy to view the events for me, and I think there's going to be something. That's going to be a space that needs to be filled, or a space that's already being filled, perhaps by new events in our community For Ruby developers who are looking for professional development and looking for career advancement, which also happens at RubyConf, but RailsConf felt like a laser focused endeavor in that area. I don't know. Does that jive at all with your experience over since 2012?
David Hill:I think 2012 or 13 was my first RailsConf yeah, it's hard to say for sure. Just because, for me personally, my attendance at RailsConf has evolved a lot over the years, just because I was so frighteningly introverted those first few years, I had a really hard time getting out of my own head to go and meet other people that I might never see again, or people that I was starstruck with because they were just on stage giving a talk or whatever. I have this one memory of I was in line for lunch at one RailsConf. I was like, okay, I'm going to take a risk and I'm going to introduce myself to this person who's standing right behind me in line and introduce myself, and we started chatting and it turned out that we both lived in Dallas and both attended the Dallas Ruby meetup group that was down there, and so I was just like I can't even find someone outside of the city I live in at this huge event with so many other people Like the one person I choose to introduce myself to is this local.
David Hill:I could have met just on any given month. Going to the Ruby meetup, I started off just kind of very. I went for the talks and for what I could pick up from people that are making presentations about Ruby and about Rails and about the things that you could do and the new features and things. And it wasn't until it probably wasn't really until I gave my one RailsConf talk. That, where people were coming up to me to talk to me about what I presented, about the more social aspect of it, really became clearly beneficial to me. I was like, oh, I really should be trying to talk to people and get to know people and just be more of a participant in the community and less just focused on the tech.
Ben Greenberg:And I think if we take a second and take a step back and think about what made RailsConf so unique in so many ways. Now, fast forwarding for me, going to 2024, I have been to so many software events in so many different language communities and polyglot-linked software events of just all types of developers around the world, and yet RailsConf, as a modality, stands out as a really unique event for so many reasons, and two of those are popped up for me, as you were reflecting. One of them is the hallway track of RailsConf, which I love Quote is the hallway track of RailsConf, which I love. Quote unquote hallway track. Right, and every conference has a hallway track. It's just endemic to conferences, but RailsConf hallway track was always one of the most welcoming and open hallway tracks of any series of events I've been to and still have go to today. And the second is this notion and I'm blanking I can't believe I'm blanking on the name of it, but with the time of the event where people could get up and just sign up for slots to give short presentations, the lightning talks were some of my most favorite moments and I gave a lightning talk. I gave a lightning talk. I must have given a lightning talk at RailsConf 2019. And that was empowering for me. But also I remember colleagues of mine and friends of mine who the first time they ever spoke on stage anywhere was a lightning talk at a RailsConf and the idea that they had something worthwhile to share with others, and because it was the Ruby community, of which was just overwhelmingly positive and overwhelmingly kind, that they felt empowered from that experience and ended up contributing to the community in years since, and, honestly, every software community. I enjoy them all I really do but the Rails community and RailsConf will always have that uniqueness of being a place that, both in its hallway track and in its lightning talks in its hallway track and in its lightning talks were just spaces for new developers to pop up and talk.
Ben Greenberg:I mentioned that my first talk at a RailsConf was during COVID and I went back and looked at it. What did I talk about during that time? And you know what I talked about. I talked about creating a Rails app to help my kids celebrate their birthdays during lockdown and creating like I'm using I think it was web sockets and web rtc and a video app and they created like a video birthday party where they could watch like a netflix show with their friends and chat about the show in real time and have like a birthday movie experience. And we sent like popcorn to all their friends so that everyone could eat popcorn together in their mutual lockdown spaces and watch a movie.
Ben Greenberg:And built it on rails because it was easy and because it was what was easier and because it was fun and developing experience and, as a father, getting to see my kids eyes light up like, oh, my dad actually does something that benefits me and I could see what he does when he clicks away on his keyboard all day for hours in a day, every day. And that's what I talked about at RailsConf and I don't think I could give that talk, even if I wrote that in any other framework, I don't think that talk would be a talk that I could give anywhere else. It wouldn't be interesting enough. But at RailsConf, at the event that was for professionals, going back to the dichotomy RubyConf is for enthusiasts, railsconf is for professionals Even at the professional event, there was space for these talks that were just oh yeah, that was nice and sweet and I'm going to really personally like, really miss that, honestly, a couple of weeks back.
David Hill:I recorded the episode with Drew Bragg, and one of the things that he really pointed out that I've been thinking about since then is that there is definitely space for the more traditional presentation talks at RailsConf, but, in his opinion at least, we need more of the whimsy that people can produce.
David Hill:Yeah. So for example, drew's game show presentation talk that he does things like that where it's not meant to be a very serious educational thing. It's not meant to be a very serious educational thing, it's meant to be a more entertaining thing with some educational content to it. So it becomes this edutainment type of hybrid.
Ben Greenberg:That's what I specialize at is the edutainment, mostly the edutainment in the edutainment, but also a little bit of the edu as well. I completely agree with that and I think there's something about our community which just delights in the delight of the language and the framework, that we delight in that delightfulness of it. And I'm not saying that to the detriment of any other language or framework, not at all. But there's something really special about that that's shined, shown what's the correct English there? David? Special about that? That shined, shown what's the correct English there? David, shown through, shined through, I think. Shown through, shown, I think Shown that's a word we don't use very often, but yes, it's shown through in RailsConf. Just the light in the language and in the framework where we could be whimsical I love the word whimsical too where we could be whimsical, and yeah, that's something that's really unique, that was really unique to RailsConf and, honestly, that spirit still holds true in RubyConf as well. The whimsicalness, in fact it's probably even more prevalent in RubyConf than it was in RailsConf, but definitely in both.
David Hill:Yeah, so we've kind of run the gamut in terms of the conversational topics so far.
Ben Greenberg:We have, that's true. What have we left out? We haven't talked about the food at RailsConf. We haven't talked about so many things, but, yes, we did run the A to Z of memories down the memory lane. It was really beautiful. But you know what I'm excited about. I'm really excited about and it was really beautiful. But you know what I'm excited about. I'm really excited about the recurrence and the resurgence of regionality to events in the Rails community and something that I think, as a community, through Ruby Central, we're really committed to seeing what that vision looks like and how we can support that vision, bringing back the strong regional focus and supporting the regional focus and the ways that these kind of have blossomed the grassroots effects.
Ben Greenberg:You know, the last event I went to before COVID was Birmingham on rails in Birmingham, alabama, and it was 2020. And I had flown from Tel Aviv to Alabama to be at this event. Wow, and lo and behold, my last international travel was to Birmingham, alabama. I did not think that would ever be the case and I'd spent a week in Alabama because I was there for a week working, for I had a customer there, so I did a customer visit, et cetera. But the idea that these regional events are popping up again like a city, ruby, and there's so many of them that are just flourishing.
David Hill:I think that's really exciting because there is the tug and pull of the large central event but also the kind of that deepness you can go to when you have the and the connections you can build when you have events that are rooted in a community one of the things, that kind of the sense that I've gotten of things with that once this final rails conference is done, ruby central would be putting more time and energy into trying to provide a lot more support to people wanting to run those types of more regional, local conferences. I just moved to an area that, as far as I can tell, doesn't have a Ruby meetup group, or an active one at least, or a regional conference, and so there's a sick part of my brain that's. Wouldn't you like to take that on, david?
Ben Greenberg:And David, celebrate that part of your brain that's honored, that and elevated. That's a lovely part of your brain.
David Hill:So I'm looking forward to when Ruby Central gets to. That point is okay. Maybe there's a playbook that I can just start cribbing from, because I don't know what I'm doing with that at all.
Ben Greenberg:It's as if playbooks are part of the conversation that we're having internally as a community of things, that we can provide resources to the regions as they think about this. And as somebody who works really hard for a long time with my co-organizers on a local Ruby meetup community here in Israel, that eventually during COVID, we really tried hard during COVID as well to keep it going, but we lost it during COVID I would love to also see personally, just like you, bringing back the regional Rails communities, because I benefited from it immensely having the local Ruby and local Rails communities. The events we even put together a conference that happened here once. It was phenomenal. But yes, that is, I think, a significant focus area going forward because I think there's just so much potential for that.
Ben Greenberg:The localization what's the expression people use when you go to these independent bookstores in the States and it's like buy local or support local bookstores or support local or you go into the local grocers or the food co-ops and the idea of you're supporting local and there's just something really powerful to local meetups and local communities and local conferences.
Ben Greenberg:And local doesn't have to just mean like my neighborhood or my HOA or my suburb, but like local in your region, a Midwestern event, a Northwestern event, southeastern, all the different regions that we can divide up, the US. And I don't know if you've ever been to a Yuruko, which is the European series of rugby conferences that have been going on for a long time, but that's another series of events that I absolutely adore and have been to a couple of times. That's the model right. Every year it's a large continental event, but every year becomes intensely local and at the end of every event, the community of people at the event vote on where it should happen again, and people from the different cities across Europe audition their cities and then the community votes at the final event of which city will host it the next year, and then that city gets to basically be on show. But it's a regional model for a larger event, then that's because the regional model is so powerful and it's so so awesome.
David Hill:That's really cool. I wish I had more than zero budget for international travel and conferences Going to those types of things. I would love to go to those types of things, but I can barely.
Ben Greenberg:For me, yuruko is the local event that's the easy one to get to. It's the North American ones that are the international hard travel, the big budget, exactly.
David Hill:And to cross that darn Atlantic Ocean makes things problematic and costly.
Ben Greenberg:I don't know why we call it a pond. It's a lot bigger than a pond. Let's be honest.
Ben Greenberg:A little bit yeah, yeah, it's a big body of water that airlines like to charge a lot of money to traverse. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, but I'm really excited about the regional events and I would love personally to have the company I work for now help sponsor me to get to those regional events, because I absolutely just find them to be so exciting. I've been to a couple of regional events in the US that are not Ruby or Rails events, and I just love these local.
Ben Greenberg:I went to one that was in Cincinnati, I think, a Polyglot software event, and I just love coming to these where the sponsors are I don't know mom and pop shops in Cincinnati, and it's like wow, I'm meeting a mom and pop shop in Cincinnati that wants to hire software developers. This is awesome, right, and so I think there's an opportunity for Rails events that happen in the regions in the US to get community sponsorship from these like small software shops or even small businesses that just hire it, because every business is a software business nowadays. It doesn't matter if you like your embroidery company or a software company, everything is a software company, and so the potential is just, I think, really enormous. Anywho, we wander in our conversation, but the regional thing is quite exciting, absolutely.
David Hill:I'm very excited for that as well. So, as you mentioned before, you are currently serving on the Ruby Central board. I wanted to ask you a little bit about that about how did you get involved in working on the board and what your typical duties or work on the board entails.
Ben Greenberg:So I got involved because less than a year ago there was a call for new board members and I had not been coding in Ruby for a little while. I've been unfortunately or fortunately, depending on one's perspective working at some other languages, but I missed the community so much and I wanted to find a way to give back and I saw this opportunity. So I volunteered myself and I got on and I've been focused with the community. The board is like a working board. I've been doing nonprofit stuff for a long time. My first career was in the nonprofit space, so I spent like over a decade in the nonprofit space and there's basically two types of boards in nonprofit space. There's boards that give money and there's boards that give time. And the Ruby Central board is a board that gives time. It's a working board, and so my area of interest in the board has been around membership and making membership interesting for Ruby developers and Rails developers. That you feel that you want to be a part of the work of Ruby Central, that you feel that you want to be a part of the work of Ruby Central, that you feel that you want to give to it, because where you give your money is a testimony to what you think is important. And if you think things like supporting RubyGems and Bundler is important, if you think RubyConf is important, if you think supporting regional events going forward as a vision is important, if you think really just investing in the vitality and in the software supply chain of Ruby is important, then becoming a member of Ruby Central makes sense, and so you'll see more about that at Ruby comp David, at the Ruby Central booth and the ways in which membership in Ruby Central is really a way to say that I value the Ruby software language and I value it in a monthly way. I value it in a monthly gift. I value it in the idea of a one-time gift. I value it in a little part of what I earn is going back towards supporting the open source software community at Ruby and the supply chain of Ruby software, namely Bundler and Ruby Gems, and there's actually working committees in Ruby Central being supported by corporations and governments around software security in Ruby and that you can also take a part in that, because security is incredibly important.
Ben Greenberg:My strongest interest area on the board has been in membership, because I think there's both support fiscally to a community, a software community, from the corporate level right. You can get corporations involved and you must get corporations involved. Companies should give back to open source. Companies really must give back to open source. It's not contractual but maybe it's a social contract. They must give back to open source. It's not contractual but maybe it's a social contract. They must give back to open source.
Ben Greenberg:But there's also at the individual level that Ben and David and Caroline and the Nadia's of the world and all of us we have benefited so much from the Ruby community are the ways in which we can give back to that community and whether it's through fiscal gifts, monthly or recurring of some level or one time, or it's through our time or serving on committees, or it's through both, whatever we're able to do, both in our resources of time and money, we should find ways to give back to this community Because it has I mean personally, it's given me so much. I wouldn't have the career I have today, I wouldn't be supporting my family the way I'm supporting my family today. I wouldn't be doing the things I love if it wasn't for being introduced to this weird, whimsical, wacky language of Ruby at Flatiron School with Avi Flonbaum who was the teacher at the time, was a longtime. New York, nyrb, new York, rubius guy, and I'm really grateful for that, really grateful for that. My social media handle has for all these years has been Hummus on Rails, because I love hummus, right, and I love hummus and I love rails. Two things kind of sustain me both physically and also professionally and intellectually.
Ben Greenberg:So, yeah, so that's been my involvement at Ruby Central, and mostly on membership and taking that membership, and I invite people who you don't have to be a member of the board to be involved in Ruby Central. You can get involved through committee work, you can get involved through becoming a member, you can get involved through any variety of ways. And if you're coming to RubyConf in Chicago in a couple of weeks, if you're listening to this before it happened, then come talk to us. If you were listening to this after or you weren't able to make it to RubyConf, then talk to us either way. Send a DM, send a message, find us on the web, find us on Twitter Blue Sky Mastodon. Send a fax. I don't know if we have fax machines, but send a fax if you do in any way you want.
David Hill:I cannot strongly enough reinforce everything you just laid out there. Getting involved in the community is one of the big takeaways that I've had from these various conversations with people I've interviewed. I'm not just attending RubyConf next month, I'm going to be volunteering as well and helping assist in that realm of things, and so I just, like I'm really looking forward to just trying to help out as much as I can and getting to meet more people that I've talked with online on these calls, and so it's yeah getting I'm so excited about that and I'm so excited that you're volunteering also.
Ben Greenberg:That's amazing. This is a community of people that we're all kind of strapping it together right. Like there's some language communities, I feel and maybe this is the grass is greener on the other side phenomenon Although I don't think it's only the grass is greener on the other side phenomenon there's some language communities and framework communities that are much more run in a corporate manner, that is handled at a very corporate level and things are just taken care of. Ruby happens because we want it to happen. Rails happens because we want it to exist. We want it to go forward. We find value in it and if we step up, it will thrive. If we don't step up, it won't thrive. It is on us as a community to make that happen. It's incumbent upon us because we are it. We are the Ruby community. Wherever we are situated in the world, from whatever time zone, wherever we are in our professional careers, if we are software architects or we're junior developers or we're just finishing a bootcamp, or we are technical writers or we are project managers or product managers, it doesn't matter. If we're invested in the Ruby community at any level. We are it. We make it happen.
Ben Greenberg:You made it happen with this podcast. You decided you stepped up, you did it, you made it happen. You made it happen with this podcast. You decided you stepped up, you did it, you made it happen. It didn't exist and now it exists and people listen to it. That's like the Ruby community. That's the spirit of it. You're exemplifying it and you, listening to this, are like wait, I have an idea. I think X, I think Y, guess what Be like David WWDD? What would David do? David would create a podcast. You, too, can create something and get involved, because that's really what it all comes down to Absolutely.
David Hill:Thank you so much for joining me today, Ben. It has been a pleasure talking with you and I'm looking forward to meeting you in person next month.
Ben Greenberg:Likewise, I'm really excited about it. Thanks for having me, damon. Thank you.