David Hill: 0:00

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 ODETORAILSCONF at checkout to get 10% off. You're listening to the Ode to RailsConf podcast, where we reminisce about our experiences at RailsConf over the years. My name is David Hill, I'm your host and joining me today is Aji Slater. Aji, would you introduce yourself?

Aji Slater: 0:31

to our listeners. Yeah, my name is Aji. I have been writing software in Ruby and Rails for this will be the 10th year, 10th calendar year of that, and currently with Thoughtbot and really kind of sad to see RailsConf going away. It was the first conference I ever went to as a software developer and I've been with it ever since.

David Hill: 0:57

I'm right there with you. I think RailsConf was my first technical conference as well, so it's got a very kind of special place in my heart for that reason.

Aji Slater: 1:06

Yeah, I feel really lucky that my first job was large enough and had that kind of established enterprise-y feeling that thought conferences was a really important part of kind of growth and so they sent me even as barely experienced new developer.

David Hill: 1:26

Nice. My experience was almost the opposite. I guess my first time going to RailsConf. It was a very small company. There were two developers me and one other guy but somehow they convinced the CEO of the company to send us and they sent us for five years to RailsConf, but very kind of same mentality, though, is like they saw a value in the growth that the developers came back from the conference with, and so they kept investing in it, Absolutely so. You mentioned during our pre-recording call that you were on the program committee once. Talk a little bit about what that entails.

Aji Slater: 2:14

How does that work? What do you do on the program committee? All that fun jazz. As soon as it was revealed that it was going to be in Detroit, because that's my hometown, and so I thought that was the perfect time to kind of jump in, pitch in with Ruby Central and RailsConf in a different way than I usually did. And partially that was because I've spoken at a lot of Ruby Central events and been a guide for the Scholars and Guide program for Ruby Central events. But I wanted to take a year off of writing a new talk because my talk writing process is, let's just say, it's not sustainable, it's maybe not the best as far as energy from me, and so I thought, well, maybe if I can get on the program committee that would be a way to be involved without having to write a new talk. That would be a way to be involved without having to write a new talk.

Aji Slater: 3:07

And it was announced that it was Detroit and I started my campaign, talked to Adarsh who was the director somehow I forget the title, always Ruby Central, at the time Executive director, I believe, was his title.

Aji Slater: 3:18

There you go, yeah, and it kind of went from there what the program committee is reviewing the submissions from the CFP, putting together the schedule, kind of being the ones with the answers about that particular event. That filters up a lot to the chair or co-chairs but it's a team effort and an interesting new twist to that that was added just the RubyConf before was the Hack Day or Community Day that Ruby Central started adding to events and as we sort of divided up the workload amongst the program committee, that is where I ended up working for the Detroit event as well, so reaching out to open source maintainers to come and have a table at the event and giving ideas for different little events going out throughout the day so that people could have different ways to participate if they didn't want to sit down and pair and talk to a maintainer that they didn't know. That sort of thing.

David Hill: 4:20

So it's funny that you use the phrase campaigning to join the program committee. I think it's funny because that's what I did too, because I volunteered at RubyConf this past November, which I had such a positive experience with. That and that was my first time doing anything at a conference other than attending or the one time I spoke, and so I had such a good time being more involved. I found everyone I could find that had any connection to Ruby Central. I was completely shameless. It was like I want to be more involved. I want to do something for RailsConf. So please keep my name in mind when you start thinking of who can help with whatever. Like I want to be involved.

David Hill: 5:06

It has not been revealed at the time of this recording, but by the time the episode comes out it will be revealed. I'm on the program committee for RailsConf now and so, like I'm super excited that I get to be more involved and do what all this stuff you were talking about of like doing the CFP review and helping it to kind of curate what this last RailsConf will be. I'm just super excited that I get to help put it together and help make this thing. Congratulations. Well, thank you, but yeah, it was weird. It was almost an out-of-body experience at points, being like I'm going to go tell people what I want, instead of just sitting here and being my quiet self and hoping that it just kind of magically appears. It's like no, we're going to go talk about it.

Aji Slater: 5:49

I was a little lucky that I had a few people that I had expressed the interest to and they already knew folks high up in Ruby Central so they were able to give me that push. But yeah, it was the same for me to really out of my comfort zone to go up and say like, hey, I want to be involved, I am actually capable of this. Give me a lot of responsibility and work, please. Nice.

David Hill: 6:16

So you mentioned before a little bit that you wanted a break from writing talks because your talk writing process was not sustainable. I want to hear more about that. How many talks have you given at a Ruby Central event, and why is your talk? It's not sustainable.

Aji Slater: 6:29

It's just that it's really not enjoyable in the last kind of week or so of finalizing the talk. I really love giving the talks, I love putting them together, but it's that last 20% that seems to be 80% of the actual work. At times it feels like a grind. It's very draining energy-wise because I have ADHD. I put things off until there's the outside pressure that provides the energy to get the thing rolling and that works for me. It's maybe not the way I'd prefer, but that's how I work.

Aji Slater: 7:13

That's how a lot of folks kind of find that their best operating function happens under those circumstances, and so you can try to fight it, but you're going to end up there anyway and it's real rough. It's hard on me, it's hard on the people around me because I just kind of disappear into the talk like I'm at work and then I work in the talk for like two weeks or so and yeah, that's just a lot, and maybe taking some time away from that. Having a year where I didn't have to do that twice was something I was looking forward to and then also just branching out to using that as an excuse to have to branch out, do something different, volunteer, get involved in other ways right, because otherwise I might just be really comfortable and just kind of stay doing talks, which is great and it's fantastic, but I feel like I've got a lot more to give and to collaborate with outside of that.

David Hill: 8:07

That's one of the lessons I think I've been really learning these last few months is that I had this idea of open source and the Ruby and the Rails community is that really the only way to give back is by contributing code somewhere? But that's really not the case. It takes a little bit more effort sometimes to find those other ways because they're not as prevalent sometimes and because so much of the emphasis is on the code. But there are other ways to contribute back to the community and to the ecosystem that don't involve necessarily pushing code somewhere.

Aji Slater: 8:41

One of my favorite stories of that is I think it was with Practical Object Oriented Design and Ruby in the foreword, or something like that Sandy Metz talks about. The thing that finally convinced her to write the book was somebody said well, you use a lot of open source resources, libraries and gems and all of this, don't you Don lot of open source resources, libraries and gems and all of this, don't you? Don't you want to give back to the community somehow? And so, okay, I guess I'll write a book and it becomes like the book in Ruby, of course. But yeah, absolutely Tons of different ways to give back Doing a podcast, that kind of thing, yeah, just sort of being out there and being helpful on the internet.

Aji Slater: 9:20

Right, the internet can be a dumpster fire Can be, but not usually amongst the Ruby community, which I really love, yeah.

David Hill: 9:36

And that's one of the kind of ongoing themes that I keep coming back to as I talk to people on this podcast is that the Ruby community as a whole, almost without fail, is such a welcoming and open community to just like oh, you want to learn more stuff, Come on in. It's like very unjudgmental, unpretentious, Just yeah, let's come join our party. We enjoy just like hanging out with each other and learning cool things.

Aji Slater: 9:59

Yeah, the idea that a rising tide raises all the chips. Somewhere in there is that phrase that like, as we all get better together, we are getting better faster than we would otherwise. I feel like that pervades the community through and through.

David Hill: 10:16

Absolutely. Do you have any particularly memorable experiences or memories from real scum that you'd be willing to share? That's part of the whole reason for this podcast was to try and kind of just share some of those stories and experiences.

Aji Slater: 10:32

I think something that I've been thinking about recently is not necessarily a single story, although I do have some of those that I can maybe get into is that at the very beginning I went to as many talks as possible and I was trying to be like that sort of sponge and I heard people talking about like the hallway track and all of that and I was like I don't understand that that's not something I'm going to do.

Aji Slater: 10:54

I'm here to see talks and all of that, and I was like I don't understand that that's not something I'm going to do. I'm here to see talks and kind of looking back over the story arc of my relationship with RailsConf and other conferences is the kind of 180 flip that has happened as I started to know the community instead of just the tech that I was there to learn, seeing conference friends that you get to see only maybe once or twice a year and catching up and using that hallway track not only as a way to learn about what's going on but also to refill those batteries and want to get back to work and be proud and happy and excited to work in Ruby on Rails and using that kind of time to do that because it's still a jobby job. It's still work. Sometimes it's a drag, and those sort of things keep me going, keep me filled.

David Hill: 11:47

You're describing your relationship with RailsConf. I was like that's exactly what I did the first four or five years, maybe longer. I went strictly for the technical content and it took a while before I was just like wait, the hallway track. There's actually some real value there in terms of just being able to go and talk to people and meet people I wouldn't normally have an opportunity to interact with.

Aji Slater: 12:13

Yeah, to interact with, yeah, and provides a lot of the same value as you would think of like job networking and like meeting people and keeping connections open and like doing all of that career sort of stuff. But with the group of people that have congregated around Ruby Central and sort of the feeling that those events bring out in people, it doesn't feel like that, because I've been to networking events, I've done that thing and if I have to do that to get on in my career, it's like I'm actually fine where I am, thanks, but it's fun. I look forward to it with the Ruby community and, yeah, you're hanging out, you're talking about your life, but you're also talking about what you're going to be doing in Rails, what you're excited about, what you're looking forward to, what you missed as things are changing and it just kind of seeps in there because we actually really like the stuff that we're working with.

David Hill: 13:06

Nice, yeah, I couldn't agree more. Just the people and relationships that I've been able to build through RailsConf are some of my favorite professional relationships now, the opportunities that I've had to interact like I'm going to call out Nadia Oduayo for a second just because, like getting to meet her at like her first RailsConf and then actually starting to interact with her online a bit, and then at the keynote in Detroit, she didn't remember our first in-person meeting. She remembered our Twitter interactions over the years. It was really kind of funny and weird. It was like getting to interact with her at a personal level where, like, she recognized me from a different thing that I recognized her from, but then we just started chatting and working on something on Hack Day together. And those types of experiences are the types of things that five years ago even I don't think I ever would have expected was possible, just because I was so reserved and introverted all the time. And RailsConf and Ruby Central kind of provided the opportunity for those things to kind of help me change direction a little bit.

Aji Slater: 14:19

When Nadia remembered my name, like came up to me and talked to me just out of nowhere, I was like you know I should remember me. But yeah, I felt so great.

David Hill: 14:29

I brought that up to somebody else that like she just like pulled me out of nowhere, and they're like, oh yeah, that's what she does. She just remembers everybody.

Aji Slater: 14:37

That's awesome. Yeah, some people have that and it's a fantastic quality.

David Hill: 14:41

Is there anything else you'd like to discuss or bring up about RailsConf and Ruby Central before we call it a day?

Aji Slater: 14:48

Well, you did ask about like specific memories or like times through different RailsConf and I have a few, but I think my favorite one was at RailsConf Portland. I had built up a little group of conference friends. Some of them were speakers, some of them had just kind of been going to a lot. Everybody had different ways that they were getting into it, but the little group that was attending Portland ended up being a few speakers and myself and we were kind of hanging out and talking Ruby and Rails like you do. But one night before I think a majority of us had our talks the next day.

Aji Slater: 15:34

We kind of got together late night after dinner and ran our talk for each other and so we spent a good two and a half three hours just hearing talks, giving notes, giving feedback and really kind of not just talking about the Ruby and Rails tools that we're using but also kind of narrowing in on the kind of speaker tooling that we do. Whether that's narrowing in on the kind of speaker tooling that we do, whether that's through stage techniques or like rhetorical devices or just keynote tips and tricks, that kind of thing. That was such an enjoyable experience A because we were all friends and we were just enjoying spending the time together, but also that kind of narrowing in a focus and finding that sort of similar wavelength for, like, going a couple layers deeper of specific niche interests and skills that brought you to the conference. Yeah, it was just a fantastic night and I think a few of the others there have also said that it was one of the best rails of memory. So I'm just really happy to have been a part of that.

David Hill: 16:35

That's awesome. I really like that and that kind of goes along with the Ruby community as a whole's inclination towards wishing and hoping for everybody's success. It's not a zero-sum game. Nobody is hoping that you'll fail. We're all looking for everybody to really succeed and do well, especially in these conference environments.

Aji Slater: 17:00

Yeah, that whole night came out of us offering to each other to provide another eye. I don't think it came from anyone who was feeling unprepared and wanted extra time to run it again. It all came out of a kind of unanimous feeling of like hey, let's all help each other out, we can all do this for each other.

David Hill: 17:19

Well, thank you for joining me today, Aji. I have really enjoyed talking with you about RailsConf today. I'm hoping you're going to be there in Philly this year.

Aji Slater: 17:29

Oh yeah, I'll be there. In whatever aspect I can take advantage of, I'll be there.

David Hill: 17:36

Did you submit to the?

Aji Slater: 17:36

CFP. I've submitted one, so I've got two more that I've got, cause it's limited to three, and so I've got to choose carefully and I've got to write up a couple of ideas that are still sort of forming, and once again I've left it to the last hour.

David Hill: 17:53

Yeah, At the time of recordings. The CFP closes three days.

Aji Slater: 17:58

Yep.

David Hill: 17:59

Yep, okay, well, get to work.

Aji Slater: 18:03

Thanks.

David Hill: 18:05

Thanks for joining me today, Algie.

Aji Slater: 18:07

Absolutely Thanks for having me.