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 ODE2RAILSCONF at checkout to get 10% off. You're listening to the Ode to RailsConf podcast where we reminisce about RailsConf over the years and a couple other things. Since this episode, we're going to be Ode to RailsConf podcast, where we reminisce about RailsConf over the years and a couple other things. Since this episode. We're going to be discussing another topic as well. My guests today are Spike Ilaqua and Becky Freeman. Welcome to the podcast, both of you.

Spike Ilacqua: 0:34

Thank you, hello.

David Hill: 0:35

Would you mind giving our listeners a brief introduction to who you both are?

Spike Ilacqua: 0:39

Sure, my name is Spike Ilacqua. I'm presently a principal software engineer at Recurly. Is Spike Alahua. I'm presently a principal software engineer at Recurly and I've been doing Rails since the mid-2000s and I am one of the current organizers of the Rocky Mountain Ruby Conference.

Bekki Freeman: 0:53

And I'm Bekki Freeman, senior engineer and sometimes engineering leader. I've been working with Rails for about 10 years and I would like to work in Ruby on Rails for the rest of my career. I'm also one of the organizers of Rocky Mountain Ruby. As Spike and I like to say, I started volunteering and I wouldn't leave, so he had to adopt me as a co-organizer.

David Hill: 1:17

Nice. So let's dive into Rocky Mountain Ruby. How did Rocky Mountain Ruby kind of start up for the both of you?

Spike Ilacqua: 1:24

Rocky Mountain Ruby if it was just a quick speed run through the history actually starts with another conference called Mountain West Ruby, which was in Salt Lake City and started, I think, 2007. And Marty Hott, who you've had on the podcast, was one of the organizers of that conference and, as Marty told it, the original plan was for that to kind of rotate around, but the other two organizers were in Salt Lake City and, as conference organizers, we can tell you that organizing a conference in your own town is a lot easier than organizing a conference in some other town. So it didn't move and in 2010, marty decided he would start a second one that would be in Colorado, and that first year was actually called Mountain RB, which led to some confusion. In 2011, it was renamed to Rocky Mountain Ruby and it ran for, I guess, seven years, eight years. It ended in 2017. So Marty ran it in 2010 through 2012. It ended in 2017. So Marty ran it in 2010 through 2012. And then, as your listeners may recall, he got involved in RailsConf and RubyConf and got busy and handed it off. It went through a couple of organizers and eventually ended with Jeff Kazimir and the Turing Institute and they ran it for a few years and then decided to do something else.

Spike Ilacqua: 2:41

So 2017 was the last Rocky Mountain Rugby and while it ran it was good. It was always about a 200-person conference, a lot of names we know and love. Aaron Patterson did his first keynote at Rocky Mountain Rugby. Jim Resnick, I think, did his first public talk ever. Matt's came to one. Jim Wyrick Last year's sponsors were all people who had actually spoken to or attended Rocky Mountain Ruby. So we had DN, simple, unbadger and AppSignal and all of their founders were either gave talks or at least attended Rocky Mountain Ruby. So it was kind of a thing for a while.

Spike Ilacqua: 3:15

But then in 2017, as I say, it ended and I think at that point I was busy. I didn't go to the last couple. So what brought it back then? Even notice, I didn't go to the last couple. So what brought it back then? As you know, there was a period of no conferences the pandemic and then RubyConf started up again, but the 2022 RubyConf was in Texas and that was around the time that Texas was passing a lot of laws that had to do with women's rights and LGBTQ rights and there were a lot of people in the Ruby community who didn't feel comfortable going to Texas or didn't want to support Texas. But, as we've learned through your podcast, you can't move a conference, you can't cancel a conference. You've signed contracts.

Spike Ilacqua: 4:00

So it was going to be in Texas, but the founders of WNRD, the Women in Non-Binary, ruby, sam Izaroff and Emily Stamp approached Ruby Central and said, hey, could we do a little side conference, some of the same speakers somewhere that people who don't feel comfortable going to Texas would feel comfortable going to? And they coincidentally picked Providence, rhode Island, where I'm from. So, purely selfishly, I'm like, hey, I'm going to Ruby Conference and go visit my family. So I did and it was the first conference I had gone to since, probably like 2015 or so, and I had a really good time. I caught up with a lot of my old Ruby friends that I hadn't seen in years. I made some new ones, like Nadia I met for the first time there. I had a really good time. I'm like I need to go to more conferences. And as part of the conference, gemma and Emily and the co-organizer they roped into this Andy Kroll, because they had never run a conference, so they found somebody who knew how to run conferences to help them. That was Andy Kroll Generously came all the way from England to help put this on Talked a lot about what it was to run a conference and run a small conference and what it was to run a conference for your first time, and it got into my head like I could probably do this Not to say it's easy and it's manageable.

Spike Ilacqua: 5:11

I kind of understand what the process is here. I could maybe do this. So it got into my head that maybe I should do this. And then, because I've been doing conferences so much, I went to a Rails conference that year the one in Atlanta where I met Jeremy Smith who was in the process of putting on Blu-ray Ruby, and got to talk to him, pick his brains, got to talk to Andy some more and just decided, hey, we could do this. So at RailsConf in Atlanta I decided I was going to do this. That's how I ended up organizing it.

David Hill: 5:39

You're a braver man than I. There was another Ruby regional conference hosted out of Kansas City at Ruby Midwest, the local Ruby meetup. When I was going to it back when I lived in Kansas City, I kept talking to him, trying to get him to start it up again, because I wanted that conference back, I wanted to help with it, and he was so done and burnt out on it. He was like here I'll just give you all this stuff and you can do it. And I was just kind of like I don't know what I'm doing, like I wanted you to do it so I could see what needs to be done, so like I was never able to actually pull the trigger and make it happen again.

Bekki Freeman: 6:11

You were hoping to volunteer him to bring it back, huh.

David Hill: 6:14

I would have happily done as much of the work as possible. But like I felt like I needed someone to like show me or point me at, like okay, this needs to be done. Next I'm like, okay, I will go do that thing. But to try and do it on my own blind, the first time I was like, ooh, I don't think I can do that.

Bekki Freeman: 6:31

Yeah, a lot of hidden things that it's really helpful to have a mentor to tell us about. And I think one of the things we took from Blue Ridge that was super helpful was the community lunch, where we don't provide lunch as the conference but we send everybody out to a few recommended places and that's actually been a huge success because people can choose all different cuisines, people get out in the fresh air and then they bunch up into little groups and go out walking and you would never think of that on your own if you didn't have a conference mentor to give you that tip.

Spike Ilacqua: 7:03

Yeah, I would say I mean, it takes a village, right. I couldn't actually do this by myself. So you know, I had calls with Jeremy Smith, with Andy Kroll, marty, who has no interest in ever running a conference again, but he's local and I know him and we could talk. We had lunch. You know he gave us a lot of advice, nailed the first year, with, you know, reviewing talks and with pacing and all these things that we wouldn't know about that he does just because he's done it.

Spike Ilacqua: 7:28

But the bigger thing, I think the reason I was willing to attempt it and able to pull it off, is we have a really strong Ruby community here. We have the Boulder Ruby group, which made it all the way through COVID where a lot of Ruby groups didn't. I organize just a weekly meetup where people just go and hang out. Marty again was one of the people who started this like 15 years ago. But it's just this idea that hey, if we're working at home or we're consultants or whatever, it's just nice to hang with other people. So every Wednesday we just go to a food truck park that has coffee and just people just sit there and work. There's no talks, there's no agenda, it's just hang out. We have a really strong Slack that one of the community members runs, so we're always chatting with each other, so it was really easy for me to ask for volunteers and get volunteers, and that's how Becky got here amongst the others.

David Hill: 8:16

So yeah, becky, you kind of mentioned that you kept volunteering so often that he just kind of had to adopt you. Is there anything you can kind of dive into about that experience of getting involved in something that's already kind of you know? Spike kind of set it up and got it going and you're kind of coming in later and getting involved? Talk a little bit about that. What was that experience like? What would you recommend to people who are looking to try to get involved in the Ruby community like that?

Bekki Freeman: 8:39

Yeah, it's a lot like what you said, where I wouldn't have done this on my own. But watching Spike put on the conference and watching him put together a timeline and have deadlines in his head of when things need to be done and have a process made it so much less intimidating to be like okay, I can help with this. That first year we found out that you have to order t-shirts really far in advance, which is hard when 80% of your attendees buy their tickets in the last week. So we had some rush moments there, but we learned a lot and that made the next year earlier, and every year we just write down notes about things we learned and make it a little bit smoother for the next year.

Bekki Freeman: 9:22

One of the things is build versus buy. I think all of us in software have that experience. In the first year, to save money, we tried to build our talk analysis system. The second year we said, you know, maybe we should just buy an off the shelf talk organization system and truly that saved our bacon. So those are the kinds of things that I wouldn't have even known to try if Spike hadn't told me they existed or hadn't already done all that research.

David Hill: 9:51

From what little I saw of like the organizational materials that I was handed that were used for Ruby Midwest is like there were so many things that was almost immediately overwhelming and so, yeah, having people that you can actually talk to to break those down.

Spike Ilacqua: 10:08

I imagine was invaluable. It's hard to organize a conference but it's not difficult. It's hard because there's so much and the timeframes and Becky and I finding out what the t-shirt deadline is and, on a Zoom call, trying to design a t-shirt Because now we know we have to order them today. We haven't actually gotten to a design yet. Things like that.

Bekki Freeman: 10:24

And both of us are backend engineers, so we're like looks fine.

Spike Ilacqua: 10:28

Yeah, it was okay. Last year we had Lagrant designed our shirt and this year they're going to design our website. So there's something to be said for finding quality help and paying for it. Professionals, for sure, but at the end of the day, like I said, it's hard but it's not difficult, right, once you know what you have to do. It's a convo board. There's a lot of long nights, there's a lot of wrangling people, which is not my favorite thing, but it's a process. What you need to do, you can clearly define. I can't run a conference. Right, turned out it wasn't true. I could run a conference, but that was like what's the real downside here? People will think I'm an idiot. I can live with that. Won't be the first time.

David Hill: 11:11

And we have something to talk about at Code Copy then Right, you've mentioned a couple of the meetup groups. I guess You've got Boulder Ruby and you've got the Coding Coffee. Boulder Ruby sounds very kind of conventional meetup. I'm kind of fascinated by the Coding Coffee, of what that is and how that kind of came to be and how you keep that going. Could you speak a little bit to that, because that feels very different than the norm to me.

Spike Ilacqua: 11:36

Yeah, as I said, I inherited it. It's been going for, I believe, at least 15 years and some various people including Marty, just like it, was just this casual thing, like hey, let's get out of the house, we're working at home, we don't get to see other people so they just started going to coffee shop and sitting in the back, you know, wednesday mornings, and it grew, it's morphed. I got involved when I was working at an agency and we would just open up our office on Wednesday and people would come in and we provided bagels. There've been other times when it's been in other offices. You know some of the coffee shops that it was at have closed and it's moved around. And obviously that died out during COVID but we brought it back. That agency is now gone.

Spike Ilacqua: 12:16

So you know, after we tried a bunch of coffee shops and such, found this one which is a coffee shop, tomorrow morning here's what the food trucks are come on down and we get anywhere between five and 20 people, depending on the weather and where people are in their life. And really it is. You just sit there and occasionally talk and do your work. Super simple, no pressure. It's a way we get new people coming through that way and it's just like you know. I saw it on slack or the mastodon and, you know, thought I'd come down interesting.

David Hill: 13:01

I think that's something I'm going to have to keep in mind. I'm not going to try and start anything until railsconf is over. With my involvement with railsconf I don't feel like I've got the bandwidth to try new social experiments before then. But after railsconf I want to try and get something started here in the tampa area. So that might be something I have to keep in mind.

Spike Ilacqua: 13:20

Yeah, I mean, it's super simple. It's just, you know you don't even have to. There's no talks, there's no buying beer or anything, you just show up. I do think, like at the core, that why Coat Coffee is successful, why Boulder Ruby is successful, and why we were able to leverage that to get Rocky Mountain Ruby going, is a Slack channel, which is probably the easiest thing to do is to just have a Slack. Ryland, who runs it here, spends maybe an hour a month kicking bots and upwork scams off of it, but other than that it doesn't really take a lot of effort, and these days, of course, the Ruby Central is willing to give you a channel on their Slack, so it's probably even less effort if you just start up a channel there and get people into it.

David Hill: 14:00

That's true. Is there anything either of you would like to mention related to Rocky Mountain, ruby or the meetups, before we kind of edge back towards RailsConf?

Bekki Freeman: 14:09

Yeah, I wanted to dive in a little bit on the difference between the small regional conference and like a really big conference like RailsConf or RubyCon. Especially for people who are new to conferences they can be a little bit overwhelming and intimidating and I think a lot of us are introverts. I can relate to that so it becomes a bit more mentally taxing. But what I love about Rocky Mountain Ruby and the conferences of the size is that they are very approachable and it's very little to intimidate you walking into a room where there's like a hundred people who all love Ruby and by the end of the conference you have made eye contact with every single person, you've smiled at every single person and you probably shared a quick conversation in the coffee line with every single person. So it's a lot more intimate experience and that makes it less intimidating because you're not walking into a room of thousands of people trying to figure out where to insert yourself or how to start a conversation.

Bekki Freeman: 15:08

And Spike and I talk a lot about the values of Rocky Mountain Ruby and one of ours is to make it welcoming and to make it easy to come and easy to meet new people, and so we've adopted the Pac-Man rule, which is, I think, something Railsworld has also talked about.

Bekki Freeman: 15:25

But basically we remind people, if you're talking in a group, always leave a space in your circle for a new person to come and insert themselves and welcome anyone who does, just to make it easier to start a conversation and get involved with the conversation that's already occurring. And I really like that aspect of the smaller regional conferences. It's single track, so you don't have to decide where to go. You don't have to make any decisions. The only decision you have to make is where to go for lunch and with whom, and we have Slack for that. We have Slack for people to organize different groups to go to lunch, and then a lot of people go to happy hour afterwards or grab dinner, and I think it's just a really nice low effort way to get involved with conferences and start making your community so that the next conference is that much easier, because you'll already know a few people.

David Hill: 16:12

Yeah, all of that's just solid advice being able to start in a smaller social circle of people you're trying to get to know. In a new social situation, starting small is usually the easier thing to do than starting at a big five, six, 700 person conference, for sure.

Bekki Freeman: 16:30

And I'll give a plug to volunteering here as well. I struggle to start a conversation, but when I'm wearing a volunteer shirt, that's some power right there. I have a reason to go talk to people and people have a reason to come talk to me. So it takes away a lot of that intimidation of meeting strangers and so highly recommend anyone who wants to start going to conferences but is nervous about walking into a group of strangers. That volunteer shirt is powerful. It's a powerful icebreaker. So please volunteer at Rocky Mountain, ruby or RailsConf or RubyConf or any place.

David Hill: 17:06

Because, becky, you and I first met at RubyConf when we were both volunteering, and so I 100% agree with everything you just said. Just the power of that shirt for providing an immediate icebreaker to be able to have conversations with people, to have a purpose to what you're doing, instead of just kind of standing around and hoping someone talks to you. It was so empowering.

Bekki Freeman: 17:30

And David and I even figured out that we have the exact same hobbies, mostly around reading Brandon Sanderson novels.

David Hill: 17:37

Well, yeah, I'm pretty unabashed in my zealous fandom of Brandon Sanderson.

Bekki Freeman: 17:45

So yeah.

David Hill: 17:46

I'm usually shy about a lot of things, at least at first. Brandon's mainstream enough, I just throw it out there and see whose head perks up he's like okay, I know who I need to go talk to now.

Bekki Freeman: 17:57

Oh, that's so great. And now anytime I see David at a conference, I have an immediate friend because we met volunteering, and so every subsequent conference I go to is less intimidating and less exhausting, because now I have a group of people that I know and will introduce me to people they've just met. So it's a really nice way to build community.

David Hill: 18:18

Yeah, the technical side of these conferences me to the people they've just met. So it's a really nice way to build community. Yeah, the technical side of these conferences about learning how people are approaching different kinds of problems and everything is absolutely valuable. But the longer I've been doing this podcast and looking at things from the more the community building aspect of it. I almost think that that's more valuable and more important than what you can come away with technical learnings, because, by and large, there's so many. Than what you can come away with technical learnings, because, by and large, there's so many other channels you can get that technical stuff from. But the community and actually being able to connect with other people I feel like that's just becoming more and more important these days.

Spike Ilacqua: 18:55

Definitely. And you do get technical learnings out of your connections too, because then you have people that you can reach out to on you know Ruby Central Slack or whatever, and say, hey, I had this problem and I remember you talked about it. You know what do you think about this? We do that a lot in our own local Slack too. What gem do you like for this particular problem? And these people become your mentors and your advice columns whatever. You know it's like it goes beyond having friends columns whatever you know, it's like it goes beyond having friends.

Bekki Freeman: 19:22

Yeah, yeah, and tangentially now that we keep hearing rumors about 90% of job applicants being AI bots or spam, knowing humans and having that human connection is so important when you're looking for your next role, because if even someone saying oh yeah, I know, spike, he is a human who is breathing, puts you above 99% of the applicants who just submitted an AI-generated resume on indeedcom, so having those connections is so valuable to our careers.

David Hill: 19:54

Any opportunity to sidestep the slush pile is a good thing at this point. Yes, All right. So returning to the kind of the primary topic of the podcast for a moment. We've got RailsConf coming up in under two months now. Unfortunately, I won't be seeing Becky at this one because you already had a vacation planned.

Bekki Freeman: 20:16

Sorry, I'll be camping in the mountains.

David Hill: 20:18

Makes me very sad. I'm glad there are people who enjoy hiking and camping in the mountains. I am not one of those people but, spike, hopefully I'll get to see you in person there. Yes, I will be there.

Spike Ilacqua: 20:27

I am actually going to be a guide Awesome, I'm looking forward to that. This will be my second time guiding and talking about how you meet people. I do find that being a guide forces me out of my shell, because I need to go around and introduce my scholar to people that I might be a little shy about talking, to say Aaron Patterson or something like, hey, here's my guy, here's my scholar and start a conversation that way. So it forces me to be more social. And there is actually also going to be a panel about community organizing, which I've been invited to join, so I'm looking forward to that. That'll be my first time actually being on stage at a Rails or RubyConf.

David Hill: 21:04

Now I'm going to have to go and check and see where your name pops up. I think I know which panel it is, but I want to make sure I've mentioned multiple times I have such a strong fondness for the Scholars and Guides program just because that was one of my first opportunities of kind of volunteering at a conference and trying to help and trying to be a little bit more social, even though, like, I wasn't really ready yet. But it was a helpful first step. I keep looking forward to the day where I have the chance to do it again, but so far it's just a one-time thing for me, unfortunately.

Spike Ilacqua: 21:34

Yeah, and the first time I did it I would agree with you. I was about it and am I doing this right? Am I giving value to my scholar? I think this time it'll be easier and I will say, you know, if there's someone who wants to volunteer for this program, ruby Central does provide a lot of guidance. You get to talk to the person beforehand. They have guides that they hand out and there's a dinner when you meet them that they definitely support you in that.

David Hill: 21:58

The program has evolved and iterated a lot since the one time that I did it. There's a lot more going on now with what they ask of the scholars. What they ask them like the different kind of project options they give them, but they want them to actually do something. I don't think they had any of that when I was a guide. It's really kind of fun seeing how much they've iterated and tried to improve it to get these people more actively engaged in something.

Spike Ilacqua: 22:25

Yeah, when I did it, they didn't have the project either yet, so I'm looking forward to working with the person on that. I was able the time. The one time I did it, drew Bag was looking for contestants for his game show, so I was able to get my scholar up on stage as one of his contestants which was fun, nice.

David Hill: 22:42

I love Drew's game show. I've got extremely fond memories of that. Now that I've seen it once, all right. So final topic for people who are kind of coming into this community is relatively new to the community, coming to conferences for the first time or maybe even considering submitting to a CFP for the first time. What would you guys recommend to them for quieting nerves, for anxiety about social awkwardness for even just submitting to CFPs? You know, if there are there any kind of piece of advice you would give to someone coming into this community fairly new.

Spike Ilacqua: 23:18

We are nice. I, like a lot of people in our field, have a lot of social anxiety, imposter syndrome and all that good stuff, and it's taken me a long time to get here, but I still have all those things. I've just decided not to care about them. Right, people are going to be nice, people are going to accept me and tolerate my weirdnesses, whatever those turn out to be, if they're real and it's hard to say just like, put yourself out there, it'll be okay, because I know how hard that is. But it's true. If you can just say hi to the person sitting next to you, what do you do? Where are you from? You'll get a conversation. It sounds silly, but it's true. Everybody is so friendly. You can talk to Aaron Patterson, you can talk to Chris Oliver, you can talk to Drew.

Bekki Freeman: 24:07

They're all people who also feel anxious and understand where you're coming from and will talk to you. Yeah, we are all very nice people and I think that helps a lot. A couple of practical things that have worked for me is make sure you join the Slack or whatever the conference is, because people will post there that they're going for a morning jog or that they're looking for someone to join them for dinner or happy hour, and if you can join a few of those people now you have people you know, for when you walk into that big conference room you can actually see a friendly face that you recognize and you already know someone's name. If you can arrive to the conference a day early, there's usually a lot of people who are also coming in a bit early and want to meet up. Then you have a smaller group setting to make a couple early friends Again, less intimidating than walking into a room of a thousand people. We talked a lot about volunteering, which is really good, and for me.

Bekki Freeman: 25:03

I have the same imposter syndrome as everybody else and I'm also short, so I usually walk into these conferences and everybody is taller than me. It used to be, there weren't that many women. Now there are a lot more, which is woohoo. I'd still like to see far more than I do. But regardless, I'm shorter and it's usually a lot of men and I just smile and make eye contact, even if I don't feel confident.

Bekki Freeman: 25:28

Smiling and making eye contact I have found is the best conversation starter because then people will say hi or they'll make eye contact back and it's a little easier to start that conversation. But if I'm staring at the ground or staring at my phone because I'm really nervous, I actually will never say hi or meet anybody. So, even though it feels very uncomfortable, just keep your eyes up and if you make a contact with someone, just give them a smile and say hi, I'm Becky, I'm from Colorado, how about you? And just something dumb. Sometimes people say what do you do for a living? And I love that one. It's'm like, well, I'm a ruby programmer, but even that one gets a good chuckle out of people. So take it till you make it. Is that the oh that sounds so glib?

Spike Ilacqua: 26:09

well, yeah, and to double down on the slack thing is that there's often, like I like to think of the ruby community as my tribe, but then there are all these subgroups, like the last few ruby and rails conference I've gone to, somebody's organized a coffee swap. Bring some coffee from your favorite roaster and trade. I am not a runner, but there are always runners looking for people to run with or to go and do things in, whatever town it is. Go eat cheesesteaks in Philly. And then there's the game night. One strategy I'm thinking of trying I've seen other people do is just bring a game and teach other people to play it.

David Hill: 26:48

And there's a reason for people to sit down at your table and talk to you. Yeah, the game night for years was my social hack that I used for myself the most. I would bring games that I wanted to play. There were always just weird enough where it was like, okay, this isn't a standard game that most people have played, but they weren't overly complex the way some of my games are. But, yeah, having the framework of like this is a game and this is how you play and this is how you interact with the other players really helped my brain kind of relax from a lot of the things that usually makes it tense, because this is a game, we're playing a game.

David Hill: 27:17

This is not serious, it's okay, there's no danger here, and the tricking my brain into that mode by playing a board game was my social hack for a long time. It's a good one, all right. Well, thank you both for joining me today. Are there any parting comments or suggestions? Or? Becky, you mentioned wanting to plug the dates for Rocky Mountain. Ruby, would you like to do that?

Bekki Freeman: 27:39

Thank you, David. I appreciate it. We would love to see all of your listeners at Rocky Mountain Ruby this fall Spike and I decided to do this again because we love it, and we will be having Rocky Mountain Ruby in Boulder, Colorado, on October 6th and 7th. It's Monday and a Tuesday and Colorado is beautiful that time of year, so, knock on wood, we've gotten very lucky with the weather where people have gone up for hikes and we go out and in between talks we take a little fresh air out on the patio. Just a lovely time, and we'd love to see all of you there. And if I can just say one more thing, I have the distinct honor of being David's 1,000th podcast listener and I'm so proud of this I'm going to put it on my LinkedIn Nice.

Spike Ilacqua: 28:29

So you've got the dates for Rocky Mountain.

Bekki Freeman: 28:30

Anything about Rocky Mountain. Ruby dates Spike.

Spike Ilacqua: 28:33

So it will be open end of May through June. Please submit talks. We love to get a wide range of things from seasoned speakers to first-timers, so don't be shy. It's a small conference. You only have to stand in front of 150 people.

David Hill: 28:48

So we got the CFP coming up shortly. I assume tickets will be opening up shortly as well.

Spike Ilacqua: 28:54

Tickets will probably open when we announce the talks, which should be in early July.

David Hill: 28:58

Okay, sounds good. So hopefully people start making plans to go to Boulder in October. I'm going to have to try my experiment with the CFP again because it's been a little while since I've been accepted to one, so we'll see what happens. All right, thank you both again for joining me today. It was a pleasure chatting with both of you.

Bekki Freeman: 29:16

Thanks for having us.