I just got back from Pune after attending the third Rubyconf India (well, that was last Monday; I managed to keep this post in drafts for a week), and – having attended all three conferences – I have to say, this conference keeps getting better every year.
For me, the highlights of this year’s Rubyconf were the keynotes by Charles Nutter and Mikel Lindsaar, Matz’s video keynote (obviously) and Steven Deobald’s Clojure talk. Mikel’s talk – How to Win – was especially inspiring and thought-provoking, particularly because I’ve just moved back to the startup world, having joined WowMakers just last month.
Another quite interesting talk was the one about data analysis from Chang Sau Sheong. The audience seemed very enthusiastic in this interactive talk. The talk about mobile platforms was also quite useful, since I’ve been looking at the available options over the past month. Apart from that, Aaron Patterson made a surprise appearance at Rubyconf in a short video message in Rocky Jaiswal and Arun Agarwal’s talk.
Having followed the recent discussion on Pat Shaugnessy’s post about the performance of Ruby strings of less than 23 characters, Niranjan Sarade’s talk about MRI internals was very appropriate for this year’s Rubyconf. I’ve been trying to work through Minero Aoki’s Ruby Hacking Guide and this covered some of the topics from the first few chapters.
One thing I noticed was that (unlike previous years) Rails related talks no longer dominate the conf. Instead, we had more variety in the topics covered, with talks covering JRuby, mobile platforms, data analysis, MRI internals, etc. I guess this is another indication that Ruby adoption is no longer just about Rails.
The inclusion of lightning talks was a great decision this year. There were talks that were interesting, informative and funny. Hopefully we’ll see more of these next year. (Psst… I hear it’s going to be Pune again in 2013.)