 This is, I've been to all 10 Ruby comps and that's not such a huge achievement. Five other people, or four other people have as well. But I've also spoken at every single Ruby comp. And I say this not to brag, but rather to warn you, I am odd, somewhat of a fanboy and very, very sad. But in getting the opportunity to get up in front of the crowd at every single Ruby comp so far, I've had sort of this unique perspective. And the one thing that I'll caveat, everything that I say from here out, is that with any kind of sort of historical record, this is my perspective on history. You may get different perspectives if you go up and talk to different folks who have been in a bunch of different Ruby comps. But this is my take on it. But as I got ready to put together this talk, there was a problem, right? And it was the problem that, it was basically the home video problem, right? So 60 seconds of my very cute kid is very cute. He is very cute. This is my one year old Eton, trying out an ice cream cone for the first time. And so home videos are great and all, but if I made you sit through 45 minutes of me reminiscing with sort of no point, you would want to off yourself at the end. Because my memories are all very meaningful to me, but you probably need something a little bit more to sustain if you're to talk. And so I had to come up with something a little catchier, something a little more interesting. And I think, I hope that I've come up with that. He's really cute, isn't he? Yeah, I think he's definitely gonna be hooked on the fine sugar for the rest of his life, like the rest of us. So to do that, I basically switched this talk from sort of, I was gonna do lightning talks and all my talks prior, which you probably don't care about, but this is gonna be secrets of RubyConf. Basically, throughout the history of coming to RubyConf and being involved with them, I've learned some really interesting insider tips, some things that you would only learn. Some of them you might already know, but some of them you would only learn if you'd spoken at a bunch of these conferences or you'd been at a bunch of them. And I wanna share those with you. I want them to be wider dispersed. I hope that because of them, you're able to get more out of this conference, more out of your involvement with Ruby community in general. And in particular, if you ever decide to create your own community, whether it be around a programming language or more likely a library, even a business, et cetera, that you can take some of these ideas, these secrets and apply them. Now, all my talks always have this idea of being open I want you to tweet about the talk. In particular, again, I'm up against Jim Wyrick. Even if he gets most of the people, I wanna get most of the tweets. So please tweet RubyConf and secrets are the hashtags so that I can find them afterwards. And I look forward to seeing what y'all will say. The one other thing that I'll tell you up front is that I have exactly 44 slides and they all advance after 60 seconds. So this is a little different in that I'm definitely not gonna run over. Might have time for a question or two at the end, but this is sort of a long format Pika, how do you say that, Pika Kucha type talk. So to begin with, we go back to 2001. Very first RubyConf. As they talked about this morning, the pickaxe book has come out here months beforehand. I actually got involved in Ruby first. When the pickaxe book came out, it was at UPSLA, 2001, no, UPSLA 2000, I believe, that it originally came out. I got the pickaxe, got really interested in Ruby. I was working with a small talker at the time and the interesting thing about the genesis of RubyConf is it started off where it sort of tagged along with UPSLA. It would be the two days before UPSLA and then UPSLA and I think this worked out really well because what you found out is that a lot of the people who attended RubyConf were basically, an interest in Ruby were disenfranchised small talkers and that was also the audience for UPSLA. So basically you have all these object people getting interested in Ruby and I say all of these. The first RubyConf was 30 people, approximately. And so we all gathered there in Tampa, Florida. In this hotel, and as I was looking up pictures of the different venues, it was a holiday in when we first were in it. I think early on in RubyConf's history, there was some kind of close correlation between us being at a hotel and it later, like going out of business and getting bought by another chain, so take that for what you will. But RubyConf 2001, the amazing thing to me about it was that there was no corporate entity behind Ruby that was pushing RubyConf forward. There was no sort of organization that was saying, we're gonna make sure that Ruby gets big in the US. Rather, RubyConf happened because a bunch of people on the mailing list, the English language mailing list wasn't even that old itself at the time, said we'd really like to meet this guy max because he posts on the English language mailing list in riddles, these short, pithy sayings, and he's like this mysterious Japanese figure who created this language we love, we'd really like to meet him. So let's put together a conference that basically just has enough money to bring max over and pay for the venue and that's what happened. But sort of my inspiration for this secret of RubyConf is Guy Hurst because, Dave mentioned him in the talk, even though at the last minute some other folks had to step in and make sure that RubyConf happened, it was Guy Hurst who was the genesis for RubyConf. Without him, it would not have happened that first year. And the really amazing thing is that Guy Hurst, as far as I know, isn't involved with Ruby at all now. But yet, at that point in time, he was the right person in the right place and he took initiative to make something happen. And that was awesome because it changed people's lives. RubyConf 2001 changed the trajectory of my professional life, period, flat out. And here's one guy who, because he got involved, made that happen, and not just for me but for a lot of other people. I daresay that the majority of the people in this room would not be here if not for Guy Hurst starting the ball rolling on RubyConf 2001. And the secret here is that leading is being followed. You just start walking in a direction and you start setting the tone for something you're passionate about and you gather people behind you in your wake and something happens. And it's something that anybody can do. There's no need to be a famous person. There's no need to already have some level of notoriety. A lot of times there's no need even to be involved long term. You get something going and then it becomes self-sustaining. And that was the secret that I learned from Guy Hurst that very first year at RubyConf. And it's something that I've seen throughout, woven throughout the Ruby community ever since where regular people get involved and make stuff happen. So 2002, RubyConf moves on to Seattle, Washington. Home of the space needle. That odd piece of architecture that I don't even know what it's there for. And it was originally for the World Trade Fair but it's still there. And in 2002 for me was a particularly memorable RubyConf. And it had nothing to do with Ruby. It had to do with the fact that I'd just gotten married about two weeks earlier and came to RubyConf almost immediately. After the honeymoon and brought my new bride with me. So I was having as good a time at the conference as I was at the hotel as I was at the conference. But so we all gathered together there in RubyConf. And it was, there were a lot of things that were interesting about that year. One was the initial sort of rise of the Seattle Ruby Brigade. The very first .rb group. They coined the .rb sort of post fix for local Ruby meetups. And so a lot of those folks showed up at RubyConf for the first time that year. I also found it interesting when I went and pulled this off of archive. It still says RubyConf.new2001 but then it has the right schedule. So I don't know if that's a fact of archiving or what but it was still a very community driven conference. But the really interesting thing about RubyConf 2002 was that this guy showed up and talked about YAML. And YAML was very new at that point in time, right? It had just come out. And this guy who called himself why the lucky stiff came and talked about YAML. And the weird thing is that looking back why did he was not an alt rocker absurdist personality at that point in time. He was maybe headed in that direction but I remember why as being preppy surfer dude, okay? I couldn't find a picture of him then but he came across as very different than what this persona ended up being. But the great thing about why was that he sort of dug into Ruby early on and he introduced us all to YAML which is pervasive throughout the Ruby community now. And something we're all familiar with. But he worked on all those different projects and constantly invited contributions and he wanted people to make things with the things that he was making. He didn't want them to simply use them but he wanted people to make things. And the secret that I learned from Y was that famous people are able to. So it's really easy to see that person up on stage. Now Dave Thomas told us this morning that if you go up and try to talk to him in a crowd, he'll probably just not as head at you. But it has nothing to do with him being famous. It just has to do with the fact that you can't hear you. But in general, anyone who you think of in the Ruby community as being a famous person, they love to talk about the things that they're passionate about. They would love it if you said, oh, I'm really interested in this particular topic. Let's talk about it. And so don't ever hesitate to go up and talk to the famous people in any given community because they're just people like you are, just like why was. Now, nobody's a person like why was. And it's really, anyhow, he made it really hard to say sentences about it. But at the same time, I think that this is yet another lesson that we can learn from Y the Lucky Step. So it's 2003 and RubyConf moves on to Austin Texts. Now you may be starting to notice a pattern here. RubyConf all except for one year has always gone East Coast, West Coast Central. East Coast, West Coast Central. So this is the first Central Conference in Austin, Texas. Memorable for me because I got the opportunity to stay with Hal Fulton. He lived in Austin, Texas and I stayed with him at the conference. Now, I say this and this is just kind of, this is a secret that isn't even on a slide deck. So only you get it and anybody watching the video. And that is that, always stay at the conference hotel. Hal was awesome. I enjoyed spending time with him. But you miss out on stuff if you're not right there where the action is happening. And in particular, in 2003, that action all centered around the project that Eric just talked about, which is Ruby Generals. Now in 2001, at the very first RubyConf, there was a talk by a guy named Brian Levengood on this project called Ruby Generals. And it was this cool package management thing that he was working on. And then it just kind of fizzled that on the line. But then as time went on, right, we're two years later now, and everybody's going, we need a package management solution for Ruby. And so a bunch of folks got together at RubyConf 2003. And I remember coming to the hotel and going into the bar. And there is just this hive of activity. I mean, literally just like people moving all over the place through these round tables like this, like this hive and the super high chairs that go with them. And there's like two or three laptops crammed on each one of these little tiny tables. And people are like crowded around them, hacking away. And what had happened was Rich Kilmer, in particular, I remember sort of saying, and I think Chad made, there were a bunch of people involved in this. But I think of Rich because he's kind of my point's essential, he can hack more code with his pinky than I could do if I could use my toes as well as my fingers. And he basically said, look, everybody's complaining about this, but we should actually do something about it. Let's go and steal the name and any concepts we can from the older regions and let's actually code this up. Let's make something happen. And it did. And now you could say something about the code quality. Typically, a project that starts at a bar is not gonna be the best ever in terms of test coverage and clean code and architecture. But it was a start and it was enough and it got people excited enough that they went back and they continued to refine it and develop it and do more with it. And RubyGems has influenced not just the Ruby community, but it's also influenced a bunch of other programming languages who look at RubyGems and go, wow, we wish we had a package management system like that. And then they build it. And so I am really, really happy to have found that Hackfest going on in the bar in 2003. And the secret is that conferences are for Hackfest and for other such interactive things that you can do only at a conference. It's really easy to come to a conference and basically pick up a bunch of information that you could have just as easily read on the web next week when it got published. Instead, I encourage you to come to a conference and look for those sessions, look for those talks, look for in particular those opportunities to interact with other people in ways that you could not otherwise. So, and the other really interesting thing to me about the RubyConf 2003 Hackfest is that it was so all-inclusive of a conference. I think almost everyone who was at the conference that year touched the RubyGems source code in some way. I remember standing at a table with David Allen Black looking at the version comparison code and doing something with it. And I think that was a common experience for almost everyone that was at the conference that year. And so look for how you can build Hackfest, et cetera, that aren't just the normal characters, but how can you draw in other people, get them excited about what you're doing and hack together with them. So 2004, RubyConf goes to Chance Lee, Virginia, otherwise known as pretty much a suburb of D.C. And this is the year that everything changed, but we didn't know it yet. This was the last year where RubyConf did not, as far as I know, sell out at seats. I don't think there were any other years after this that where RubyConf didn't sell out. But we had no clue, right? We just all went to another RubyConf that was about 60 people, right? So over about over three years at this point, it had pretty much doubled in size, which isn't really a very great growth rate, if you're wondering. But it was a lot of fun. It was usually the same crowd, but this guy with this really hard to understand a proud-nounced name and even harder to spell, he was talking on the mailing list, he kind of popped up all of a sudden and he's like, I'm working on this and sticky thing and I have this framework and you should check it out. It was exciting and it made this blog post or blog engine in 10 minutes video. We're like, okay, this is kind of interesting. So it comes out to RubyConf 2004 and presents on Rails. And it was a good presentation. The main thing I took away with it was he was using TextMate and I was like, I wanna get me some of that. And so he basically gave a pre-release version to most of the people that were there. It was also the beginning of the Mac ascendancy. I actually think Apple should have sponsored that year because it was from sort of that point in time that I remember it became like the only thing, like right now, let's see, I see one non-Mac computer at the moment in the audience. But David came out and he talked about, like I said, the presentation was good, it was solid. It wasn't like, wow, this is the most amazing thing ever. But the interesting thing was he didn't stop there. So many times what happens is you create this cool library, you go out to a conference one time, you talk about it and you hope that people will pick it up. But David morphed himself from the geek into the amazing marketer and took Rails to a point where it was sustainable and he was able to work on his passion all the time and have so many other people contributing to this project. And of course it greatly affected the Ruby community as a whole. So what I learned, the secret that I learned from David is that your passion is worth marketing. And this is something that we geeks fail at so utterly, so often. We look at marketing as being a bad word. You know, I don't want to be one of those hype guys with everybody drinking the Kool-Aid, but the truth is if you want to be able to work on your passion long term, if you want a lot of other people using it, you've got to be bold enough to go out there and say, this is awesome. I think this is awesome. I think that you'll find it to be awesome too, and I really think you should get involved. And look at how it's changed this community. It hasn't just improved Ruby around Rails, it has improved Ruby in general. The Rubinius project, as it exists today, would not have happened if not for Rails. You could point it, Rack would not be here if not for Rails. Project after project after project after cool thing after cool thing after cool thing all because one guy, one geek, decided to actually get serious about marketing what he was passionate about. And you can do that too. So 2005, RubyConf goes to San Diego to a sold out crowd of the expectation wasn't that it would sell out. So it wasn't actually that big of a crowd. It was like 150, 170 people. Really interesting venue. It's like, there were like the Bob Hope room and the Lucille Ball room, et cetera. And it's basically like this hotel that in its glory days hosted all these stars. Little did they know that we were coming. And down in the basement, there was the meeting room and it was like, if you've ever, if you ever saw the Rocketeer, sort of that 50s style lounge singer shell on the back kind of a thing. And so we're there in 2005 and it's very obvious that things are changing and they're changing very, very rapidly. And a lot of that was around Rails. Every single break, the Rails guys, and there was now the Rails guys, the Rails guys were in this, in the lobby working on the next release of Rails. There's so many more people. There's a ton of excitement around the whole conference. And I had the opportunity to give what I think was my best talk ever. So if I was gonna personally rank all my talks, 2003 in Austin would have been the worst ever and 2005 would be the best ever. So it was on the long tail of software. You can still find an essay form out on the web. But the thing that I learned from that was that, well, let me tell you first about the person that I met through that. So he's sitting here in the audience. John Carlin came up to me after my talk as well as a bunch of other people. He's like, hey man, I'm working on some cool stuff. Here's my car. Let me just slate. And I don't remember if he contacted me first or I contacted him first, but we started talking. And because of that initial conversation, we looked at one business idea. He introduced me to his designer friend. And then three years ago, I said, I came up with a business idea and I was looking for people to partner up with. John was one of them. Alex Koldeaufer, the designer he'd introduced me to was another. Daphne Amelia was the fourth one of us. And we basically formed Spreedley at that point in time. Spreedley would not have the founders that it has today and probably wouldn't even exist today if I'd not given that talk. And so the thing that John taught me that day, the secret, was that speakers have the best conversations. They basically get to have a whole set of conversations. Here's why this is, right? So it's this basic human act. I was just reading about speaking. The thing is when I'm up here, I'm like kind of terrified by the fact that I'm facing off against all of you. The book I was reading said that basically there's nothing scarier to our sort of more basic brain than being up in front of a group of other individuals all alone in a situation where we pretty much can't run away. But you're all sitting out there in the audience and as far as you're concerned, I'm just having a conversation with you. What that means is that after this talk is done, all of you will feel like you already have this conversation with me and will feel comfortable, especially being the geeks that you are and not especially Gregorius to talk to people you don't know, you now feel like you know me. And so you'll come up and talk to me in a way that you wouldn't have otherwise. And this is why speakers get to have the best conversations, especially technical conferences, is because now we have established rapport and I get to have interesting conversations with all of you that if I was a non-speaker and my normal sort of fearful of public or personal, interpersonal interaction with strangers I wouldn't normally have. So I highly, highly recommend that if you have the opportunity to speak at a conference, take it. Take the opportunity to get up in front of other people to be extremely nervous, because I always am. Everybody who does any amount of public speaking has those nervous moments. The difference is that my butterfly is now flying formation, I stole that from somebody else. But so anyhow, take the opportunity to speak because you will have better conversations because of it. So 2006, RubyConf heads to Denver, Colorado, which, if 2005 was the best talk I ever gave, 2006 was bar none of the best RubyConf ever. And it was just a combination of factors. Everything was firing and all the knobs were turned up to 10. The content was amazing, the venue was great, it was our first time ever at an embassy suite with the whole atrium in the middle and people just congregated there and hacked and played Nintendo DS and talked. And there was just this whole, I played my first ever game of Katan, right? So it was just an amazing year for RubyConf. And it was also the very last year that RubyConf was single track. And there's something different about a single track conference. There's something, there's a shared experience that happens at a single track conference that you just, as wonderful as larger conferences are and the things that you can do with them that you can't do at a smaller conference, there's something really cool about a single track conference and RubyConf 2006 was that conference. But there was this one guy who came to RubyConf 2006 and he gave this really funny talk where he was talking about fuzzing web interfaces. And he started off by saying, I'm gonna do a bunch of math in this talk and I have the math to back it up, but don't be that guy and he constantly calling me out on my math. And so throughout the whole talk, he's like, don't be that guy. So the rest of the conference, everybody's like, don't be that guy. And so it was really funny. This, of course, was Zed Shaw. And Zed Shaw is a character, as Dave alluded to, in his talk. He's never decided to call me out publicly, probably just because I don't rank. But, Oh. Oh. But Zed did teach me something really interesting and it kind of goes back to an underlying principle in the Ruby community and that is men a swan. Maths is nice, so we're nice. And really the thing that I've always appreciated about the Ruby community is that there is no problem with having lots of heated discussion and debate about concepts. But when it descends to the level of personal attack, you stop talking about concepts and you start dealing with all kinds of personal stuff that doesn't really help. And Zed kind of taught me that. But the real secret is that controversy is the best and the worst recruiter for a community. It's the best because there is no better way to attract a whole bunch of attention to your community than have something blow up really big. And there's nothing that blows up bigger than a flame war. But it's also the worst in that it's not, those aren't always the folks that you want to necessarily attract to your community. And also a lot of the people that come in and see that kind of conflict are gonna go, I'm not really interested in this and keep moving. I still like to read Zed, but if I had to be completely honest, I'm glad he hates the Ruby community. So in 2007, RubyConf moves on to Charlotte, North Carolina, three hours from my hometown of Raleigh. And it's nice when it's on the East Coast, I can always try it. And so it met in downtown Charlotte, even though Charlotte's three hours away from Raleigh is the most time I've ever spent in Charlotte before. You know how that goes, when you live close to a place you actually don't spend very much time. Happened in the very impressively shaped comedy hotel. And the thing that I think everyone who's at RubyConf 2007 remembers about that RubyConf is werewolf. It was werewolf this and werewolf that and werewolf the other. And here's the truth, it was a blast. It was so much fun. I remember sitting around and got to know some people about a level that I sort of did before. Now I got to know sort of their dark side. I can tell really good lies side, but still I got to know them at a level that I hadn't previously. The other really good thing about 2007 being about werewolf so much is that I think we burned it completely out of our system. As far as I can tell, there's never been a RubyConf conference since that was dominated by werewolf to that level. It was like, okay, we're done now, that was fun. We moved on, hopefully to hack in pursuits, et cetera. But RubyConf 2007, I gave a talk entitled Why Camping Matters, and I related the importance of hacking to the concept of a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. That was highly entertaining if I do say so myself. But the interesting thing was I had somebody come up to me afterwards and say, when you talk at the same conference the same time, you start to get a few groovies. But it's okay. And so one of them came up to me, very positive guy in general, and said, I love the fact that you always have like this theme, and there's always like something different and entertaining and interesting about your talks. And I kind of thought, wow, I'm glad to work here. In 2003. So Joe Bryant basically sort of said this, and then Joe has gone on to be extremely entertaining himself. Has really developed his speaking skills and teaches it a way that I think people really get because it's interactive and interesting and entertaining. He spends a lot of time with Jim Weirich who does the same thing. And so the thing that I really learned from that experience, the secret is that conferences are entertainment. You thought you came here to learn something, but I say that you came here to be entertained and happened to learn something as a side effect. The fun things about conferences are the laughs, the interesting things that you never would have learned unless you'd been sitting across the table from that person, the more intense social interactions, the opportunity to just interact on a level and have fun at a level that you can't have online. And so I would encourage you as you approach your conference attendance as you're here at RubyConf, as you go to conferences in the future, if you ever organize a conference, as you present at conferences, to keep this in mind that you should think as much about entertaining the audience as about, and also seek out those opportunities to be entertained because those are the places where you're going to learn something because it's gonna stick in your mind. I most remember some of the most entertaining talks throughout all of the RubyConf conferences. And so definitely keep that in mind as you attend and as you present. So 2008, RubyConf goes to Orlando, Florida, the first time that it did not cycle. It's stuck on the East Coast, yes, my coast. And stayed there and moved to Orlando, Florida and sort of, it was cool in one way and not so cool in the other, but the centerpiece of RubyConf 2008 was location because this is definitely the only RubyConf where there was a lazy river behind the hotel, okay? And they have these awesome suites that my whole family like stated, like a four bedroom suite and like the whole family was there and it was a fantastic time. There were good restaurants in the hotel which was good because it was completely isolated from anything else. And so there were there were pluses and minuses there. 2008 was a lot of fun, but the thing that I really noticed in 2008 was some other folks came that I knew like from the Raleigh area, et cetera. And while they enjoyed it, it seemed like I was getting so much more out of the conference. It just seemed like, I was, I just having these much more interesting conversations was that there was some kind of in-crowd, some kind of click going on. I wasn't sure like what exactly was causing this. And so as I, as the week went by and as we sort of kept going through, I started to, I got inspired by a presentation that the Seattle Rivergate did. Basically a bunch of them got up and talked about a whole bunch of different projects that they had going on. And in thinking about that, the sort of the conclusion that I came to with that, they just had Seattle RV to back up a little bit has just always inspired me with their sense of community. The fact that they are just always hacking on something really hardcore and they get so many different people involved in it. And this guy has this project but this other guy works with them on it. And I think they have like weekly hack nights which is really cool. We manage monthly and rally. And so the inspiration for me is sort of the realization that I started coming to came from this guy, Ryan Davis, and what he inspired at Seattle RV. Now this picture was challenging to find. Finding a picture of Ryan that's smiling at the camera and he isn't simultaneously flipping the camera man off. It's very challenging. Is that why you're talking to a person? And so he is, he's a character. If he finds out that I put him in my presentation, a picture of my presentation, he might stab me afterwards. And he could definitely take me in a fight. So, but Ryan and the Seattle RV, I just remember at multiple Ruby comps coming along and like sitting down to Ryan, talking some, we kind of knew each other from back in 2002 and he'd always be hacking on something. And man, if you're ready to, he'll just like grab you and be like, I'm working on this and I'm trying to figure this out. He's more than ready to include you at any point in time. And what I came to realize is that within any community, you get clicks that form. They're basically just groupings of people who with common interests and the best clicks are meritocracies. The kinds of groupings that you should seek to form are meritocratists, if that's a word, and in that, you want to invite anyone in that's ready to contribute. If you're ready to dig in, then come on and join us. And the thing that I saw there in 2008 was that, yes, there were some people who weren't as engaged in the conference, but I found that that was mostly because they weren't as involved in the conference. They were working on this thing over here or they were out over here as opposed to really engaging with the conference as a whole. So seek to make and seek to join clicks that are meritocracies. Now, 2009, Rumiqoff moves on to San Francisco, California. And the 2009 was the year that I learned that 5K wasn't simply a measurement of distance. It was actually a race. And a run that you could do. Now I did not run that year, but I am gonna run tomorrow morning as I hope some of you are. John talked me into it. See, there are other things that can happen when you meet people because you give conference talks. And so the really interesting thing to me about 2009 was the contrast with 2001. In 2001, there's 30 people. When the room was asked, that's less, you realize that that is significantly less the number of people in this room as sparsely populated as it is. It's really, it's probably about as many people as there are on this side of the room. And when asked how many of them were getting paid to do Ruby, one of them raised their hand. And yet, last year in San Francisco, we pack out the embassy suites there. And not only that, but the startups in San Francisco set up a bus tour specifically to like bust the Ruby people around because they're all using Rails and they can't find developers. Like this is the contracts, the change that's happened over nine years. And it's absolutely phenomenal, the growth that we've seen. But the downside is that these conferences keep growing bigger and bigger. And it gets harder and harder for me to meet more of you people out there. So please come up and let's talk about stuff. But seriously, how do you deal with this growth? Well, in 2006, the first Ruby ho-down happened. And this was memorable to me, not because it was the first regional conference, et cetera. It was just the first conference I ever co-organized. And the last one to date as well. And because of it, but the fascinating thing to me about the Ruby community is I've never seen a programming community that has been so focused on spreading out to a bunch of different conferences. Ruby Central sponsors them. Jeremy McAnally is my hero because he co-organized the first ho-down. And when I said, when the second one came up, I said, man, I am too busy, I cannot do this. He just went and did the whole thing himself from then on out. So he's really my hero. And so Jeremy put the ho-down together. But the first regional Ruby conference, I believe, was Yuruko in 2003 in Europe. Some local Rubyists in Europe said, we want to have our conference too. And they got together. I think there were probably less of them than there were at the first Ruby conference in 2001. But they had a blast. They continued to do it. And that has been a constant pattern. And the secret is, and this is really important, if you're going to build a community and you market it like crazy and it grows, recognize that conferences scale best horizontally. So look for ways that you can scale out your community, spread people out, find lots of events that people can get involved with. It's one of the reasons that this conference has such great talks is because there are so many regional conferences that act as proving grounds for new speakers and give the new folks the opportunity to show their stuff and for people to get excited about it. And the thing is, when you do a regional conference, can I just say, make it a single track? I've seen some folks starting up regional conferences and trying to do multi-track. But the cool part about a small regional conference is you can do one track and it gives you shared experience across the whole group. So conferences do scale best horizontally. The big ones are fun. Don't deny it. But the small ones are where I think the real learning and the real growth happen. So here we are, 2010, New Orleans, Louisiana. And who knows? I mean, I look back 10, well nine years technically to the 2001 RubyConf. And I think, what does nine, 10 years from now look like? I have no earthly idea because I sure would not have predicted this in 2001. None of us would have predicted this back in 2001. We never, we, at all programming languages hope for the killer application. Very few of them find it. And it's not something that you can sort of create out of the blue. But it's really fun to be here. My hope is that these secrets of RubyConf give you some ideas for maximizing your experience here. That as you go through the conference, you'll be looking for those sessions that are going to entertain you as well as inform you that in the future as you present that you will be looking towards how you can learn from the audience afterwards by having an ongoing conversation with them. But my real, the thing that I really wonder about this year is when I look back at it in 10 years, what am I going to remember? I don't know yet. It just started, right? And some of the things that I remember from so long ago, I didn't seem to matter at the time. I know one thing that I will remember about this year and that is being put up against Jim Weirich. Bless his heart. And so, what I'm wondering is when I think of the people who influenced me at RubyConf 2010, who will it be? It could be one of you. It probably will be one of you. And I look forward to seeing how I am shaped by yet another conference. And I haven't decided. Next year, do I do another talk or do I skip a year to take the pressure off? I'm not sure. But I want to thank all of you for coming, for listening, for being involved. And I want to go ahead and take time for two or three questions I can answer on history. I will also mention, I have all of RubyConf t-shirts laid out over here. Feel free to check them out if you're interested. So, any questions? Yes? So, I'm going to mark the final five questions by asking you if you'd like to come to our little regional conference in Sweden and talk about removing it soon. It sounds awesome, man. It is awesome. Yeah, I've heard really good things about it. So, I will take that as an invite and go ahead and get it on the calendar. Awesome. I'll talk more later. Yeah. Anybody else? Nathaniel, I just want to say this is a great topic to encourage people to get out of their shell and to speak about their passions. And I really want to just sleep. What was your 2003 talk? What was so bad? I don't remember it being bad. So, it was a clueless Ruby hacker explorer security and the speaker is always much more critical of their talks than anybody else. But to me, it was just kind of flat. So, you can actually find the, I went back and looked at the slides and there's some content there, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, follow up on the Nordic Ruby thing. We were talking last night about trying to resurrect their hello-hunter, so if you want to come up with it. Yeah. Because we might kill it. We made you really comfortable lying next to you. Well, that would be great. Wow. Is that West Coast door even open? Yeah. I don't know if it's going to be open. Does that make it a little bit psychic? One, if I go to Australia. That would be, no. Well, the problem with Hawaii is I have to bring my whole family. If I go to Hawaii by myself, I am in so much trouble. The thing about I was at San Diego, and that long-tailed talk was awesome. Yeah. It was awesome. You know, I don't want to toot my own horn, but at the same time, if I look at all of my talks, some of which have been quite lame, that one was awesome. So, you should go and read it if you haven't. It's still out there. I am sorry to say that the mailing list that will spawn from that is totally defunct. Yeah. 100% spam right now, so. I forgot there was a mailing list. I don't know yet. I don't know. Not sure. I haven't decided on that. Not sure what I think about this in any way. I have a question on exactly this topic. Yes. You've encouraged people to participate deeply with the commerce that they attend, and yet, if you bring your family, isn't that some other distraction? Are there some other obligated distractive time with them if you rub them along? How do you balance those things? I would like to be the same, and I don't see myself holding on. Well, so, Katie and I have an agreement that when I go to conferences, I disappear. And she likes to come along just so that she gets to see me at all, as opposed to not seeing me at all. And so, the kids, even though they don't, no, I did see there was a kids' track this year. I didn't know that that was happening, but as my kids get older, that could be a lot of fun to do. But at the same time, the kids get something out of just being here and just coming in when I'm giving a talk and being in the back and just seeing that this is when I come to a conference is what I do. But it is challenging, but again, it's mostly about setting expectations. All right, well, thank you so much for coming.