 Our first speaker is a hugger. If you see him later, he might give you a look. He's from Madison, Wisconsin. He's one of the organizers of an upcoming RubyConf. If you can't get enough of these things, on Madison RubyConf, I'll be one of them. He was in a race, driving a car fairly fast and smashed into a wall and stopped really quickly. He's going to tell you about that and somehow relate it to Ruby. Jim? Are you going to get by? Jim, we're sick. So it's always fun to go to a different part of the country. For me, I'm from Madison, born and raised. And then for some, well, for a very good reason, I moved to Florida, to Jacksonville. But I don't get up to the most close much, at least until this year I've been on to San Fran a couple of times, and ended up to Ruby on the Elves. And then Oregon. So it's always fun to come out here and meet people that I don't know, and I get to see, like, Tepo, Less Hill, who I worked with for a number of years. I'm stumbling while I get fine, why am I connected? So, but the point of coming out here was to talk about an accident that I had, as Shane mentioned. We are talking about racing stock cars, which is, I think, unusual for the Ruby community. Does anybody else here race stock cars? So, title. 60-0 in 2.5 seconds, which sounds very impressive, but it's really made up numbers. I don't know how long it took me to crash. It was probably more like 70 miles an hour. And maybe 80 or 100, like I said, you guys don't really race stock cars, so you don't know. But, so, this is a story about an awesome failure in my life, and we're all in courage to fail, fail fast, fail really fast. And the idea being that you fail, and then you move on, and then you have that experience for the next time. So, whenever you do fail, it's important to learn the lessons as you're going through your failure, as you get out of the failure and move on to the next, your next endeavor. So, I share this story in not in the hopes that you don't actually go on crash, but that you don't have to, so go out there and take risks and have fun, but make sure that you take away some lessons while you do your talk title is 60-0 retrospective. Who here is really with a retrospective? Agile retrospective? Awesome. So, appropriately enough, it's looking back or dealing with past events or situations. So, an agile retrospective, this isn't, because typically you wouldn't wait 14 years before you actually did the retrospective. But this event actually happened in 1997. It was time to look back at it as a topic. And unfortunately, we couldn't have the rest of the team here either. And the team in this case would be my wife and my dad. Did we get live streaming work, by chance? Yes. So, if that's true, then my wife is probably watching so she's here, kind of. She's very supportive, she watches all my talks. So, typical agile retrospective, you talk about what went well, what didn't go well, and what can we do better next time. There's sort of very generic questions and intended to foster discussion. Really allow people to get out what they felt to celebrate the successes, what didn't go well to point fingers, not point fingers, but to try to correct what could have gone better. So, obviously we're looking back at this crash that I was involved in in 1997. And in fact, a lot of people don't know, a lot of close personal friends don't know this story. It's not something that necessarily looking back on to find this, but it looks something like this. That, you know, the distinguishable mess used to be a 1981 vehicle saver. As you can see, it has some modifications. It's a little bit Mad Max. This is a personal favorite picture of mine as well, because it's got three of my cars, all three of which are now in the scrap heap, but, so this is my stock car. The brown Friesian out there was my daily driver and the 67 Kevillac first ambulance combo. Sort of a non-collection of cars. How did we get to that? When I was growing up, every weekend we spent going to the racetrack since about 1983, watching my dad race in Dose. Two, so they had a four cylinder stock class and this was every Friday, Saturday night, for about three months. So basically the length of the summer, every week. So that's how I acquired a taste for, you know, pindos and purses and on-cars. But eventually I got my driving license and I said, I gotta get on the track. So I look for the most economical way to do so. This is a 78 Chevy Malibu, I think it was. And this is 1996, this is a parade lap. So that's why there's two people in the car. We need more personal opinion. But as you can see, some severe modifications to the back roof line, so that we can see, which will make more sense in a moment. And this car probably cost about $400 to $500 all total to get it track-worthy. So it's just like a NASCAR. So there's a few interesting things about this picture. If you don't know what's going on, you probably don't pick up on. You'll notice that I've turned, perhaps look at the camera. But then, why is the other guy sitting there looking out the back? And what's up with the flag? It looks like it's a really dusty day. But this is the reason why. We raced in a unique division. This is me, right about there. And it's a pretty tight group of people. And we did things a little bit differently, allowed us to get into the track for free. And the reason for that was, it was hard to get people to join this division. It looked something like this. They put us as a lot of spotless fun. In fact, my first race, it was so much fun. I had so much drumming going, I could hardly keep quiet and put on my gas. It was just hopping around so much. I also spun several times. But just leave those cars. It sounds dangerous. The level of danger is much less than some of the crazy things that people do. For example, I just gave a stock in Spain. And I was invited to run with the Bulls. And I said, yeah, be crazy. I'm sure you, in my stock car, I never have this face. And the guy behind me doesn't have this big lot of snot coming out of his throat. So it sounds dangerous. In fact, it's a fairly controlled environment. We have eight known quantities and there's not really a vetting process, but everybody that comes into that division has to get along or they're not encouraged to continue. Everybody respects each other. It's a pretty tight team. And you're all going the same direction, which is helpful. So in the event of an accident, you're only going 60 miles an hour to zero. If you're driving at a two-lane highway and both people are going 35 miles an hour, that's already more dangerous than what we're doing. There's safety equipment, there's roll cages, helmets, fire retardant jackets, those sorts of things. So it sounds dangerous, but in reality, it's actually fairly controlled. There's paramedics on the scene for the rest of the races, not just for the back. But so 1997, this is opening day. You can tell because there's no deaths or scratches on the car. But I got a new car, I was really excited about, and I was going faster, so I dropped one number. It's all the faster race cars. Just say I want a number. And so there's a couple of things that you can do when you're racing. I'm going, I'm competing here. So in that first video that we saw, I was driving around the track while everybody else raced. As you can see here, I'm keeping up with the first place car, what they're right there. So of course, we need to go faster. So we need to be able to meet those other guys. So when you're in the amateur stock car racing, there's pretty much two rules of thumb for how to make your car go faster. One is to add stickers. So we added stickers. It's sort of an odd collection of stickers. We have a Danish film processing chemical company, Refrema. We have who's more prouder tools because there was some bossy with Benford tools, whatever. And then a little Kelvin sticker, like you would put on your everyday driver. You guys want to put it on your car, so I'll leave it there. So the other thing that you can do is you can reduce weight. And so having failed to achieve victory is what's putting the stickers on the car. We looked at the car and said, where can we reduce weight? But clearly here, the issue is that the car is too heavy. So we reduced weight, and we won races, and everything was great. But there's still more weight on that car than we removed. We were taking through the managing department, fixing something, and I saw, oh, there's cruise control on this car. You don't need cruise control for a stock car. So let's take it off. And that removed approximately, I get a lot of numbers you guys don't know, but it removed about a pound and a half of weight from the car. Clearly there was no better place to reduce weight on that car. Let's just take off that one and a half pound part. So we did a silly thing. We took off that cruise control part and went out and we went racing. This is actually not from the night after crash, but this will give you an idea of what it looks like from inside the car. That is a fellow competitor I started in the second row. So I get in the car and I'm racing around the track and something is wrong. I can feel it. It doesn't feel like a problem either. When I put the gas down to the floor, it stops short of going full throttle. So I come into this corner and I jam the gas down as it goes all the way to the floor. I get about halfway down the straightaway where I would normally lift off the accelerator and my foot came with the pedal didn't. So I'm racing backwards down this straightaway at full throttle with no way to stop. The only thing I can think to do is to try and turn the corner. It seems logical. And unfortunately I didn't make the turn. The car actually spun around and embedded itself into the end of the concrete wall, which is about six inches thick. And the track is actually designed for cars to go the other way. They didn't think people are gonna be driving backwards around this if you need to make sure it's safe for them to. But as you can see, I'm okay. In fact, I tried to get out of the car and paramedics rush over it as I thankfully crashed right next to them. They said, sit down, settle down. Are you hurt? I said, no, I'm fine. They said, pull down. It looks like you cut your knee. And I had no idea at the time. Looked out and, oh, sure enough. There's blood on my knee. Excellent. At this point though, adrenaline, whatever, I'm not feeling anything. Everything's fine. And then they say, it looks like you've entered your knee pretty badly. Okay, well, let's get me out of here then. And they proceeded to cut through the roll cage in the outside of the car with the Johnson Life, which, when I gave this talk in Madrid, it was very hard to explain. You know, the Johnson Life. So they're cutting through the roll cage, which is right next to my leg. I had to try to be helpful. I was like, oh, I'll just move my knee and the paramedics jump out of their skin because my knee is very badly injured. None of which is, of course, not going to be. So we go through it. I'm feeling fine. In fact, my brother John here, I talked to him and was like, oh yeah, I'm going to go to work tomorrow. I gotta be at work at seven a.m. And this happened about midnight, it wasn't 30 on a Friday night. But Saturday, 7 a.m. was a time that I could go to work. So I bet you took 50 bucks out of my network tomorrow. So we took that bet. As most people probably would. They took me to the hospital with the doctors and my knee starts going back and forth. And all of a sudden it released. And I realized that he had just sawed off pieces of skin. But I'm joking with the doctor. I said, I never feel like you just lost a little piece of yourself. Again, I was fine. It was anesthetic. There was adrenaline and things were going pretty well. So I went to work the next day and I showed up at about 6.45, my usual time. And my boss was there. He was relieved. I was okay. It's a light duty work that I could do. We did some hand to several of the books and I could sit at a table while the table turned. He was pretty decent. Then my girlfriend showed up. Now in my life, Jennifer, and I had another crash. Because apparently throughout this whole ordeal, my dad had asked, do you want me to call him Jen and let her know what happened? And at night, she's probably sleeping. Don't bother calling her. But then I didn't call her, even though we worked at the same place and I knew she'd got her way. I didn't call her. So she walked into work and sees me with my leg up, holding the books. So we spend the entire 12 hours at work. Have an angry girlfriend. But I'm pretty much okay. I started to feel pain, but I've got pain killers, and so things are going well. But then, get home. And my dad had brought the car back from the racetrack and had had basically all day to think about the accident and look at the car. So I walk up in the driveway and I see this. This is my sock car, or a small part of it. This is the driver's seat, which is cut off about halfway so we can turn around and see how the car. And I see this, which you've already seen. But I'm like, wow, oh, that looks bad. And then my dad points out, you see this blue bar that looks like a little A-frame? Imagine if you had a passenger in that car and a crash. So if I had had a passenger in my car, that would have been approximately in their face, which sounds like a very bad thing for a passenger. Then we looked at the front of the car and realized I crashed on the right-hand side of this car. If I would have spun a little bit more and spun on the crash into the left-hand side of the car, things would have gotten very bad very quickly. And this was a very sobering moment for me and for my dad. I see he felt responsible for the maintenance and the changes of the car. Yes, as they're preparing for this talk, it's bringing all of this stuff back. And it's some scary shit, honestly. So that this talk was about the retrospective. So now that we've heard about the incident, let's go through the questions. What went well? What faster than we ever had before? Maybe 70 miles an hour. The safety equipment worked and the controlled environment worked as planned. The paramedics were there. They got me out of the car, got me to the hospital. Everything was great. So what didn't go well? Well, I didn't win the race. I crashed hard. The equipment that was there to keep me safe nearly killed me because of the poor design. And I had an evening girlfriend. As I looked back at these though, I saw some more generic lessons that could be learned. So what can we do better next time? Don't race the car unless we've practiced. Have someone else review the roll cage design. Because it turns out that we had placed a bar in such a way that if you had a strong forward impact, it would wriggle off of the uprights and into the driver's compartment, which is never gonna be right here. Examine the car for sharp edges. I wound up cutting my knee and that happened. As I hit the car, I actually slid in my seatbelt and I sliced my knee open on a upright, or a mounting plate for the steering wheel. After that, they installed a gym pad on all of the cars. First it faced me a piece of plywood that was wrapped around the sharp object so that if you hit it, it would just shatter your knee instead of cutting your stand on it. And communicate with my girlfriend when I crash, even if I don't think it's a big deal. But those more general lessons that I see don't implement without practice. It sounds pretty strong. Have someone else review the design. We do this in either air programming, doing code reviews, making code open source. Look for sharp points and take care of them. These are failing tests, broken windows, those kind of things. And communicate to avoid surprising the other people on the project. Would have saved me a lot of explaining. So, capture. So again, I said tests, design reviews. Get feedback, get interacts. There's wealth of information if you have to rebuild the product. There is a wealth of information available at the hashtag measure to how to get more information. I gave this talk in Spain and I was the closing keynote so I was able to listen to everybody else's talk and incorporate them into my talk. And it actually worked out pretty well. Seven Feud is one of the authors of Travis CI. But it turned to a couple of failures if you don't really know what's going on. And in this case, I didn't really know that taking off that one and a half pound part that was related to the accelerator was going to make it stick. Analyze the situation for us. Everything was great until we took the time after the fact to really look at the car and realize how dangerous, the how much peril we had actually wanted to put me into. So when you try something new, you're going to be uncomfortable. We took off that part and I was uncomfortable for about four weeks. Change, so you've gathered all this information, you've analyzed, so you need to affect change. One of my coworkers when I was working at Hash Riot said, make this the kind of place that you want to work. Which I took care of. Do you want to work in a place where people don't take out the trash? No, of course not. So I started taking out the trash. Didn't matter that I was doing it more than anybody else. I wanted to work in a place where people took out the trash. So looking back, dealing with this past event, made me realize that I had learned some lessons. But at the same time, I don't want to tell people not to take risks. Just try to control your environment a little bit. Make sure that you have help on hand. Make sure that you do your due diligence. But go out, play, raise something, have fun, whether you're breaking democracy in Spain with the open internet party. Help organize people around an idea. Go bungee jumping, skydiving. Put yourself up there, take a risk and do something that sounds dangerous. In our community, we have a couple of people that tend to do this on a regular basis. Not wearing the boxers, but actually decide that you're going to attain what the multiple versions are moving from. Right? That's a big deal. That's a big deal too. Maybe you'll just read a quarter book that teaches folks about programming using bacon and facts. Bacon and foxes. Or faxes. I mean, who really would have thought of this and said that's a great idea. Everybody's gonna love this. Not me, but everybody does. And we're a better community for it. Thank you.