Ruby Conference Review: RubyConf Australia 2016

This is the second article of a multi-series blog post about Ruby and tech conferences I’ve visited in 2016.

The Setting

I guess I don’t have to lose too many words Australia: It’s an absolutely adorable country — unfortunately located very very far from everywhere. It’s got breathtaking nature, stunning wildlife and super-friendly people (more on that later). If you’ve never been to Australia, you should go. It’s great.

RubyConf Australia (@rubyconf_au) took place at the Gold Coast, to be precise, at the Sea World conference center. For non-aussies: Gold Coast is an one-hour-flight away from Sydney. It’s rather a touristy destination directly at the sea shore (the name of the city is actually “Surfer’s Paradise” — questions?). When you arrive, you feel like you’re in Miami South Beach. It is actually very similar, big hotels, party in the streets everywhere, surfer girls and boys — and yes, even the artificial atmosphere of Miami is there. So it’s definitely a fun place for some days, but not for longer.

The Conference

RubyConf Australia 2016 took place at the conference center of SeaWorld. It’s a super-modern venue. I estimate that about 350 people participated on the conference. Most of the people came from Australia and New Zealand, but also a notable amount of people from overseas. I expected to see more participants from Asia, but that wasn’t the case.

To summarize the conference in one sentence: RubyConf Australia was actually the greatest conference I’ve ever attended so far.

Really. The organizers put so much love in the organization of conference, you could feel it everywhere. They opened the conference with a aboriginal Didgeridoo-Player, which was impressive.

Their moderation was funny but not shallow, always with a smile, it was thoughtful, they didn’t take themselves to seriously, they cared, they were open for questions, they even performed a song on stage upon request of the audience at the beginning of conference day 2.

These two also took a lot of time at the beginning to introduce the conference, the sponsors, the people, etc. — so everybody had a smooth start. I could go on and on with my praise — Melissa and Liam did an outstanding job, and it showed once again how much not only the speakers but also the MCs set the tone of the conference. It couldn’t have been better.

But it doesn’t stop there. There was a fresh lovely coffee station and even a Gelato wagon, so you could get tasty ice cream between the talks and chill in the sun:

They’ve even replaced the toilet signs to a more gender-neutral version.

After all, they really tried to please everyone, and from my impression, that worked out perfect. I know that this doesn’t come by accident, but that there’s rather a lot of hard work involved. So Kudos to the organizers.

The only thing which went terribly wrong was the opening party. Apparently when you signed up later, you couldn’t sign up for the opening party — or you simply missed to tick the right checkbox. This had led to the embarrassing situation that many people who queued up for the party simply were not admitted in the first place, because they weren’t on the guest list. An opening party only for half of the participants? Seriously, guys. This was a major, major screw-up — everything was so perfectly organized, so how could that happen (talking about inclusion — maybe you start with yourself…)?

So the folks who couldn’t go to the party (including me) went to a nice Pub, the Drinks were on Scrivito, we’ve invented the hashtag #checkBoxGate and Scrivito paid for the drinks. Fortunately later everybody got an SMS one after one that there’d be enough space anyway and that we should come over. So we did, and everything turned out fine in the end.

Besides of that, they’ve also organized great social activities accompanying the conference. You could go on a hike. You could go to a wildlife sanctuary and cuddle with Kangaroos and Koalas (which are the most adorable animals on earth by the way, besides cats). There was a closing BBQ at the beach. They really cared that everybody felt good during whole conference, not just during talks.

There was a lot of twitter activity during the talks under the hashtag #rubyconf_au. A LOT. Definitely more than at most of any other conferences, which is great.

I especially loved the handwritten notes by @sienatime, for example:

They’ve even handed out special edition t-shirts to the most active tweeters, which was a nice gesture.

Unfortunately there wasn’t an official Slack channel during the conference.

The Talks

The schedule was basically a good mixture between soft/social talks and more hardcore technical talks, which was good. Many of the soft talks were focussing on equality and inclusion in tech.

My personal highlight was first and foremost the talk of Dr. Nic (@drnic). Not so much because of the talk itself (which was a bit confusing), but just to see him on stage. When I started to learn Ruby on Rails, I literally grew up with Dr. Nic. Back in the days around 2007–2008, he was basically one of THE guys. And he didn’t disappoint on stage, because his talk was simply really funny.

Despite of that, there were many great talks, but in my opinion three talks really stood out:

First, the Keynote by Jeff Casimir (@j3) was held without any slides, but the content was even better. Talking about failing in business and how to cope with it was a great, entertaining and thoughtful intro which once again set the tone of the conference (that’s what a Keynote should do, right?).

Second, the absolutely hilarious talk from Adam Cuppy (@adamcuppy) called “What If Shakespeare Wrote Ruby?” turned into a super entertaining improv theatre on stage. Adam was once an actor, and you could definitely feel that — the crowd was really giddy with excitement after the performance.

Third, Senator Scott Ludlam (@SenatorLudlam) from Australias Green Party held a very thoughtful and intelligent talk about politics, citizens rights and how technology-savy people can contribute. This last talk of the conference ended with well-deserved standing ovations.

And of course there was a Friday Hug …

Socializing and Meeting People

All the people I’ve met were super-friendly and nice. Period. I guess it really had a lot to do with the tone of the conference which has been successfully set by the MCs at the beginning. It was just a good and positive atmosphere.

As already mentioned, they’ve also put a lot of effort in creating a great social environment to meet with people and talk. In the coffee and gelato line, at the various social events, etc.

Besides the (in-the-beginning-screwed-up) opening party there was also another nice drink-up and dinner in the same pub where we already celebrated #checkBoxGate: food was great, unfortunately we had to eat in several rounds because they simply couldn’t accommodate that many people. Afterwards some people actually went to a karaoke session, which was also big fun.

The conference ended with an entertaining party at a movie world theme park, again with a lot of networking, debates about the talks and more:

So, plenty of opportunities to meet interesting people!

In general: Rails is big in Australia. I met some very interesting Rails and skilled development firms, most notably RedAnt, Terem Technologies and reinteractive. I’m looking forward to do Scrivito projects with them als local implementation partners.

What else?

Staying in Gold Coast is a fun thing, but definitely you should add some days or weeks in Sydney, or maybe fly to Melbourne, where most of the tech companies seem to reside. A trip over to New Zealand is also only a few hours, so don’t miss out Auckland and Wellington, where I also met interesting Rails Dev Shops like rabid and TouchTech.

What could have been better?

There’s definitely room for improvement regarding the opening party (I guess I wrote enough about that). Also I’d definitely like to see conference badges a) where you actually can read the name of the participant and the company b) which actually are not literally hanging too low (so you don’t have to bend down to read them) and c) contain the same information on both sides.

Notable was also the absence of any lightning talks.

But besides of that: No complaints at all, only praise. So far it’s been the best conference I’ve ever attended. Kudos

Did they get the conference badge right?

Kind of. The name was quite readable, the company name not. Still room for improvement, but already pretty good!

This is how a good conference badge should look like (this blog post is from 2007!).

Would I go again?

Absolutely! Yes, yes and yes. Australia is a gorgeous country to visit and the conference was simply just great. Up to now definitely the best Ruby conference I’ve ever been to. So if you have the chance: Go there! You definitely won’t regret it.

Hopefully see you next year in down under!

Originally published at scrivito.com.