Rubyfools, Redux

; updated

Thanks to everyone who attended the RubyFools conferences in Copenhagen and Oslo! I had a great time, even if I did end up in hospital:

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The story is simply that I got some food stuck in my throat (lodged around about here to be exact), which meant that I couldn’t swallow anything. At all. After a few hours of spitting every 5 minutes to avoid drowning, we took a trip to the hospital, and they kept me in overnight after fizzy-water torture failed to dislodge the offending piece of fondue meat.

In actual fact, everyone was really nice, and I couldn’t imagine a better hospital experience. So - to the medial staff of Copenhagen’s hospitals - thanks!

Anyway - the slides from the Oslo incarnation of my presentation are now available at the RubyFools site. They’ve been cleaned up a bit, but basically represent that talk as given.

I really enjoyed the conference overall; I’ve found that smaller conferences (200 people or less) make it easier for everyone to meet, and for an overall sense of “the conference” to emerge. The bigger conferences are still fun, but seem to end up more chaotic, with far too much time being spent coordinating who to eat dinner with, and whether or not to go to talks or just spend time outside talking.

Keep it under 200 people and you can still engage with the speaker during presentations, and get to know (or at least meet) most of the other people attending.

Hopefully they’ll invite me back next year, and I can try out the hospitals in Norway!