We are RubyFringe

posted by pete on July 20th, 2008

It’s strange writing that RubyFringe is in its last hours, because this event has been our baby for seven months. The tireless efforts of the Rubyfringe curator team — most notably the logistical force of nature known as Ms. Meghann Millard — over the last while has resulted in an event which I am proud to say has been a huge success.

I personally hate avoid Twitter, it’s true… but I will admit to the guilty pleasure of watching the real-time comment feed. People seem really happy with what happened here.

Thanks again to all attendees, the amazing volunteers, and my fellow curators. This has been one of the most significant long moments of my life.

Kieran Huggins from MyTTC took this awesome photo from behind the stage.

All attendees received a conference program not unlike that which you’d buy for $15 at a musical.

For those of you not present, I was indulged in the form of this opening letter:

---

We made it! We are here: Welcome to RubyFringe.

It’s not an accident that the team behind RubyFringe are music geeks; we’re musicians, we’ve worked at labels and managed bands, and we collect vinyl LPs. We chose to buck the Ruby “everything in red” trend and instead draw on the influence of punk rock. Pioneers like Charles Babbage and David Bowie invented despite a vacuum of technology, and the results seemed like magic at the time. While the superficial aspects of the punk era could be easily co-opted for profit, let’s not forget that youthful rebellion through music is a political movement with teeth. You can thank this “devil music” for being able to wear jeans on casual Friday, after all.

“Music is a hidden exercise in mathematics by minds unconscious of dealing with numbers.” — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz

What does it mean to be part of a punk rock Ruby conference? Your ticket was not free, and there is nary a safety pin or sewn-on patch in sight. Punk embodies a reaction to the established ideals of the day. Democratic, ad-hoc subcultures full of people who passionately believe that life can offer something more emerge. Auto-education seems natural as people teach themselves the skills they need, and make tools they do not have. Rubyists don’t need permission from proprietary corporate vendors, and they would never ask for it anyhow. The people drawn to these ideals are often refugees from a harsh world. They seek a better life, blocks, and ActiveRecord.

“Only fear of death makes us want to stop life, to ‘fix’ it impossibly forever. The moment life is fixed, it is no longer true; it is dead, and therefore uninteresting.” — Jean Tinguely

Is Ruby a small community of eccentric individuals? Compared to Java, sure. However, it is clear that there are more and more kids crowding the playground, and they are not all going to be alpha geek early-adopters. Some will smoke in the parking lot, some will play Lobbyists and Downloaders, and some will be transfixed by the huge enterprise advertising banners across the street. Still others will be content to play with themselves and rat out the smokers when they light trash bins on fire. Clearly, at least one will discover LSD and draw instructional comics, too.

“In order to capture Chaos, human beings cannot inscribe order into it.” — Akira Asada

It makes sense that we are seeing a protectionist freak-out: there are more and more Newbies that had not heard of Ruby until they saw fifty Rails titles on sale at Amazon. Those geeks lucky enough to be connected, attractive, and particularly eloquent can play the arrogant card to great effect. However, if the public perception of a typical Rubyist can be summed up as “massive superiority complex,” is it any wonder that many folks think we’re dicks?

“Gardening and engineering are key metaphors. [We are seeing] the change from an engineering paradigm, which is to say a design paradigm… to a biological paradigm, which is an evolutionary one.” — Brian Eno

Recently there has been a feeling of growing discontent: how could Ruby — which felt so new and liberating two years ago — get saddled with so much negative baggage, so quickly? More importantly, how did we let this happen? Was there a moment when the tides turned? If we could go back, would anything be done differently?

Why do people attend technical conferences with the expectation that they’re going to be bored?

tachidomaru: This word is a combination of “stand” and “stop,” and means “to stand, stop, and look back.”

RubyFringe is just a moment in time, but it’s your moment. It’s up to you to meet everyone here, challenge them, and take this movement forward. It’s easy to be an asshole on the Internet! Coming to RubyFringe and changing the world — one conversation at a time — is hard. We are going to keep putting drinks into your hand until you realize that these strangers are not just the best friends you could have, but that together we represent an opportunity to write the winning history of software development.

Please be nice, and remember to drink lots of tap water.

Pete Forde

RubyFringe Co-Curator