It's 11am and I've just left Recife. I'm flying towards Sao Paulo, the first of three connections to come back to Italy after speaking and attending the TropicalRuby 2015 Ruby conference in Porto do Galinhas.
I'm looking outside the small window of the plane: the weather is sunny, like most of the days I spent here, and I'm thinking about the great time I had here in Brazil.
My mind is still digesting most of the information I absorbed at the conference. Avdi's keynote was mind-blowing, one of the best keynotes I've seen in a very long time, probably second only to Jim Weirich's lambda calculus keynote (which I still haven't completely digested, even after a long time).
The location of the conference was absolutely gorgeous and the idea of splitting the conference between talks and activities was brilliant. Activities were an excellent opportunity for speakers and attendees to break the ice and have fun together. And let me tell you that talking at a conference where speakers can be on a stage wearing flip-flops is a priceless benefit.
My talk was about maintaining a 5-year-old Ruby project. I illustrated patterns and best practices we developed and adopted at DNSimple to ensure the long-term maintainability of our codebase; I advocated Shark Conservation and distributed Italian "Saluzzesi" chocolates.
I also ended up teaching scuba diving during a scuba diving baptism session in Porto de Galinhas. I still can't believe I traveled to the other side of the world to speak at a Ruby conference and I ended up talking about sharks and teaching scuba diving to Ruby developers. That was amazing, and I'm really thankful to the Ruby community for making all this possible.
Unfortunately, we had a few problems with audio and video and some talks, including mine, were not recorded. However, the slides are available at Speakerdeck.
Thank you to all the Tropical Ruby organizers for their hard work. They were always present, before and during the conference, supporting every speaker's needs, from travel suggestions to accommodation.
Ciao Brazil!
Cross-posted from the DNSimple blog.