Baruco 2013

I don’t go to many conferences - I am pleased that Baruco is one of them.

I really enjoyed the conference. It was well organized with a stellar lineup of speakers. I’ve returned home from Barcelona with things to ponder, things to try out, and a list of books to read.

Topics

The topics were a good mix of nitty-gritty technical talks and more fluffy topics like higher level design, community building, and how do we build better software.

I was somewhat surprised with how little Rails was a topic. Sure, it was mentioned, but none of the talks were specifically about Rails even though that’s what the majority of us makes our money from. I think this might be a good sign.

One track

Baruco only has one track. For a conference, that’s a fairly bold move - when attendees cannot chose what to experience, the experience that has been chosen for them, must be great.

Luckily, the impressive roster of speakers did deliver and it worked very well. This meant everybody had the same reference points and hallway discussions are centered around the same ideas.

Summing up

My main takeaway from the conference has so far been that Ruby is still going strong with some of the best yet to come - and that we have a great community of friendly, approachable and curious people.