Day two rocked with some impressive speakers. Justin Ghetland spent his hour talking about Ajax on Rails and revived my interest in Javascript and Ajax. The presentation was a collection of examples like live search, drag and drop, autocomplete, and just how easy Rails can integrate these effects. Sam Stephenson, the creator of Prototype, is floating around somewhere at RailsConf as well.
To create a Web 2.0 start-up, you need is a name that ends in “r” with no vowel before it. –Justin Ghetland
Scott Raymond was on deck with his lessons from Blinksale & Iconbuffet. Scott’s presentation was particularly interesting to me because he told it from the view of a contractor, a one-man show without the resources and staff of large companies. He emphasized the importance of client communication and a variety of other must-do business practices.
The “Putting BBC’s Catalogue on Rails” talk by Matt Riddulph was great, both in content and presentation. Whether you knew what was going on or not, the speech was easy to listen to.
I missed the second half of “Rails Deployment” by Ezra Zygmuntowicz (last in the phone book, as he put it) but enjoyed Jason Kunesh’s topic of universal design. Jason made point of the disabilities many internet users have and how to create accessible, useable apps and websites. A lot of visually impaired web users surf with the aid of screen readers, dishing out site content at an incredible 300-400 words per minute! Jason played a clip at 100 and it sounded like jibberish to me.
Lastly, David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Rails, delivered a lengthy keynote to end the night. While he may look like he’s 19, he knows his stuff. A very inspirational speech, DHH is a comfortable presenter with the brains to back it up.
