From: James Britt Date: 2006-07-30T01:44:32+09:00 Subject: Re: About last night ... Matt Pattison wrote: > > It is an interesting argument, that the Ruby community has grown, from > tiny to quite large (at least if you count the size of the hype), > *therefore* Ruby is now too big for a single one track conference, > *therefore* Ruby is too big for one unifying conference that brings > all the leading developers together, *therefore* we should instead > focus on lots of regional mini-conferences. I don't think I buy it. > Isn't the whole point of a conference to hear from and meet the > leading practitioners from around the world in that field, be exposed > to their ideas and learn about the cutting edge of the field? Isn't > the whole idea to get as many of these people together as possible in > the one place? This may be a hold-over from a pre-Internet world. I like the idea of a massive Ruby get-together; I'd like to go to a conference and have a reasonable chance of talking to whomever is doing anything in the Ruby universe. But I'm not a big fan of the Moscone Centre, Sun ONE sort of assemblies. I think the earlier Ruby conferences spoiled me. The best part of the conferences have been the hallway track. As the size of the crowd grows, they tend to become increasingly disjoint and (to some extent) cliquish. So you end up with satellite gatherings anyway. (Maybe. I'm also playing Devil's Advocate here.) But there is no longer (and hasn't been for a while) a need to get everyone in the same room to hear a talk. -- James Britt "Inside every large system there's a small system trying to get out". - Chet Hendrickson