I came back from RailsConf this year completely energized, there are just so many exciting things happening in the Rails community right now. There's simply no better time to be working with Rails! I'd been to the previous 3 RailsConfs, but this one really stood out for me. The event was punctuated by an outstanding closing keynote by the always energetic Gary Vaynerchuk!

Here are a few of my conference highlights:

Rails 3 and Ruby 1.9x

At RailsConf 2009, there was a lot of speculation that Rails3 would be released and, well, it wasn't. A year later though and it's here in a big way. The extra year of work that's gone into this milestone release is impressive. Rails3 is fast, beautifully organized and even more configurable than before. Most importantly though, it's incredibly well thought out and remains very opinionated! There's no question to me that it's production ready. We've kicked off our last two projects from the latest beta4 build and haven't come across any show stopping issues. 

MongoDB

I attended 4 or 5 sessions that focused on MongoDB or NoSQL databases at this year's conference. The benefits of moving to a non-relational (and non-traditional) database platform offered by the presenters were extremely compelling. I was particular impressed with MongoDB and the excellent MongoMapper library written by John Nunemaker. We've already identified a few upcoming projects where we'll be testing out Mongo. Stay tuned for the results...

Spree!

RailsConf 2010 was a coming-out party of sorts for Spree. There was so much more interest this year and it was wonderful to be a part of. We worked hard to get the new logo released in time for the event and it was really well received. There were Spree stickers and T-shirts visible everywhere!

It was great to be able to spend the week with a good chunk of the Spree team. There's a clear roadmap now to move Spree towards Rails3 and the team is hard at work on this goal. 

Gary V

A really amazing way to wrap up an amazing conference - Gary was on fire! I heard a lot of great quotes from a lot of great speakers that week, but I credit him with my favourite. Talking about his upcoming book (tentatively titled "The Thank You Economy"), he had this priceless insight:

"Consumers buy for different reasons, convenience is huge but giving a fuck is coming on strong!"

Way to go Gary and way to everyone that contributed to making this year's conference an overwhelming success. 

Bryan Mahoney - Bryan is Dynamo's Director of Technology, continually breaking new ground evaluating, developing and guiding our sites and webapps, & a pillar in Dynamo's client service front. Co-author of 2 early books on the integration of ColdFusion and Flash, he is an expert in database driven content management and design. Bryan now principally rides Ruby on Rails.