Jared Jared Jared!

It's like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, but it's Jared, Jared, Jared (Richardson) that is.

So I was complaining about how white RubyRx is, but I did observe someone apparently Indian American (female) and there was a DZone rep that was Asian American.

Let me flip this and say that, otherwise, the conference is nice and cozy. This is one of the smaller conferences with two simultaneous talks rather than four simultaneous talks. The number of attendees is maybe under 100. The talks have been, for the most part, pretty good, as can be expected from a NFJS production (many speakers who speak here speak on the No Fluff Just Stuff circuit).

I was making an analogy to someone in the hallway. I like tennis, perhaps more than I like coding (I'm almost sure of it). If you're trying to sell a tennis enthusiast a product, it can't be introductory material. Novices in tennis typically learn from a friend who teaches them or perhaps take a lesson. However, tennis is suitably expensive that most people don't take that many lessons.

However, it's hard for a complete beginner to be really enthusiastic. Usually, you need to be about 3.0 on the NTRP ranking which means you're better than most of the weekend hackers that play once in a while, but you're not fantastic. You still have plenty of issues. These folks are looking to get better, and so you pitch to them.

Conferences are roughly aimed somewhere at a 3.5 or so in the tennis world (the scale goes to 7.0 and a 5.0 can play college tennis at a reasonably high level). The average person has had to pay something to attend the conference (or if their company has paid for it, all the better). I'm the rare interloper who doesn't code Ruby or Rails regularly (or even irregularly). I go because I think I should go, but that's like saying I'm dieting but cheating by eating meals I don't count.

You wouldn't expect complete beginners to show up to this conference. It's too expensive for that. They should get a book instead and get started in that fashion.

The good news is it isn't an academic conference where people of dubious presentation skills are presenting stuff they have spent hundreds of hours thinking very hard about and present it as if you had spent that many hours on it too because they don't have any idea how to simplify what they are thinking.

Ruby conferences are generally pretty high quality. Even when they aren't talking about technical subjects (such as freelancing of fear of programming), the quality is still very good.

And of course, Jared is a nice guy!

(So when can I expect my payment, Jared?)

Oh I have to thank Jared for his book that I won in a raffle. I didn't even know he authored the book, so it was destiny!