FriendlyRb 2024 Recap

I want to put down my thoughst about FriendlyRb while they are fresh.

If you haven’t heard about it, FriendlyRb is a small conference in Bucharest, Romania. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my trip last year, so I missed the first edition, but this year I made it to the conference and It was a blast for me.

I met some old and a lot of new Ruby friends. And even though we don’t agree on everything(types vs no types, minitest vs rspec :D), we’ve put aside our differences and shared the love of Ruby and Rails.

The organizing team did an amazing job. Everything was very smooth, we had plenty of time to socialize, and what I really loved was the guided tours and the Friday trip to learn more about the country and the culture. When I go to conferences, I never explore the surroundings, because I want to spend time with the conference folks, but this time, I was able to do the two at the same time.

I have a little story about Romanians. The train was delayed on Friday, so we ended up on another one but we couldn’t sit. We were chatting with the guys about being a little hungry, and hoping to be able to get a bite once we reach Busteni. A few minutes later a lady sitting close to us, offered us pretzels. She said that she overheard that we are hungry and she would like us to eat some. How amazing is that? The whole country was friendly, not just the conference attendees.

The after-party was great, good food, good drinks(Adrian’s dad’s liquor was very tasty), great chats!

The talks were also great, I hope the crowd enjoyed mine as well. The feedback I got was good, but since they are friendly people, maybe they just didn’t want to tell me the truth :) Someone even told me that they found a vulnerabilitiy in their app after listening to my talk. That makes me very happy.

I am grateful to the sponsors for taking off the financial stress from the shoulders of the organizing team, and to show their support for the community. To me it is obvious that Ruby and Rails has a bright future in Europe too.

And this conference again reminded me how cool the community is in person, and how much gets lost in online communication. It is so much better to discuss controversial topics in person and it feels like everyone is more willing to agree to disagree in person than online.

To sum it up, I had a great time and hopefully there will be a next edition next year and unless something comes up, I will surely attend!

And don’t forget, a tide lifts up all the boats, let’s support each other and grow stronger together, we will all benefit from a strong Ruby scene in the future. Go to conferences, build connections, share ideas and experiences.

Huge thanks to the organizing team and hopefully see you there next year! The next stop is Rails World in Toronto next week!