On the recent EuRuKo
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Get the course for $99EuRuKo happened this week in Brno and even though I was planning to be there, I didn’t go at the end, and I’d like to explain why.
But before I start the explanation, I would like to make it clear that I am a human and I have flaws. Maybe even more than others. Also, english is not my first language, so if you read something from me that upsets you, ask for clarification of what I meant, it might be just a language barrier issue.
Now let’s get onto the EuRuKo story…
Beginning of August, we had a few dramas in the Rails community and one of them involved me. I believe some people painted a dishonest picture of me, and this article should set some things straight and show my side of the story.
First of all, let me give you some background. DHH posted an article about deporting the gypsy people camping and shitting in the public parks of Copenhagen, making the park unhospitable to the residents of the city. As usual, some people immediately jumped to the conclusion and said he is a nazi, etc.
I work for the company that organized this years EuRuKo. As part of my job, I helped to promote the event on various social media platforms. But to be honest, I promote all of the Ruby conferences I see on Twitter, because I think we should have more community events and people should go to more conferences, because it is fun, and can help with career development. Also, the more successful events, the stronger and bigger the community becomes and a tide lifts all the boats, so we will all benefit from that. To get back to the point, I went to Bluesky to like and share the post about the recent EuRuKo update, and unfortunately, right on the top of my feed I’ve seen a post stating that DHH wants to exterminate people. I posted a not so greatly worded reply, questioning this claim(I didn’t see this in the post) and sharing my opinion about people shitting in a park. This is my personal opinion, based on my lived experiences. I grew up with gypsy people and call me whatever you want, I don’t have pleasent memories of most of them. Does this mean I would like to exterminate all of them? Of course not, I like to assess everyone as an individual, but if they are making life unpleasant for the majority somewhere, I think they should either start to integrate or get fined, put into prison and if they are not citizens, deport back to their country of origin. This is my opinion, feel free to disagree with it and please, convince me that I am wrong if your experiences are different from mine.
Of course I never got a reply to my question about the extermination claim, but I was called a racist, a bigot, a little bitch and whatnot. They even ended up saying that the world would be a better place without me and when I posted about that, they doubled down and said they would be happy to tell my kids I was a piece of shit, if I would commit suicide. Unfortunately, we lost people from the community to suicide and I find it extremely disturbing that somone would encourage anyone online to kill themselves due to a disagreement. If this happens to someone in a weak moment, it can lead to irreversible damage to many people’s lifes. We can surely do better than this.
Now I totally understand if someone misunderstood what I meant by that post. As I said, it was not well worded, but if I read something like that from someone, I usually start a discussion because a short form post can be easily misunderstood and in my opinion the goal of twitter and such is to have a conversation, not to preach the choir.
All of this wouldn’t bother me at all, but then these folks started to call out Ventrata, EuRuKo and even Tropical On Rails about being associated with me. They sent emails to Ventrata and got a reply from the CEO that they didn’t like, but I think nothing would’ve satisfied them. I don’t want to share any details of the internal discussion about this at the company, but since they were trying to damage the reputation of the company and the event by using me, I immediately offered my resignation and to step away from the event completely, if they think that would help the situation. They didn’t want that. Then I’ve been told one of the MC’s for the event rejected to be at the event, even if I am removed from it. This MC is Carmen Huidobro. She posted about all of this online, so I am not sharing anything private. She said she would feel unsafe at the event due to my comment. Now Carmen, if you are reading this, you were sitting next to me at a speakers dinner last year, with your wife. I believe we had a friendly conversation there and I doubt I made anyone feel unsafe, so I have no idea why you say this. If someone would be disrespectful or violent towards anyone(especially a woman) at an event, I would be probably the first to step in and protect that person, because I believe that, even if you have a disagreement, you should be able to handle that in a civilized manner. I’ve been to many events and I am absolutely sure that I didn’t make anyone feel not welcomed or not respected, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, sexuality, opinion on tech and whatnot. And actually, when you were brought up as a potential MC and I was asked for my opinion, I said you would be a perfect fit, based on my experience, you are very energetic and that’s a good trait for an MC.
Besides Carmen, a person doing a workshop also wanted to retract his workshop from the
conference, because of me. He claimed that I am lying about not being an organizer
of EuRuKo and he claimed that I am advocating for ethnic cleansing. It is worth
nothing that, this person and I had a disagreement on something last year and I
assume he has some hard feelings towards me due to that, and likely that has
something to do with his actions. But I wasn’t lying though, I said this a few
times even before this drama: I am not an organizer of EuRuKo. I work for the
company organizing it, and I help where I can, but I am not doing much, the
credit goes to others. In my opinion, if you are paid to work on something, that
thing belongs to whoever foots the bill.
And I definitely don’t advocate for ethnic cleansing, that would be actual a
crime, so if he believes so and have proof that would stand in court, he can
file charges against me.
Due to all of the above, I stopped helping with the conference and the decision was made to not even attend, and the workshop person was happy and could hold his workshop. Which is fine by me, I have pretty low ego, I just wanted the conference to be a success. And I don’t mind if people attack me and want me to lose my job, but I would appreciate if they wouldn’t try to ruin a conference because they don’t like me, and they think I am the one organizing it.
And here is something that really bothers me. As I mentioned, I promote all Ruby conferences I come across, regardless of who organizes them, because I want a strong community. I would’ve promoted EuRuKo(just like I did last year) even if I would’ve not worked for the organizers. Now the 2 people that complained about me, didn’t really promote the event. Carmen made a single post “Oh, it is me” about the announcement of her being an MC and then nothing, until she could post about her decision to not be an MC. The workshop person had zero posts about doing the workshop or attending the event. They were fast to jump on the opportunity to ruin the event, but didn’t bother much to help to make it a success.
This year is tough for conferences and I think we all should do our best to make them all as successful as possible, beause that keeps growing the community and we can share the love of Ruby with even more people, regardless of our differences. I know ticket’s to EuRuKo were more expensive than last year, but that’s not to make it profitable, just to have a chance to even cover the costs. Running a conference without losing money is a pretty big challenge unfortunately, and I highly recommend to read the recently published guide from Ruby Events about it.
And to get back to the attacks against me. I was a contractor the last couple of years and I was always speaking out online about these things. I got many DMs every time from people saying they agree with me, but they don’t want to state that publicly, because they are scared of the repercussions. I didn’t even realize it until now what they meant. Since nobody knew who I contract for and those were short engagegemts anyways, it wasn’t possible to report me to my employer and try to cause damage to me. Once you work for a company and that’s public knowledge, some people believe you are representing the company 24/7 and whatever you say can be turned against the company to cause reputational damage. I think this is pretty scary, because you should have the right to state your opinions outside of work, without fear of losing your job(this is why I don’t report the people that said the world would be a better place without me). And even if it is just a loud minority and your managers are for free speech, surely they wouln’t want to deal with this and will ask you to think before you post next time. Which will basically silence you and we will end up with the same situation we had in the past and the creator of Rails will be uninvited from a conference, even though the majority of the community would love to hear his keynote, but nobody dares to speak up.
I don’t really have a closing for this, so let me just repeat myself. Please go to conferences and to as many conferences as you can. They are all fun and attending will likely help with your career. Also, please conversate with people online. If you feel that someone offended you, ask them if they meant what you understood from their post.
Also, if someone says the world would be a better place without you, that’s not true. All lifes matter and if you struggle, reach out to someone for help. Life is rough sometimes, but beatiful at the same time, it is foolish to shorten it.
I intentionally didn’t publish this before the conference to not strip more drama and make sure that it doesn’t hurt the ticket sales, although looking at what’s happening around the attacks againts Omarchy(https://x.com/dhh/status/2099048362922172444), maybe I should’ve and it would’ve helped the event. But that’s water under the bridge now, I hope to see you at the next conference I attend!
