Rails World 2024

I had the privilege to attend and speak at Rails World 2024 in Toronto.

The bar was pretty high for the conference after the amazing one in Amsterdam last year, but in my opinion, this event was even better than that one.

But let’s start at the beginning. I spent 2 days at home after FriendlyRb and Romania is +3 hours from me, so I was pretty jetlagged while being there, but I was adjusting to the timezone by the end. When I got home, I started to shift back to my own timezone, but then I went to Toronto and that’s -4 hours, so I became really messed up in my head. I am lucky to have a ~6 hours direct flight to Toronto, so the trip was pretty short. Getting through the border was smoothless, and the Rails Foundation organized my transport from the airport to the hotel.

This was my first time on the American continent and even though Canada is not the US, I immediately noticed that everything is bigger there than in Europe. The car for the transfer was massive. I drive a 7 seater at home and everyone tells me how big my car is, but compared to the SUVs in Toronto, it is small :) And the buildings… they were also massive.

Toronto didn’t feel overpopulated at all. The streets were clean and the city was very walkable (I walked 24km on my first day). Since weed is legal there, most of the time the streets smelled like weed. I’ve seen a few crazy people on the streets, but not more than in the average European city.

On my first day, I woke up at 3AM local time, worked on my talk a little, then I went for a stroll. A little later, I met my fellow This Week in Rails editor Wojciech and we had a nice walk to the venue to help packing the swag bags. They were just preparing the venue, but it was already obvious that it was a great choice for the event. It was huge and very unique as it used to be a brick factory. While packing the swag bags, we met Erich, who lives in Toronto and Akhil(from the Rails issues team), and once we were done, we decided to have lunch as a group. Erich was an amazing guide to the city and we had great food.

Later on we went to the early registration and the real fun started. I met old friends, some online friends I’ve seen the first time in person and new friends. In the evening, we had a speakers dinner and I had the opportunity to chat with Matz. He is an amazing person. Of course I took the opportunity to ask him about the future of types in Ruby and he told me that we already have them in Ruby(duck-typing) and he is happy with that. I am glad, because one of the reasons I love Ruby is duck-typing.

The next day, but I woke up at 5AM and I decided to walk to the venue rather than using the bus from the hotel. The finished venue looked amazing and I met even more of my Ruby friends. The opening keynote from David was great and inspiring as usual. Rails 8 (the #NOBUILD, #NOPAAS framework) was released at the end of the keynote and it has a lot of goodies(Authentication, Propshaft, Solid Trifecta, Thruster and Kamal 2). He also mentioned a few things planned for 8.1(Action Notifier, Active Record Search and House). After the keynote I did my recon at stage 2 and between chatting to folks, I started to get mentally prepared for my talk. I went to see the talk before mine and I happily concluded that people are really interested in Kamal as half of the seats were empty, due to the concurrent talk about Kamal on stage one. My concurrent talk was also about Kamal, so I assumed it will be a small crowd so there won’t be much pressure on me. Oh boy, was I wrong? Right before I stepped on the stage, a big crowd started to form and the nerves kicked in. I even told Jim Remsik that this is the last time I submitted a talk :D. Then I stepped on the stage and the nerves gone immediately. I enjoyed my time and I had a feeling the audiance enjoyed it too. Since I spoke way faster than I should’ve, there was some time left at the end and we did a little Q&A. I got really good questions and loved the interaction with the people. When I stepped off the stage I felt like I am high and I realized that I loved the experience and want to do it again! Overall, I think I did good, but there is plenty of room for improvement in my public speaking. Thanks for everyone who attended the talk, asked questions and gave me feedback afterwards.

With the pressure off, I was able to start to enjoy the conference even more. I checked out the sponsor booths and chatted a lot with folks. In the evening, I ended up at a party organized by Irina from Evil Martians and sponsored by the Whop guys. I had great conversations and a good time.

The second day, I still woke up at 5 and since I didn’t have much to do, after getting myself ready, I walked to the venue again and I walked in the park around it a little. It was very beautiful. Then I met Ahmed and we had a really good conversation.

The day went by fast with chatting a lot and attending a few talks. Just to name two, Ridhwana Khan from the Rails documentation team gave a great talk about metaprogramming in Rails, and Julia from Harvest about testing integrations in Rails apps.

The day was concluded by Aaron’s closing keynote and as usual, it was a mixture of tech and comedy and was the cherry on top.

Then we headed to the Shopify headquarters for the closing party. The building was amazing and I had a great time. Good food, good drinks, games and great company.

When the party ended we ended up with a little group in a night club for a while. The Ruby folks know how to party! But since I am getting old, I called it a night somewhat early.

On Saturday, I finally woke up at a more sensible local time at 6AM and after getting myself ready and checking out of the hotel, I went to spend the rest of the day with a group of attendees at Andrian’s and Yaro’s apartment. It sucked when I had to leave for the airport, because I had such a great time during the few days of the conference.

To conclude, I had an amazing time, amazing conversations and I once again realised how much I love this community. The only downside is that I was unable to talk to a lot of folks I was intended to and some of the conversations were cut short, but to all of those folks, we will continue next time!

And as I mentioned in my FriendlyRb summary, go to conferences, build connections, share ideas and experiences.

Huge thanks to the organizing team and hopefully see you there next year in Amsterdam!