Last week, I got back from my first RailsConf! I can’t believe how many people I met and talked to. I will do a day by day breakdown, recalling as best I can the people that I met.

Day 1: Monday, April 23

At breakfast, I met with Gavin Stark and one of his colleagues, both from realdigitalmedia.com. I had a great time chatting about all sorts of things, including OSS and patent trolling.

I spent most of this day attending talks, but met some “celebrities,” including Rich Hickey, DHH, Sven Fuchs, James Edward Gray II, and Chad Fowler. I did not have as much of a conversation with all of them as I should have, but I hope to rectify that at the next opportunity.

For dinner, I went with the members of a team that I have worked with at Groupon.

Day 2: Tuesday, April 24

I went to #codeandcoffee: RailsConf 2012 Edition. While there was only a handful of us, and we were all from Groupon, we still had a great time and were ready for the conference afterwards.

Today was crazy. I met Xavier Shay, Aaron Patterson, Avdi Grimm, and all of this year’s Ruby Heroes. I went to lunch with Aaron Bedra, Ryan Bigg, Scott Ford, and Engineers from Railsdogs.

In the afternoon, I spent time at the Heroku booth chatting with their engineers, including Terence Lee. I also met Yehuda Katz there as well. It was amazing to be able to ask the people who maintain so many projects that we all use what they felt about their projects.

I went to dinner with Jim Wierich, Mike Clark, and Nicole Clark. It was really nice to have a quiet dinner with great conversation. I am sure that conference parties are fun, but I really enjoyed meeting the Clarks and I always enjoy the time I spend with Jim.

After getting back, I met up with Nick and Amanda Quaranto, Jon Yurek, and Gabe Berke-Williams. We played some card games. Did I mention that I love our community? The wide array of interests that we all have makes events like this wonderful.

Day 3: Wednesday, April 25

At breakfast, I met Elise, one of the EngineYard marketing folks. She has a degree in nueroscience, and I really enjoyed hearing what her perspective is on the community.

Back at the conference center, I met Matthew, one of the Hashrocket Rocketeers, and was interviewed, regarding my open source project Githubris.

Conclusion

RAILSCONF ROCKS! Seriously, I would encourage anyone to go. I hope that I can go again next year. I want to thank Groupon for making it possible for me to be there.