Ethical Software by Alex Bunardzic

This is definitely the post with most tags in my entire blog (so far). Tagged with no less than 8 tags (Zen, Ruby on Rails, Art, End-user experience, Simplicity, Smart servant, Music, Software), it is a telling sign of how complex the conference has been.

Cramming 15 speakers in two days proved to be a bit of a stretch. Nathan (the CoR organizer) took the calculated risk, and I think it paid handsomely.

Speaking of Nathan, who is a friend and a colleague of mine, let me now tip my hat off to what he did here. David Hansson and Matz started the revolution, and Nathan helped articulate the first wave of attack.

Makes Me Proud

Standing in front of a pretty full room (about 250 people in my optimistic estimation), getting ready to deliver my talk, I felt the wave of gratitude and elation coming all over me. I felt proud to be among the people who had joined this revolution, and I felt gratitude to be given a chance to deliver the first blow to the bureaucratic way of pushing software on people.

Some of the Best People

The nicest impression I took from this conference is David Hansson himself. I was overjoyed, upon finally meeting the mastermind behind the nasty subversion known as Rails, to see an incredibly intelligent, incredibly nice person standing before me. None of that misconception of him being arrogant and all that. Quite the reverse, here is a person who is, if anything, humble, composed, calm, hard working, and a visionary to boot. David, it was a genuine pleasure meeting you.

Even though I had a huge privilege to rub shoulders with many of the amazing presenters, some of the best people I’ve meet during the conference were among the attendees. I was inundated the whole second day of the conference with people who sought after me and who wanted to thank me for my presentation, that occurred the previous night. I was mesmerized by the level of sophistication these people brought to our very intense and deep conversations.

Sadly, this state of affairs prevented me from experiencing many of the presentations I was dying to see, but still it was worth it. I believe I’ll still be able to somewhat recapture the spirit and the intent of the presentations I’ve missed by downloading the slides and possibly even by reading transcripts or viewing the video.

The Wealth

The wealth of material presented to me by the software developers who sought out my company and poured their hearts and minds during discussing things with me is simply overwhelming. In the span of only one day, I’ve learned more than I usually do in the course of three months of intense study.

I’d like to give here a big, heartfelt thanks to all the people who were generous enough to devote so much of their best efforts to help further the ideas and visions I’ve unveiled during my presentation. I am deeply impressed by your sophistication and by your vision and your undying passion to go the extra mile. I will dedicate the stream of my upcoming posts to all of you, and will try to credit, from memory, all of the wonderful ideas you’ve pleasantly surprised me with.

For all of you reading this, who are interested in visiting the forefront of the edgy software development, I invite you to join the embarrassment of the riches that I was so fortunate to be showered with yesterday. I will try and reproduce the conversations that transpired, in the hope that that’ll create the momentum for truly revolutionary changes in the field of software development.