About a month ago, my tech lead asked if I’d ever had the chance to attend a Ruby conference. My answer was “not yet.” I had become comfortable in my remote role and had always been able to satisfy my curiosities through independent learning. Traveling to a conference never registered as critical to my growth as a developer.
He mentioned the annual Rocky Mountain Ruby conference, so I did some Googling. Turns out it was being hosted in a few weeks in Boulder, CO.
I like Boulder… I like programming… the tickets were affordable… I was intrigued. I brought it up to my wife to see if it fit our schedule, and she gave me the green light. Tickets bought, plane booked, let’s do this!
Travel
My wife and I decided to make a little vacation out of it and brought our youngest son along. We stayed at the Hotel Boulderado, within walking distance of the conference and plenty of restaurants, shops, and adventures in downtown Boulder.
The hotel was beautiful. It opened in 1909, and the architecture alone made the stay worth it.
Conference Day 1
The pre-conference jitters had set in, and I felt like I was back in college, throwing on my bookbag and walking to class. The conference was a few blocks away, so I popped in my AirPods and made the trek. I arrived early, and check-in was easy. I found my name tag and had my picture taken for my Ruby Passport!
I checked out the eTown facility and grabbed coffee and breakfast. I didn’t know anybody at the conference, so everyone was a new friend.
I eventually settled into my spot in the presentation hall and geared up for a day of learning.
Then my imposter syndrome kicked in. I’ve been a Ruby developer for nearly four years, but I haven’t spent much time with developers outside my own colleagues. I worried I didn’t belong, that everyone in attendance was Staff level or higher, and that the talks would be beyond my technical skills.
The conference hosts kicked off the event with a short presentation on the state of the programming industry and some ground rules. The code of conduct was simply:
TLDR: Don't be an asshole.
I got a good chuckle, and the rest of the presentation was phenomenal. It put me at ease immediately. I went from questioning whether I belonged to being excited to be surrounded by fellow programmers who share the same passion.
The rest of Day 1 didn’t disappoint:
- Kevin Murphy: InstiLLMent of Successful Practices in an Agentic World
- Sonja Peterson: Confident On-Call: Building Incident Response Skills as a Ruby Engineer
- Joel Hawksley: Beyond Senior: Consider the staff path!
- Nicolas Erlichman: Modeling Class Hierarchies in Active Record
- Fernando Perales: Slowly We Rot: signs of a Rails app’s decay
- Ben Reubenstein: Commit for Good
- Drew Bragg: Your own AI Agent in ~400 lines of Ruby
- Travis Turner: Got AI ontological shock? No worries: UFOs, Theology, and Psychedelics with Ruby-Colored Reverence
There were great takeaways from all of these, and I’ll go into more detail in future posts. Every talk left an impression on me. It was a cool feeling to be among the people building and contributing to the tools I use every day.
I walked out of eTown that evening feeling inspired and optimistic about my future as a Ruby developer. With LLMs becoming a prominent programming tool, our outlook is as unpredictable as it’s ever been, but spending the day in a room full of programmers gave me:
- Confidence in my career and skill set
- Inspiration to become a more regular open source contributor
- A whole bunch of new programming friends
Conference Day 2
I was definitely riding a high from Day 1. I showed up excited, and Day 2 was just as strong:
- Marco Roth: Herb in Rails 8.2: Your ERB views, now HTML-aware
- Andrea Fomera: High-Octane Onboarding: Ramping into a Rails Codebase with AI Agents
- Christina Seeman: Optimize Your Mindset (Without Overclocking)
- Giovanni Panasiti: Building an Agentic RAG in the Rails Way with RubyLLM
- Ifat Ribon: Fewer Tests, More Confidence: A Rails Testing Philosophy for the AI Era
- Alan Ridlehoover: Indispensable: What Human Programmers Can Learn from Human Computers
Plus a dozen or so lightning talks.
Boulder Itself
As I mentioned, my wife and I made the trip a bit of a vacation. We explored everything Pearl Street had to offer, hitting a few restaurants, coffee shops, and the legendary Boulder Book Store. The culinary highlights were the bruschetta at Positino and the pierogies at the Biergarten.
My wife was very excited about her new Birkenstock sandals, and I grabbed a few cold-weather shirts that will always tie back to this conference.
Also, Expedition Vehicles?
I’m a big fan of expedition vehicles. I have no real need for one, but I love the creativity manufacturers bring to maximizing small spaces. I converted a camper van during the pandemic and would love to do another as a shared experience with my kids.
On the way back to the airport, my wife and I stopped at Rossmönster for a quick tour of their HQ.
The two models that stood out to us were the Loft and the Baja. The shower implementation in the Loft was just chef’s kiss: a brilliant use of the entryway as a multi-use shower/mudroom/bathroom without sacrificing space to a single permanent use.
That said, the Baja was perfect. It had enough seating and sleeping for our family of five and felt like a fortress on wheels. Sitting in the rear dinette, taking in the 270-degree window view, was inspiring. We don’t plan on going off-grid for weeks at a time with the family, but it was fun to dream.
Conference Conclusions
As we boarded the plane back to Utah, I felt grateful for the experience. I met some great folks and gained a newfound confidence in my career and skill set. I enjoyed my time at Rocky Mountain Ruby 2026 and look forward to coming back.
For anyone on the fence about traveling to a conference, do it. It was well worth overcoming my stubbornness to step out of my comfort zone.