This past weekend (March 1st through 4th), I flew the red-eye from Toronto to München and from there to Wrocław. Only my flight to München was delayed, so I missed my connector and spent five hours in what amounts to a gigantic shopping mall waiting for the next flight with 30 minutes of free WiFi.¹

A story that civilized Europeans may find amusing: When I was finally boarding, there seemed to be two gates boarding at the same time: One had a big sign saying “Wrocław,” the other said “Breslau.” I was wondering why an otherwise organized airport would board two different flights at adjacent gates, and wouldn’t this lead to people ending up on the wrong plane by accident?

wroc_love.rb

I went to Wrocław to participate in wroc_love.rb. It’s tagline was “We want to confront ideas,” and I think they succeeded. I have great respect for the speakers who braved the lion’s jaws and spoke on “unpopular” subjects such as using JRuby to bridge Ruby code with industrial-strength Java code, the ways in which OOP “as she is spoke” might be deeply wrong, and even why the opening keynote’s ideas might not matter.

I don’t know much about organizing a conference, but I do know it’s the kind of thing I respect, coördinating the activities of hundreds or even thousands of people with a brutally hard deadline. And while pulling off this feat of meticulous detailed project management, the organizers also have to concoct an elixir of “chemistry” so that the event, no matter how big or how small, will be inspiring and memorable with just the right flavouring of practicality.

I had a small role in this, I gave the opening talk on the Saturday morning. I was told that the party the night before was a huge success, and I must say I admire the audience for their ability to sit still while Wrocław’s legendary dwarves were putting hammer to anvil inside their heads.

The audience were extremely polite and asked good, probing questions at the end. I went back to my hotel to catch a brief nap before the afternoon’s talks and I’m sorry to say I slept until 8PM.

I staggered into the venue the following afternoon, and by all accounts I missed an outstanding presentation by Jan Stępień titled “Embrace the Static. Cherish the Functional. Remain a Rubyist.” My loss.

I did catch up with some old friends on Sunday and really enjoyed talks by Bryan Helmkamp and the professorial Steve Klabnik. Bryan’s talk was about refactoring, and this is a special interest of mine.

Opinions about refactoring are obviously opinions about good code. After all, if you have code that works, refactoring it is really about the humans involved in programming, not the machines. So a talk about refactoring is in a way a talk about us as people and how we think and how we work. Bryan’s talk was well-conceived and delivered with gusto.

I also want to commend the lightning talk speakers. Lightning talks are tough! Really tough!! I found them all stimulating. I may try to give a five minute technical talk of my own some day, when I work up the courage.

a moment in real life

Several people said “hello,” and one stands out in my memory. I won’t name him, but I hope he’ll be fine with describing our chat a little. He had been out of programming for a decade and was getting back into it. He had flown in from England for the conference and to catch up on some family who live in the area.

Part of why he had come to wroc_love.rb was to take a dip in the Ruby world. I think that’s amazing. I know from experience that it’s hard to climb back on the horse after you’ve been away for a while. I have felt so lost and out-of-touch in similar circumstances. If I could have just one word for him, that word would be:

Bravo!

the evening of the last day

After the conference, a group of us went for pierogi and Yammer was kind enough to pick up the cheque. We agreed to meet-up at Bierhalle for the after-party, but Klabink and I did the Beatnik thing and found an amazing little coffeeshop called the Vinyl Café. They had a nice stereo system with turntable, and a huge collection of albums.

They invited us to select a record to play, and Steve was kind enough to let me put the Round Midnight soundtrack on while we sipped our drinks and talked of this and that. Or rather, we gossiped as humans are wont to do.

And then to Bierhalle, where I was treated to some very nice selections by a knowledgable comrade, Radoslaw Jedryszczak.² He really helped me appreciate what the March Beer and Wheat Beer had to offer, and I think I will try appreciating beer a little more now.

We left at 0030 hours or so, and I had a taxi to catch at 0430 hours for my flight home from Copernicus airport, so I said good night, returned to my room, and packed. Sixteen hours after saying good bye to wonderful people, it was wheels down in Toronto and I drove home carefully.

Today, I’m a mess but I can tell you that it was very worthwhile. I really loved my experience and I am grateful for the chance to be a part of it.

gratitude

Much respect to Jan Szumiec, Andrzej Krzywda, Mateusz Lenik, Michał Łomnicki, Paweł Pacana, Rafał Hirsz, Jan Szumiec, and Marcin Pietraszek. I said Jan Szumiec twice? That’s because I like Jan Szumiec.

Speaking of gratitude, BIG HUGE THANKS TO THE SPONSORS:

foot note: