I've been working with Ruby on Rails for a little over a year now and I LOVE it. I'm still amazed at how accessible the Ruby programming language is and in November 2018 I was lucky enough to attend RubyConf in LA. I was selected as an opportunity scholar, booked my flight, and landed in sunny California all within a matter of a couple months - and not even a year after I landed my first professional development job!
As a newbie to the coding community, I had heard of tech conferences, but had never experienced one first-hand. And, as someone who joined the software community as a front-end developer and huge javascript fan, having RubyConf be my first tech conference really intimidated me. I wasn't a Ruby expert, I had just started to dabble in it. All worries and doubts aside, I had a great time.
The RubyConf organizers did an incredible job with the Opportunity Scholarship program and I was quickly surrounded by like-minded, supportive individuals, some of whom were also experiencing their first tech conference. I was also paired with an incredibly smart mentor who answered any question I threw at him - no matter how dumb I thought the question was.
If there's one thing I took away from this experience, it's that it's okay to jump into new experiences without knowing everything ahead of time. In fact, it's so much FUN. I've been trying to get out of my own way when it comes to learning new things and my experience with RubyConf helped me to grow in ways I couldn't have predicted.
For anyone who is curious about RubyConf, tech conferences, or the opportunity scholar program at this conference, I created a list of key takeaways that I wanted to share:
This talk on meow-ifying songs was hilarious and gets at building an API to accomplish a goal
Fast forward five months later, I'm still diving into Ruby and I can see a twitter feed full of supportive and friendly faces from this conference. Like Matz showed during his talk about the power of community, I say we keep growing this group of Rubyists and help make the community the strongest it can be. 💪
-A ✨