XO Ruby is hitting the road (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Jim Remsik has lived on the bleeding edge (but also the heart’s center) of the Ruby world for decades. This fall, he’s organizing six (yes, SIX) XO Ruby confs all around the United States.

On this episode, Jim joins us to reminisce about the early days of Ruby and Rails, share what he’s learned from so many years of organizing events, and invite all of us to join him on his upcoming 7500 mile road trip.

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Featuring:

• Jim Remsik – GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Hashrocket
• XO Ruby

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Chapter

1. Welcome to The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Depot (00:01:08)

https://depot.dev

3. Start the show! (00:03:20)

4. Hashrocket days (00:04:44)

5. Still doing Ruby (00:14:13)

6. Modern meetups (00:17:53)

7. The Austin event (00:21:52)

8. Why do these events? (00:25:50)

9. Landing sponsors (00:30:10)

10. Cross promo (00:33:57)

11. Sponsor: CodeRabbit (00:34:55)

https://www.coderabbit.ai

12. The challenge of six (00:37:35)

13. The cadence (00:39:13)

14. Confreaks! (00:41:42)

15. Adam does Austin (00:44:23)

16. Sponsor: Miro (00:46:50)

https://miro.com

17. How Jim runs events (00:48:00)

18. LessConf learnings (00:53:19)

19. Adam does burritos (00:55:40)

20. "Kill" a hot dog (00:56:33)

21. Pretty much tomorrow (00:58:11)

22. All the locales (01:00:38)

23. Road trip! (01:01:27)

24. Devs are scattered (01:02:27)

25. Cross posting everywhere (01:06:41)

26. What success looks like (01:07:48)

27. Contracting hard times (01:11:12)

28. Live show learnings (01:16:06)

29. Moar live shows?! (01:18:52)

30. Travel rejuvinates? (01:20:38)

31. It's gonna work out (01:24:02)

32. Negotiating future cities (01:25:08)

33. Other Ruby confs (01:25:54)

34. Adam calls one out (01:27:42)

35. Wrapping up (01:29:17)

36. Closing thoughts (01:30:21)

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