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I went to Railscamp, and all I got was a lousy t-shirt
How to improve Railscamp
Andrew GrimmUniversity of New South Wales
Aim of talk
To vaguely summarize current (conflicting) thoughts about improving Railscamp
Speech bubbles represent heckling (zombie-chaser, zombie-heckler, hahahaha...) of new suggestions (some of them quotes)
These proposals aren't half bad!No, they're ALL bad!
Reasons for attending Railscamp
Boozecamp: A weekend away, werewolf, poker, Guitar Hero, stupid stunts, and beer
SmallTalkcamp: Chat with like-minded people, hear about the newest technologies
Rubycamp: Learning about ruby and Rails
Our beer meetup group has a Rails problem!Railscamp? I thought thiswas for Javascript!
John West theory
Rejecting people who are being sent
in a group by a corporation is ok
Rejecting people who aren't already part of RORO is ok
People who aren't activein the community won't knowabout the camp or when tobuy tickets. And that's fine...
Is there a shortage of tickets?
Railscamp Canberra sold out within 4 hours of opening
If you joined RORO after they went on sale, you're SOL until the following oneUnless you get a ticket from someone dropping out
Growing the community includingmore people in Railscamp
How to deal with the shortage
Increase Railscamp size
More frequent Railscamps
Region-based Railscamps
Start having Rails conferences
Lotteries for tickets
Ticket quotas for newbies
Required breaks
Alternative topic camps
No booze
Increase Railscamp size
Means not everyone knows everyone
Sufficiently large camp grounds may not exist
Hiring out a hotel might work, but then it'd be more of a conference
More frequent Railscamps
Make each Railscamp less special
Region-based Railscamps
Some states may be too small for their own camp
Merging states together (Barassi Line) might work better
Would mean not meeting up with people you know
Mitosis doesn't work with communities.
Start having Rails conferences
Australia has the most Railscamps, and yet has never had a conferenceAre Aussies a bunch of pissheads?
Conference requires Big Deposit Up Front
Pay for speakers from overseas
Wouldn't have Guitar Hero
Lottories for tickets
Allow people to reserve single or group tickets for a couple of weeks, and then determine at random who comesMeans people missing out
Quotas
Reserve a number of tickets for first or second-timers, or those intending to mentor
Don't sell all tickets at once, but have two rounds of selling
Required breaks
Have to give Railscamp a miss if you've been to the previous two, unless you're organizing it
I keep missing Railscamp!Me too, but my aim is improving!
Alternative topic camps
Maybe we need a miscellaneous camp
No booze
Make Railscamp's appeal more selective
Crazy talk territory!
Making Railscamp affordable for all?
Many people can easily afford railscamp, but not everyoneSome choose camping over cabins to save money
Subsidize students, unemployed, first-timers?
Corporate sponsorship could payBanners out, but stubbies and acknowledgement ok
Making Railscamp more productive
Pitch sessions
Multiple talk venues
Get people mingling
Software for group projects
Internet ban
New Zealand
Railscamp? Productive?Isn't that what conferencesand hack nights are for?
Pitch sessions
Already used at hack nights
Describe group projects
Multiple talk venues
Talks going over time are a fact of life
Mainly a problem if the schedule is so jam-packed it forces other talks to be late
Multiple talk venues avoid tight scheduling
Epic LOLs when they happen to be management methodology talks
Get people mingling
People shouldn't work on their own stuff solo?People can casually join in on solo projects
Werewolf and Guitar Hero are good at this?Even though the former seems anti-social
Werewolf criticised as cliquey
Urban Terror and other first-person shooters aren't good, because they're not face to face?Disagreement on this too
Software for group projects
Let's do stuff
What
Boredjour
Somewhat under-utilised?
Internet ban
Is it by design or by necessity?
Is it meaningful to partially ban the internet?
No, but is that stoppingthe government?
New Zealand
Let them manage their own Railscamps, even if Aussies attend
No need for themto be sheepish about it!
Will someone please think of the newbies?
Do we need to reach out to newbies?
Programming activities for Railscamp
Appropriate talk topics
Yes, we've got themin our sights!
Do we need to reach out to newbies?
Unlike RORO meetups, Railscamp attendees are committed to Rails/ruby
Railscamp rocks as-is, and if we try to make it super-approachable for new attendees we'll probably just end up gimping it.
Programming activities for Railscamp
Projects with instant gratification
Work better when installation done beforehand
Brains
RubyWarrior
Triaged Rails bug tickets
Appropriate talk topics
Some RORO regulars feel they can only talk on ever more advanced topics
Talking about the advantages and disadvantages of competing gems (eg authentication) would be good
Lightning talks on useful gems people have come across
Bring back the analog blog!
Conclusion
A few changes are generally seen as good, but most would be controversial