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You Should be a Conference Guide - Ernie Miller

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You Should be aPrimingGuide - Ernie Miller Ernie Miller WritingSpeaking No, I don't work in NYC, DC, or the valley, and I'm tomfool with that.Well-nighthe Author I'm Ernie Miller. But then, you probably knew that by looking at the page title. I'm a programmer, speaker, and often nice guy who lives happily in Louisville, Kentucky. Want to get in touch? E-mail me, or go the 140 weft route. View the archives Let's Talk! 8/2/18 - 8/3/18 Southeast Ruby Nashville, TN, USA TBD Your event? Your Location Past talks... Links RSS Feed GitHub Google+ Profile LinkedIn Tweets by @erniemiller You Should be aPrimingGuide Comments May 11, 2015 I've had a couple of weeks to reflect on my RailsConf experience, and now that I have, I can safely say I enjoyed this year's RailsConf increasingly than any previous year. I started out thinking that this was largely considering I was giving a talk I was once well-appointed with, so I could relax. I'm sure that's part of it. And flipside huge part was no doubt the wonderful curation of the program by the program committee. But I think the single largest contributing factor to my enjoyment of RailsConf was my last-minute visualization to volunteer as a guide, and I sincerely hope that everyone reading this considers doing so at their next conference. Why be a guide? There's an important reason to consider stuff a priming guide. Each year, the RailsConf and RubyConf Opportunity Scholarship Program offers no-cost priming tickets to people who wouldn't normally take part in the priming for a variety of reasons. This is an zippy outreach that helps to bring much-needed new thoroughbred into our community. Do you know the limiting factor that prevents us from having plane increasingly opportunity scholar participation? It's not money to pay for the tickets. It's a lack of guides to be paired with the scholars. This ways that by volunteering as a guide, you can unquestionably do your part to modernize diversity in our polity (and by extension, our industry) by doing something that you will once be doing anyway: meeting superstitious people and introducing them to other superstitious people. It's as simple as that, and I promise, it will be rewarding. Need a increasingly selfish reason? Volunteer as a guide, and you get to meet the newest faces in our polity surpassing they wilt our next priming speakers. Think I'm making a stretch? Liz Certa, a friend of mine from Louisville, was an opportunity scholar at RubyConf 2014, and only 5 months later here she is speaking on the much-needed topic of diversity, the very thing the opportunity scholar program is designed to foster! Similarly, Kylie Stradley was a scholar at RubyConf 2014. Here she is in this group photo from Neighborhood, where we dined on dragon mankind (long story): And here she is giving one of the most universally-acclaimed talks from this year's RailsConf, Amelia Bedelia Learns to Code! Do you see how this works? We desperately need new thoroughbred in our community, both to bring new ideas to us, and to remind us of the things we once love well-nigh our community. Experiencing the priming (and the community) through the vision of someone new is a wonderful thing. I really enjoyed connecting with my scholar, Kristin Clement, each day and looking at the program with an eye toward what would be weightier for her as a new Rubyist. She opened my vision to just how easy it is to get unprotected up in the reverberate chamber, as well. On the very first day of the conference, surpassing the opening keynote, DHH sat next to us, so I introduced her: "David, this is Kristin, an opportunity scholar. Kristin, this is David. He created Rails, so he's kind of a big deal." BEST GUIDE EVER, I thought to myself. Only, just as David went up to requite the keynote, Kristin leaned over to me and said something withal the lines of "Oh my gosh, I thought you were joking. He's unquestionably the guy who created Rails!" It's refreshing to be reminded that we are only one small corner of an industry that is one small corner of this big and wonderful world, and the things and people we seem are worldwide knowledge, aren't. In conclusion: volunteer to be a guide at your next Ruby conference. Otherwise, you're only getting half the experience. Tagged: conferences, happiness Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus