It’s been a busy month, finishing up a big release at work and then escaping to hang out in the UK for a bit. Not that it’s an excuse to go dark, of course, but I have been preoccupied!

Scotland on Rails was a really excellent conference. A smallish regional event (even the regional conferences are getting big these days), it was a largely single-track event and had a very cohesive feel. I was lucky to be able to present twice during the conference; “Introduction to Ruby” for the charity workshop and a “Migrating to Ruby 1.9” plenary session (slides for both of these to be posted soon).

The conference covered a wide range of material; a good bit of pure Ruby (which always makes me happy), a suitable amount of Rails-centric sessions (it is Scotland on Rails, after all), and even an Erlang talk for good measure.

From an adoption standpoint, Scotland felt very US-in-late-2006 to me; a lot of individual passion and interest in the technology, a number of smaller companies actively using it, some large company/academic interest. It seems like there’s a lot of opportunity for growth, given the number of smart people around. It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming year or two; I definitely plan on returning to see for myself!

Thanks again to Alan, Paul, Abdel, and Graeme for all their hard work putting the conference together. This sort of thing is not a trivial undertaking!

To those I met over Ruby or a pint — let’s keep in touch!