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