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More on Railsconf
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Sorry, I didn't mean to disappear like that ^^;. It be old news now, but I'll proceed where I left off anyway.
Through a very entertaining comparison of the lives of insiders and outsiders in an industry, Paul Graham's keynote entitled "The Power of the Marginal" totally changed the way I think about big and small companies. Somehow I never really thought about the advantages of joining or starting an obscure little business. It's more than just the advantages, though; I've realized that it's the mindset of a company that maintains a sense of freedom, appreciates its limitations, doesn't fear making mistakes, and spends its resources doing rather than planning that can make it so much more successful. This last month, I've started to see how I could fit into it all - the one aspect that gets me the most excited is that the people who do this kind of thing tend to be very passionate and have a love for what they do.
Some of my favorite points from his speech:
- "Obscurity is like health food - unpleasant, perhaps, but good for you. Fame tends to be like alcohol produced by fermentation. When it reaches a certain concentration, it kills off the yeast that produced it."
- Skill, pride, and money anchor a company down to the status quo.
- Don't learn things from teachers who are bad at those things.
- Cheap and lightweight projects spread and grow faster, have more personality ("magic"), and are conducive to faster learning.
- The great power of the marginal: "Just try hacking something together." Decide what to do as you're doing it, learn as you go.
- Spend less time worrying about what to do and more time building stuff. (This really got me thinking since as a college student still figuring out her life, I am indeed worrying constantly about what to do ^^;.)
- You're on the right track when people complain that you're unqualified and that what you're doing is inappropriate.
The presentation is available for viewing online - I highly recommend it. You can also read the full text of the speech.
Side note: As I browsed Paul's site I found another speech I found equally fascinating, one I had heard about from talking to my new friend Casper at Railsconf: Hackers and Painters. It got me REAL pumped up about the way my life is progressing :D. Two parts I particularly liked explain how both art and programming should be about the ability to 'doodle around' in order to explore your options, and also about putting a lot of care into the details in order to end up with a fully beautiful product:
A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen. Static typing would be a fine idea if people actually did write programs the way they taught me to in college. But that's not how any of the hackers I know write programs. We need a language that lets us scribble and smudge and smear, not a language where you have to sit with a teacup of types balanced on your knee and make polite conversation with a strict old aunt of a compiler.
When people walk by the portrait of Ginevra de Benci, their attention is often immediately arrested by it, even before they look at the label and notice that it says Leonardo da Vinci. All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning, like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune. Great software, likewise, requires a fanatical devotion to beauty. If you look inside good software, you find that parts no one is ever supposed to see are beautiful too.
There's definitely a lot of things than can be hooked together here - visual art, programming, music, business, poetry, swordsmanship. I'll have to think about this more later.
Getting back to Railsconf - another talk that stood out to me was Nathaniel Talbott's keynote entitled Homesteading: A Thriver's Guide (a very nice summary can be found here.) Like Paul's speech, it was more of an inspirational thing, which compared the opportunities of homesteading in the late 1800's with those of entrepreneurialship today.
A question was asked: "Are we happy right now doing what we're doing?" He urged the audience to make the changes that would allow us to be able to say yes to that question.
Some other good thoughts:
- Our culture is obsessed with apparent security and the idea of landing a job at a place that would give a "cradle to grave" employment. Those days are gone, and the best course of action is to find work you love.
- If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, would you still be doing the same things today? How will you make it so that you're spending your life to the maximum and enjoying every moment of it?
- "Turn your dreams into code."
One interesting thing about the talk was the use of silent Bible verses on the screen to introduce each of his ten points. Nathaniel's faith came through in his speech and I really appreciate the extra depth that resulted.
Many other presentations had good stuff I could go on about, such as Scott Raymond's use of Vitruvius' architectural principles in relation to web development and David Demaree on user friendliness. The conversations I had between sessions were also very important and should be expounded upon. And the fun things, like that fantastic work of collaborative art in the hallway and the Why the Lucky Stiff concert :D. But I think I'm just going to conclude by mentioning the three revolutions pertaining to web development that have become very important to me because of this experience: that of technology, of business practices, and of gender.
Speaking of which, I'm so grateful for the incredible friendliness of the men at Railsconf. After my Intro to Lit class the other day, a woman in the construction industry shared that most of the men she meets at construction events have an attitude that tells her, "You don't belong here." I never got this feeling at Railsconf or any of the other male-dominated tech events I've been to; in fact, I get the impression that everybody supports the idea of more gender diversity in the business.
And now, a pic inspired by what I learned from Paul Graham :)
I'll write about the Getting Real principles, Barcamp, and the end of my CIS class next. Some time after that, I think a deeply personal, weepy post about turning 20 is in order. (AUGHHHHH!!!!)
