Everything In Particular

I mentioned in my last post that the thing I learned the most from at BarCampRDU was leading a session. The session was simply titled Intro to Ruby on Rails. Here’s the thing, and I think Ryan Daigle summed it up nicely: leading a session is different than giving a presentation. I chose to give a presentation and would have been better off leading a session.

The difference is in the level of interactivity, and it’s better for the audience to get them more involved. Leading a session takes more preparation and agility than giving a presentation, because when you are letting the audience direct the content somewhat, you never know where the discussion may lead, and thus, where the boundaries of your knowledge might be reached.

For example, the presentation I gave was originally intended for Python developers who had limited or no exposure to Rails. During one of the morning sessions, I changed it around to be a more general Rails introduction. When I was talking about Ruby blocks and the yield keyword, a Python programmer piped up and said, “Python has yield.” I doubted her, but I looked it up later and she was absolutely right. The Python code base I work with on a daily basis is fairly old-school and generators, which use the yield keyword, didn’t hit Python for real until 2.3, but that’s the subject of another post. I was also clued into Python’s enumerate, which is similar to Ruby’s each_with_index. So, ironically, the boundaries of my Python knowledge were exposed. Good for me, bad for the session.

The other lesson my session experience hammered home was that you never give a slide presentation when a demo would be more appropriate. When the subject of a demo was brought up, everyone wanted to see one. I raced through the slides then got about ten minutes into a demo that was really designed to take about an hour. I ended up finishing the demo with two other people during the hour slotted for the next session. This informal demo was easily the best part of my session. So, demos good, slides bad, let the audience in. I will be better prepared next time.

A funny aside

I was taking notes during the day. Here is one of the sections from my notes:

Cool things that happened before the sessions:

• I met Andy Hunt
• A lot of folks proposed talks, more than I expected
• I got the balls up to propose a talk

During the Rails demo, while I was in the terminal, one of the above lines of text ended up getting inexplicably pasted into the terminal session. I’ll give you one guess as to which one.

BarcampRDU was today. I met some cool and interesting folks and just had a great time. The best experience, and the thing that taught me the most, was leading a session on Rails. There’s lots more I want to blog about Barcamp, but man I’m beat. I do want to say kudos to Fred Stutzman and the entire organizing committee, the sponsors, and volunteers. I think we can all safely say that the event was an unqualified success. More details to come…

I’ll be taking notes and blogging about BarCamp more extensively, but thought I’d start with a little note about the pre-event party at Tyler’s Taproom.

The Dead Kennedys were blaring when I walked in. As I stood in line for food the Sex Pistols came on. I can’t decide whether I feel old or hip when 70s and 80s punk comes on in a public place. I mean, I still listen to the stuff sometimes, but I think the retro chic is lost on me. My first Sex Pistols record was a third generation copy of a cassette, so when Anarchy In the UK comes on, that’s what I think of, that old cassette with my handwriting on it. And, yes, I still call them “records.”

I went with Bart and ended up hanging out with Bart and Jared for most of the evening. We’ve all been programmers in the Triangle for a while and it turns out we have similar experiences and mutual friends. So it was basically a night of hanging out, talking with good folks, and discovering a couple new beers. That’s a win in my book.

And, oh yeah, we went outside to escape the loud music, so I guess I am old, and probably not so hip. :)