The Ruby Gems Podcast
A Ruby Central podcast that takes an inside look at the people, projects, and progress shaping the Ruby community. Discover the gems in Ruby and connect to this vibrant group of amazing people.
The Ruby Gems Podcast
Rails World: Roy Tomeij and Ali Krynitsky
Roy Tomeij and Ali Krynitsky join us at Rails World Amsterdam to discuss the European Ruby community's revival and the growing landscape of Ruby conferences across the continent.
• Roy shares his Ruby journey starting in 2005 when his team switched from Java to Rails 0.12
• AppSignal co-founder explains their approach to community sponsorship beyond just recruitment
• Ali details how COVID decimated many Ruby meetups, creating the need for fresh initiatives
• Baltic Ruby conference travels to different locations to revitalize local Ruby communities
• Ruby Europe Foundation connects approximately 20 meetup organizers across European countries
• Both guests emphasize the need for new blood in the mature Ruby community
• RubyEvents.org serves as a central hub for all Ruby conference recordings
• Practical advice for new conference organizers: secure sponsors first and share the workload
• The "Euruko effect" - how hosting the traveling conference often inspires organizers to create their own events
• AppSignal's famous Stroopwafels have become a beloved Ruby community tradition
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Welcome to the Ruby Gems podcast. We are recording live at Railsworld in Amsterdam this episode, which is a bit of a change in scenery for us. Normally, marty and I are remote from each other over a Zoom call, and here we are across the table from each other this time, that's right.
Marty Haught:Yeah, this is fun. We are in the Buzzsprout recording booth. It's like a greenhouse and you can hear the sponsor hall behind us. I can look out and I see people milling about, chatting and having a good time. And here we are, we're going to record for the podcast. So we have two guests in the room with us right now. We have Roy and Ali. I'm going to have them both introduce themselves, starting with Roy.
Roy Tomeij:Good afternoon, thanks for having me. I'm Roy, roy Tomei with AppSignal, co-founder of AppSignal, but I've been using Ruby 4 for much longer, so a little bit of history, if you'll entertain me. In 2005, we were a Java shop and a shop I mean me and my co-founder tice right, just a few of us. And then I went on vacation for a week in may of 05 and I came back and he told me, like we have did cms, it's like I rewrote the thing in this new thing called rails in a week and it still works. It works even better.
Roy Tomeij:And there's this Danish guy who made this 30-minute video on building a blog. Go watch it. And I was like, yeah, sure, sounds like fun. And we just stopped using Java cold turkey and moved to Ruby on Rails. And the first apps we ran in production ran on Rails 0.12, which seemed like fun but in hindsight was a terrible idea because you couldn't host it anywhere. You had to set up your own hardware to be able to host it. So lots of headaches, but in the long run that paid off. Yeah, 2012.
David Hill:You're still using it more than a decade later, so it must have done something right.
Roy Tomeij:Yeah, More than two decades later even. Time flies, yeah, it's great and obviously at some point we figured out that SaaS is the way to go recurring revenue, build it once, sit on the beach, drink margaritas, make money. That's not how it works. Apparently, it's still putting in the hours and working, but Reels has been a huge help for us in making that happen.
Ali Krynitsky:All right, ali. Yeah, so let me jump in. Hi everyone, thanks for having me here. My name is Ali. I'm part of Rubiness company. This is a software company from UK, and we're doing a lot of things in the community. We're running our conference called Baltic Ruby. We are also part of the Ruby Europe Foundation and this is all about community and connecting folks around our passion to Rails and Ruby. And we're also part of VillasRB, of some local communities that are also supporting and bringing some energy there. So, yeah, that's basically what I'm right now in. So yeah, building community.
Marty Haught:Yeah, so I guess on that topic I would love to hear both your takes on the European Ruby community and kind of some of the things that have been going on in the last few years since the pandemic and sort of how that's going.
Ali Krynitsky:That's a changing point. I believe in all the events like COVID and everything that was happening over there, that was all for everyone. Before that. We have our own event space where we're hosting 13 probably 13 tech communities. It's both free for them to host their meetups over there and it was like completely ruined with COVID and then those like two, three years was nothing happening and the most awful thing that happened actually that we noticed so in 2023, when events were back, we were on Yuruko in Vilnius in 2023.
Ali Krynitsky:And we found out that there is a big problem in communities. So after COVID, nobody was running meetups anymore, so just a few of them that were happening ups anymore, so just a few of them that were happening. The same problem we have in Vilnius in our Vilnius RB community and companies were not engaged anymore. So they found out some other channels to hire people, build their awareness. That's not so straightforward, but if there is no business behind community, there's also like no energy. There should be someone who is contributing with their power, that they have money and expertise and everything. So we start poking around companies. Folks like, hey, come on, let's do like we did it three years back.
Ali Krynitsky:And we found out another problem that during that COVID phase a lot of old rubies got families and kids and they're not engaged so much into that and they're not ready to jump back, need to somehow shake it up. And we saw that, hey, what if we will run a conference that will travel and we will run some initiatives like juniors bootcamps, for example, that so we will partner with local universities in different countries, grabbing those students saying like, hey, jump into Ruby world, rails world, that's a perfect start for you Developers careers. And we will like build some boot camps, educational programs for that, partnering with companies that are doing business in those locations. And then another part was like open source that we are like big fans of and actually like speakers and events like it was before Quants. It's already three years. We're running that conference Pretty successful, thankfully to our sponsors as well, like Royce sitting here as well and supporting Ruby, baltic Ruby for 30 years. And yeah, that's the status of community in Europe. Yeah, there's been. That's the status of community in Europe, right.
Roy Tomeij:Yeah, there's been a huge Ruby revival over here in Europe. I think even pre-COVID, in the late teens lots of local conferences stopped happening for whatever reason, and also during COVID, indeed, a lot of Ruby meetups stopped happening and didn't really boot back up afterwards. But then, looking at conferences over the past few years, there's been an explosion in the most positive sense of the word, all across Europe, from east to west and north to south, just Ruby conferences and real conferences popping up, and that's great to see.
Ali Krynitsky:Yeah, there's definitely a trend to have your own small cozy, very warm conference.
Marty Haught:Yeah, it sort of reminds me of how things were in the US around 2009, 2010, where there were so many regional conferences in the US when, like, we actually had to coordinate a schedule on a calendar so that we wouldn't like, oh no, your conference is on the same weekend as our conference, uh-oh. And so I think that's lovely to see that Europe has really embraced it, certainly more so than I would say is happening in the US right now. We do have some regionals, but not to the level I think that Europe has now, and I guess I'm curious if you have any insight as to why. How is it flourishing so well here than maybe other parts of the world?
Ali Krynitsky:I think that, first of all, there is still some portion of inertia that rise and I think there are still very. There is a problem, or like upcoming problem the community, it's a mature community. We need to add more fresh blood. That's a problem that we will face in the nearest. We still have those people who were. They remember that time 10 years back? Right, how was? They're still engaged. So I think there is a number one why we have that rise of rails and ruby events across the european. That's of old school community folks that's right just united and decided to distance that. Just united and decided to do something, like RubyU, for example, an old army of Rubys who decided, hey, we need to somehow organize ourselves. No one will take care of what we do.
Ali Krynitsky:That's something that was 10 years back.
Roy Tomeij:As for the difference between Europe and the US, I don't know because I'm both not a conference organizer nor based in the US, but obviously there were lots of great regional Ruby and the US. I don't know because I'm both not a conference organizer nor based in the US, but obviously there were lots of great regional Ruby and Rails conferences I've been to and thoroughly enjoyed, organized by very driven people who at some point probably COVID, was a motivating factor in that. I don't know why they weren't able to reboot, but there's lots of great conferences lost that I would love to see back in the US and see the same revival over there that we're seeing.
Marty Haught:Well, one thing I can say about how the regionals in the US trailed off was that essentially organizer burnout. It's a lot of work. Most of these regionals are done by one or two people and it's a lot of work. Most of these regionals are done by one or two people and it's a lot of work. And certainly if circumstances are changing and maybe the last conference they ran wasn't as successful, so financially maybe it's a little risky, maybe just they aren't willing to put the work in. I think that is sort of what led to that.
Marty Haught:And certainly, in thinking about what's happening now in the US, I can give an example of Rocky Mountain Ruby, and that is that it's a new organizer, so Spike and Becky are both leading that effort and so I don't have to do it because I'm way too busy to do that anymore, but they are willing to do it and so I think it's kind of convincing this next generation of organizers. Like you can pick this up and maybe it's not as hard as you might think, but that's a convincing individuals locally. Oh, maybe I'm willing to take the jump into organizing. That's a challenge and maybe with Ruby Europe and with sort of what's happening here, maybe that's not as heavy of a lift, perhaps to bring in new organizers.
Roy Tomeij:Yeah, that makes sense, and I think more organizers shouldn't be afraid to ask for help With AppSignal. We sponsor a large number of conferences but oftentimes the next year we have to offer again. Well, I would think as an entrepreneur it would be a no-brainer to next year ask the same people to put in money.
Marty Haught:You're sponsoring again, right? Yeah, exactly, you're back on for next year, but that's like 90% of them never do. I think you're right. I think there certainly could be. Here's the playbook, and obviously you choose the flavor of your event and how you want to make it your own, which I think is brilliant, but also like, hey, just grab this playbook and go with it.
David Hill:I wanted to ask a quick question about sponsoring conferences that you just talked about. It's a topic where I approached my employer to try to get them to sponsor RailsConf or RubyConf last year and was basically told the company views sponsoring a conference like that purely as a recruitment meeting and we're not looking to hire right now, so there's no value in it for us. So I was kind of curious since you're sponsoring multiple conferences, including RailsWorld here today, what value is it that you're willing to spend that kind of money to sponsor these conferences that way?
Roy Tomeij:Yeah, so we're in a slightly different position AppSignals and APM and Error Tracker and Office a bit more than just that but in a nutshell, so we have developer products to showcase and to sell. And just looking around here the booths at Railsworld there's more developer-focused tooling represented, but oftentimes 90% of booths are just recruiters and leave your name here and you get a thumb drive or something else that no one wants. And ROI is very hard to measure. I have no idea, like in general, what we make off of sponsoring conferences. I don't dare guess, and maybe not anything at all, and maybe it's crazy brand awareness. I have no clue. So this is mostly based on gut feeling and just thinking that community is, believe that community is important to everyone. Basically and Marty just talked about Rocky Mountain Ruby, which was the fourth conference ever presented at back in 2012,.
Roy Tomeij:So a long time ago, I did a quick US tour that year with Madison Ruby and Ruby Nation and that's the first time that I came out of my little bubble of being in Amsterdam and maybe having a Ruby meetup and just seeing like globally there's this thing and everyone's accepted and you're all like Ruby and Rails and just having to hang out with people, like-minded people, having fun. Sure, thus far, when I halfway through day one at Railsworld, I've seen the opening and half of the keynote and that's it, and part of that's been a hallway trip, meeting old friends, making new friends. I can watch recordings. Later I can speak with these people again, and that's what it's about hanging out with kind folk, but that's. And then tying that back to sponsorship. Obviously I have a deciding vote in sponsoring and what we sponsor. So then there's this five-depth Venn diagram of wanting to sponsor and things Roy likes, and then there's Ruby conferences somewhere in the middle. So that's also a good spot to be in for the Ruby landscape, I guess.
Ali Krynitsky:Max, let me quickly follow up because we talked before that Like two years in a row you were sponsoring us. That was the most easiest negotiation, I would say, because for me as an organizer that's a challenge how to pitch. If a company shares those values, it's probably easy. But you mentioned that how to measure that right. And for me I'm a marketer by background and for me that's a very clear statement there are some things that you can count, but it's very hard to predict and then to somehow estimate.
Ali Krynitsky:So if a company does not understand that kind of logic that stays behind your motivation, for example, almost there is a zero chance to convince them. Because I need to sell a lot more values and ideas and say you are definitely sharing those things. You're not articulating that in your communication. You are not aware of what is happening in our community, a lot of things that where we connect with each other. So my take is that that's the easiest thing that ever happened to us and that's also an encouragement for every Ruby enthusiast that is dreaming to kick off or shake up their local community or on their own conference, small conference, that's very easy actually to engage some companies who are interested.
Roy Tomeij:They're there, they have like appSignal yeah that's very cool, yeah, and I do think a lot of companies who do sponsor have no idea how to run a sponsorship. Oftentimes, if they do have a booth, it's going to be for recruiting, or there's a screen here look at our demo. Like why? So when we attend a conference, so we have a booth, I always tell organizers we're there to just add to the conference.
Roy Tomeij:Right, we want to make it. It's already fun. We want to make it more fun, so we'll bring a game to play. We'll bring swag for which you don't need to leave your personal details in order to get whatever you want to get. In the end you're going to be paid. That People will remember that and just think, if people just walk away from this, just thinking, absolutely, those are nice people, that's good enough for me, because in the long run, I'd rather have them say that. And then, obviously, in our space there are some big brand names that we want to stack up against. I think in general, it's nice to be considered a nice person, but business-wise too.
Marty Haught:I think this is something for companies out there that are thinking about sponsoring either a meetup or a conference, that it is about brand awareness and having that association with your name and that maybe you aren't specifically looking to hire right now, but that there is value in like showing up, helping the community, paying it forward, getting out there, making things fun and engaging, and maybe at some point in the future that will lead to someone thinking about like whoa, when you are hiring, they will remember how you showed up for the community and helped the local meetups or the local regional conferences. You showed up for the community and helped the local meetups or the local regional conferences.
Roy Tomeij:or maybe like if you have a dev product that they would then like, hey, we should consider this absolutely, and obviously I can measure this and can tie this to conferences, but I do know when we have a job opening, we get between a thousand and five thousand applications for a single job. Wow, yeah, and that's which in itself is a challenge to process thoroughly. Yeah, but it's because of this, but apparently people think, well, that sounds like a fun place to work, I guess, right, yeah, good for us.
Ali Krynitsky:I would be not mistaken if I would say that's like a pure organics that everybody's dreaming nowadays. You're not investing like in LinkedIn. I've never seen that All the like most of the companies were doing promoting themselves there. That's a really cool channel. Community is the channel, no matter you're promoting your product or you're hiring, that's for the child brand. That's a channel you can consider.
Roy Tomeij:I like that yeah, and for us to basically just thinking about this, it just boils down to one thing good things come to good people and we're just paying it forward.
Roy Tomeij:But obviously we're here let's not say we're not here to sell stuff. Obviously, we want people to create brand awareness, to eventually buy apps Enabling events like this by sponsoring, by supplying money so this can be held in great venues like this. That just keeps the community thriving and growing and in the end, we sell to developers. So there have to be developers to sell to, not to worry about AI just yet in that regard, but just being part of the community and facilitating this. Because being part of the community and facilitating this and I think I said this, maybe earlier off mic that like we sponsor Reels Girls in Ghana, will we ever make any return on that investment? No, of course not. I think we have zero customers in Ghana, right, and that's fine, because I just hope those people will be empowered to do great things and who knows what that leads to like on a global scale or whatever.
Ali Krynitsky:Yeah, in the end, you never know what butterfly flapping its wings set something in motion 10 years from now let me also add, if you will open rubyvansorg, that platform that Mark Ross is running with all the recordings, talk recordings. He added recently that sponsor section, so if you will open it, there is a statistics. Appsignal is an absolute leader in sponsoring events globally, so a number of events and that Rails Girls is also accountable.
Roy Tomeij:I didn't know. They kept the leaderboards. I'm happy to be.
David Hill:Happy to be winning.
Roy Tomeij:I do think we do sponsor his website with monitoring. I do know that, but didn't know he had a leaderboard. I'll take screenshots later because I've seen vanity metrics, yeah, so let's.
Marty Haught:maybe let's, because I don't know how well the audience knows about Ruby events. Does one of you want to sort of describe what Ruby events is for our listeners?
Ali Krynitsky:You mean the platform? The platform, yeah, yeah. So it was started like there is a Ruby conferences website that everybody should know about it. There was a schedule and there is a schedule of all the Ruby events globally. You can plan your year three. And Marco decided to build one more like a spin-off of that platform, another one with all the recordings, because there is no hub with all the recordings and that content is missing. Where to find it? Like should I google?
David Hill:it should go to youtube right when even then, you'd be digging through. Yeah, yeah, a lot of garbage, yeah so.
Ali Krynitsky:Yeah, that's a cool idea just to have everything in one place, and you can build a lot of like features on top that, and so it's a great platform to also collaborate on that level of European communities. We're talking, discussing with him a lot of ideas, initiatives, how we can now link that Ruby Europe. I won't say that it's on the stage that actually everything is ready, but how we can link those groups that we have there, because we have, like each conference meetup organizers across Europe. They have their own channels and they can engage people there or like engage different speakers or anyone else or ask an advice, or like share some advices, like Playboop that you mentioned, that kind of that idea behind and, yeah, so you can join in any way because it's like content, it's valuable for the audience that we have there and Check it out. Rubyvansorg, if you haven't heard about it, and when it's coming to all the Ruby initiatives from the communities, from the community leaders, contributors that we have, I think that's the best initiative that we have currently. Thank you.
Marty Haught:Marco. Yeah, thank you, marco. Marco is a force of nature. Marco Roth, by the way, goodness yeah.
Roy Tomeij:And for me it's a to-do list right Ruby events and rubyconferencesorg, and that's where I find what's going on.
Marty Haught:Yeah, you're like. Hey, it's like D&E Stroopwafels. Yeah, that's right, Stroopwafels.
Roy Tomeij:They're caramel. Those who don't know, but if you have been to a Ruby or Rails-related event over the past few years, you may have seen them.
Marty Haught:Yeah, and I think I recall, roy, you actually brought over Stroopwafels when you came to Rocky Mountain Ruby, if I recall correctly. Does that sound right?
Roy Tomeij:Yeah, back then I would just like carry a pack of 12 or so.
Marty Haught:Yeah, it was just like I think, yeah, it was a very limited supply and I recall getting one, so thank you for that. Street waffles are absolutely delicious and, if I'm correct in the timing, appsignal hadn't been formed yet when you spoke in 2012.
Roy Tomeij:No, we had. Just judging by the GitHub history, we had the first line of code written, but still very much at a consultancy, spending our Friday time on let's build this SaaS thing that sticks. And we had tried a few times before, working with other people's ideas and partnering with them, and in the end they always left and we were stuck with a product no one would buy. Then we thought, well, let's build something that we would like to use, right, something for our peers. We had just started writing code. No idea where that was going when we first met in 2012.
Marty Haught:Yeah, yeah, super cool. And yeah, just so the audience knows that AppSignal has sort of been the supplier of Stroopwafels for over a decade.
Roy Tomeij:As Jim Remsick once said at Madison, Ruby introduced as the official diabetes sponsor of the podcast and I think that sums it up Right.
Marty Haught:One thing I wanted to dig into a little bit more. We've mentioned Ruby Europe, but I don't think we've defined Ruby Europe. I would expect our audience probably doesn't know much about Ruby Europe. So I mean, ali, do you want to tell us more about what is Ruby Europe?
Ali Krynitsky:Yeah, yeah, thanks. The something that we first Baltic Ruby, happened in Malmo two years back and we community organizers, events organizers, we just made that round table. Just that was kind of small talk, started from like, okay, what we should do, are you planning to do your event next year? Right, okay, we're shutting down our own community. No, no more energy to push it forward. So we start complaining. Then we saw that maybe okay, maybe okay, maybe we should organize something on top of those communities. Maybe some other contributors may appear. You name it first blood.
Ali Krynitsky:So it's like building the platform, the community, like the meta community that will help, for example, to be aware in Poland that something is happening in lithuania and they can join, because it's like eight hours ride by car and you can load a bus with the drivers and go over there. And we made it actually a couple of times. So the folks from poland came and gave a talk at our meetup. We go there. Then we again engaged marker off, who came to riga and in gave talk there, and steven baker, with whom we made a whole trip from riga, vilnius, poland. It was a whole week.
Ali Krynitsky:We were like a road show, yeah, making with those like guitars and talks and fun. So it's more about fun like having fun. It's not about a routine that okay, another talk, no, we are having fun. That's the most valuable and priceless thing that you get from all those initiatives. That's the best motivation. So we decided that's a good idea If we can share speakers, if we can share attendees, and it probably might be helpful on that level. Then we started to add more ideas and actually right now we're in the process of kicking off it even further. So thank you very much for joining this Baltic Rugby March.
David Hill:You're welcome.
Ali Krynitsky:Because that's a bridge between Europe and the US. It's also important In terms of all the open source. For me, that's an important part of the community Because, you are absolutely right, it has some distributed nature. If we can help that, to help them collaborate, find some audience, some feedback contributors or whatever that will be valuable, we can, as organizers of some foundations, organizations, we can collaborate and provide more opportunities, create opportunities for them as well as for meetup organizers, for them as well as for meetup organizers. So spain triangle of the maurice causal from warsaw community did as he also did roadshow in us with the top. So that's something that is just happening. Like this, you don't need to plan everything, you just okay, I have some time right, let's do some traveling, even with your family. You can grab your kids and go to Warsaw. You're going to meet up there, shopping, like that.
Roy Tomeij:It's easy and I think it's great that there's now a closer connection between organizers within Europe, and that's I'm not an organizer myself, but that's what I see because I'm in contact with lots of them Because the US is a large country but there is a shared language, there's a shared culture and Europe are still separate countries, with events happening in several countries but there is less cohesion. I think, really, europe plays a huge part in just connecting people and, even though there are language differences and cultural differences, there's this shared drive to further Ruby. I think that's a great motivator for lots of new organizers as well.
Marty Haught:What's the scale, like how many organizers roughly are included in Ruby Europe? Are we talking like five? Are we talking like 15? Are we talking like 15? I can?
Ali Krynitsky:hardly say because, well, we were expecting. Okay, everybody will like that idea.
Ali Krynitsky:That hopefully happens with us so we initially created like okay, how many countries do we have in Europe? Okay, that's the list. We created like a channel for every country hoping that, okay, now they're like an organizer will appear and he will die. So I think, maybe third of that list, yeah, there's something happening. I can hardly say the exact number, but I'll guess we have like 15. Well, well, 20 meetup organizers and communities that make some discussions there, and some of them more active. But this is not organized so well yet. We need to agree on that. We need to do better. But the thing that I like and I believe it is working because it behaves like community platform shoots People just connect and there are some discussions are happening. You don't need to push it forward. Really, it's just appear there and people help each other. They can advise whatever you can act, go there and visit another and it's happening.
Roy Tomeij:But this is great, like, even if it's just 20, and I'm air quoting just, I mean just, jack Even if it's more than you would have liked or anticipated. That's 20 people who weren't connected previously and are connected now, and anything that does well will attract more people, even those who maybe have cold feet initially. So just the fact that it's brought 20 people together for the first time, I think that's a major accomplishment.
Ali Krynitsky:And we have like 10 plus conferences over there as well, so it's like a hub for everyone who's just traveling and attending Ruby Meetup. Different Ruby Meetups.
David Hill:So we mentioned before organizer burnout's a real thing, yeah and the need to have newer people kind of entering that pool of people organizing meetups and organizing conferences. So, as an organizer and as a habitual conference sponsor, what advice would you give someone who's looking at that need as an opportunity? Well, maybe I could step in there. I don't know what I'm doing, what should I do? What advice would you give to someone who's looking at trying to organize something?
Roy Tomeij:A lot of people pretend they know what they're doing, but none of us know what we're doing. So get started. If you don't know where, ask help from a previous organizer or reach out to someone in a different region if you don't know how to get started. I think money obviously is an important factor. I think we've had that conversation with Baltic Ruby in the beginning with troublesourcing sponsors. Obviously, before you sign a venue, you need to know If you sign for that. Personally, you need to know you can at least pay for the venue in case you have to cancel. Personally, you need to know you can at least pay for the venue in case you have to cancel. So get some sponsors on board, which can be tough. But I know it's not just AppSignal. There are more companies who love the community, ruby community and the wider community. I have a list See.
Roy Tomeij:Ali has a list, if you're an organizer and want in on the list.
David Hill:I'm sure there's going to be.
Marty Haught:Are you going to become an organizer, David?
David Hill:I'm sure it's going to.
Roy Tomeij:I'm thinking about it. Yeah, I'm sure there's going to be show notes somewhere. Yeah we'll have show notes, a ton of emails about the list. I'm also curious who's on there, so I'll Link in the first comment. I'll catch on that later and find others to help you just share the burden of the anxiety of just getting stuff. I used to organize Amsterdam RB to Amsterdam Ruby meetup, so I have some experience in that regard. And alone it's very alone, even if it's just two or three.
Marty Haught:We share the work and just prevent some of that organized burnout yeah, I would say for those that are considering organizing, you can reach out to Ruby Central, because we also help organizers get started and give them support, and we want to formalize more of that going forward. But it certainly is a great thing for someone to reach out to us because, if nothing else, we can connect you with lots of great people that have this experience and can advise you forward.
David Hill:I am considering entering that sphere of being an organizer just because the Ruby meetup that used to exist in Tampa the people who were running it moved to other areas of Florida and stopped running it. So it's like I want to meet up local to where I am so I can have some local Ruby friends. And then Tampa, with its relative proximity to Orlando and what a tourist trap that Orlando is, is like oh, it'd be really cool if there was a Ruby conference in Orlando. So I had an excuse to go to Orlando more. I would love to put something together for that.
David Hill:So yeah, I have these ideas bouncing around in the back of my head. I'm just kind of like where do I?
Roy Tomeij:start Well, I'll commit to sending you Stroopwafels right now, if you pull this up. So if that doesn't motivate you to get started, what else will?
Marty Haught:Are you willing to have Stroopwafels in your house? David, I don't know that.
David Hill:I've ever had Stroopwafels, so I don't know what that is.
Roy Tomeij:Oh, we brought 2,000 today. Well, I think we can remedy that shortly here, I guess I know what I'm doing.
Marty Haught:And actually you can't. I think, roy, what you could do is you can go get a hot beverage from the booth over here where they're serving the hot drinks, and you can go get a Stroopwafel Yep Put it on top, set it up, put it on top. Don't forget to unwrap it first. You do have to unwrap it first, pro tip for sure. That would be a little messy. If you didn't, you could have that experience.
Roy Tomeij:Yeah, your cup is going to be life-changing.
Ali Krynitsky:Okay, oh and you can hug them, so it will help.
Marty Haught:You're like pre-warming them up, Alex. Yeah, you're like keeping them in your pocket.
Ali Krynitsky:With a special portion of emotions.
Marty Haught:I see, okay, I hadn't thought of that approach, that's new, huh.
Roy Tomeij:I sometimes microwave them, but I can tell you the inside gets really piping hot. So I think Marty's suggestion of warming up over your cup is probably.
Marty Haught:Yeah, that is I mean. Again, I'm not Dutch so I don't know these things, but certainly that seems like that's the way to be done. The one thing I will advise is make sure you have the right size cup, otherwise the Stroopwafel will collapse into your cup if the brim is too wide.
Roy Tomeij:I can hear Marty has been part of room community for so long. He's had a ton of Stroopwafels yeah.
Marty Haught:PSA on good, proper Stroopwafel usage for your best knowledge.
Ali Krynitsky:I think that we're discussing Stroopwafels and it's indeed it's like a brand already. Yeah, it's unique At the conferences and I won't be mistaken if here, like in Amsterdam, if I will go to Stroopwafel Café and I will order Stroopwafel you know, fresh one that they cook there. I will try it out and I will say not that quality. Wow, everybody gets used to Epsignol Stroopwafels so heavily that it's like a drag really.
Marty Haught:You know I hadn't thought about maybe I should try a local like made-on-site Stroopwafel. I've never thought about that. You should because they are fresh Generally.
Roy Tomeij:don't know which place you've been to, but fresh generally is better. But even then when you eat it, you'll think of Epsignol because?
Marty Haught:but fresh generally is better. But even then, when you eat it you'll think of AppSignal because that's true.
Ali Krynitsky:You'll be like oh, AppSignal with every bite right there. Yes, Let me add to the recommendations because I've got one more funny fact there is a Yuruka conference.
Marty Haught:Right Now is this part of the fabled Ruby triathlon.
Ali Krynitsky:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So it will be happening in two weeks and there is a. I would say that there is a tradition or a trend, what would be the proper word to say to name it? So, every organizer. So Uruka is a traveling conference.
Marty Haught:A traveling conference, yes, yeah you can pitch is a traveling conference A traveling conference.
Ali Krynitsky:yes, you can pitch your city and if the community votes, you will get that chance to organize Uruco in your city.
Marty Haught:Yeah, it'll come to your city.
Ali Krynitsky:You're the primary organizer that year, yeah, so the local community is hosting that event and we did it in 2022 in Helsinki and organized to bring it to Vilnius, and we decided to run Baltic Ruby after that. Right, I know that after that it was in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Mohamed, who was organizing, picking off this year. Rubicon of Austria. And there is a trend, rubicon of Austria. And there is a trend Every organizer of Uruco is trying at least thinking about kicking off their own events their own, yeah. So my advice go to Uruco beach, your city. You will suffer for one year and that will be. It's most probably like a Stockholm syndrome. After that, there will be no chance for you to step out of that.
Ali Krynitsky:You will continuously run different. You will have that need because it's a special satisfaction that you get.
Marty Haught:You get the conference bug and then you're like you know what I think I want to do this next year. It's going to be my own Awesome. Any last minute thoughts before we wrap up?
David Hill:I don't have anything. Thank you both for joining us today. This has been a great conversation.
Roy Tomeij:Thank you for having us. Absolutely, it's my pleasure there you go.
David Hill:Thank you so much for tuning in to the Ruby Gems podcast.
Marty Haught:We hope you there you go at rubycentralorg. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and consider leaving a five-star review. It really helps others find the podcast. Until next time, thanks for being such a gem.
