Well today was the first day of talks here at RailsConf.  DHH kicked things off with an opening speech.  He spent some time talking about Rails 3.0 features but unfortunately it was hard to follow the slides in the back.  Somebody on #railsconf thought it would be cool if you could broadcast slides to everyoene's laptop during the live talk.  That would have come in handy for this.

The talk was good despite the sound and slide difficulties.  I always enjoy hearing how other programmers approach the challenges of their job.  DHH was talking about how "renogiation of requirements" can ultimately lead to a huge productivity gain.  He described a time at 37 signals where he spent two weeks trying to solve an impossible task.  He ultimately came up with a much simpler solution and proposed it to the client.  Client was indifferent ("Sure, whatever") and he was done in 48 hours.

The talks this morning have been pretty good so far.  Mercifully there is no smoking in the conference center so that is a welcome change of pace from the rest of the hotel.  My main complaint so far would be that the chairs have metal backs with no cushion so they're extremely uncomfortable.

One last thing I would like to mention is the state of the Rails community.  There are lots of first time RailsConf attendees here this year which is a great sign.  People also seem to be mixing a lot better instead of hanging out exclusively with the people that they came here with.  The Rails community really seems to be moving in a more positive direction, despite minor flare ups and distractions along the way.

I really think the whole Rails - Merb merger sets a good example for how much everyone stands to gain when setting aside ego and just work together to write the best possible software.  Constructive criticism is fine but collaboration is even more productive.