Intro
When I saw the announcement for the Balkan Ruby conference, it immediately brought back memories of the 2019 Balkan Ruby conference which was also held in Sofia. I was so excited and decided to buy tickets without delay. Previous experience had shown me that attending a conference is better with friends so I started to look around for some people to join me. I managed to get a close friend to agree to accompany me on this adventure. In addition, we also wanted to organize a gathering of our Ruby Turkiye community, the more the merrier. 🙂
The Train Trip
I have always wanted to travel on a sleeper train. I remember watching YouTube videos about different sleeper trains in various parts of the world, they all looked exciting. Luckily for me there was a sleeper train available, the aptly named, Sofia Express, which travels from Istanbul to Sofia, passing through the neighboring city of Edirne. It was the most obvious and perfect way to get to our destination. The trip proved to be quite comfortable, despite it not being a match for one of those luxury sleeper trains in Japan, but it was good enough for us and we really enjoyed the 2 berth compartment or “coupe” as they are sometimes called. We got on the train at midnight, enjoyed the night view, watched a movie into the late hours, and finally rested until morning. We got off the train after a refreshing sleep and now were ready for the morning coffee in Sofia.
Vitosha & Sofia
I like green cities, and Sofia never fails to disappoint, with its beautiful nature. The conference venue was conveniently situated near our hotel in the Vitosha neighborhood. The scenic view of a misty Vitosha mountain shrouded by a cloudy sky greeted us when we arrived. After resting a bit, we took a stroll through one of the beautiful parks passing by a bubbling creek the sound of which added to the calming ambience, finally the path led us directly to Sofia’s city center. Here we found some interesting historical architecture and plenty of shops and cafes.
The Conference Spirit
The conference opening speeches and first day events are always exciting and fun. Whenever I go to a conference, those few hours on the first mornings are the time I spend looking around to spot friends, meet new people and strike up a conversation whilst waiting in line for coffee. Witnessing in person, the excitement and enthusiasm in people’s faces, is energizing. One of my favorite moments of the conference was meeting Xavier Nova, who is the author of the famous coding Zeitwerk library. Listening to his story of how he came up with the name was fascinating. Another fun moment for me was to see the members of the Ruby Turkiye community. We did some brainstorming about how we could make the Ruby Turkiye community more active and able to contribute to the Ruby ecosystem. This in turn resulted in me giving a presentation about “Neovim and Rails” in the official Ruby Turkiye virtual meetup.
I’m sure everyone agrees that the two most enjoyable things of any conference except for the talks are the food and drink on offer. This conference didn’t disappoint me at all in this regard. The Bulgarian banitsa, a feta pie, known as a borek in Turkey, and boza, a fermented wheat drink were both delicious.
The Talks
“Back to Business” was the theme of this year’s conference so the talks were mostly about business. In general, all the talks were engaging but a couple in particular stood out for me. Aitor Garcia Rey’s “Running a Fintech with Ruby” was an interesting examination of the complexities of digital payment systems. Stephen Margheim’s “How (and why) to run SQLite in production” was clearly a trending topic in the Ruby & Rails environment. Radoslav Stankov’s “One Engineer Company with Ruby on Rails” was an inspirational description of the solo trader and how they can succeed going it alone. Dimiter Petrov’s “20 Years and Going: Making it as a Consultancy” highlighted how much the company Thoughtbot has contributed to the Ruby ecosystem, not least with the quality content they provided in their blog posts, podcasts ,books and open source gems. I’m in no doubt that every Ruby developer has benefited from their resources. I have selected just a few of the very many excellent presentations, the rest of which can be found on the “Balkan Ruby 2024” YouTube playlist or alternatively you can read about them on their website.
Final Thoughts
For me, a conference is not just about the talks themselves, it is also so much more namely the trip, the community, the friends, the inspiration, the memories, the jokes, the fun, the city, the drinks, the food. It is a whole adventure. Of course, not all of them have to be perfect, but when you truly get into the spirit it is impossible not to enjoy the whole adventure. In fact, this is how I try to get the most out of a conference. Looking forward to the next one!