My new home town (not just the place I live, but now HOMEtown) rocks. The unspace crew did a freaking amazing job on RubyFringe. Joey has a huge list of notes on his blog if you want some nitty gritty.

For me personally, here’s the stand outs…

- I have to say Damien Katz’s presentation was extremely raw and powerful. The story of how CouchDB came to be will stick around in a lot of peoples minds for a very long time I’m sure.
- Giles Bowkit’s talk was just an assault on the senses. Wow. Almost want to go to Burning Man now. Looking over the shoulder of my cohort’s laptop on the backchanel it seemed dead quiet in the 5 secs I peeled my eyes off stage.
- Nick Sieger’s Jazz presentation taught me more in 30 mins than any music class ever has (not that I attended many) did in school. Even though I love music. Love it to bits. But he broke it down so well I was stunned. Wow. Thank you.
- Mr Grigsby. Resourceful. What more can I say. This dude plays the system hard.
- Leila had a hard job having the last talk of the day, but her essence was on the money, do something people love (and therefore value) and you’ll do well. If your customers love the stuff you build. You’ve got it made. She showed an extremely hard core passion for her company. Fantastic.
- Less than 200 people seems a perfect number for networking. Not large enough that you’re anonymous, not small enough so you’re talking to the same people. Met so many great people. Hope to stay in touch.
- Libin, my man, you should be THE official Canon product tester. I believe he was trying to hit 1k photos. at time of posting 413 odd photos were up on Flickr but he hasn’t uploaded Sunday’s yet…

Surprisingly technology was less of a focus of most everyone’s presentations. Instead of the usual tech stuff every day on blogs, to mix things up the talks really got into the hearts, minds, and souls of the presenters. All of which just can’t be conveyed in the web medium. The tech presentations that were given were solid as well, it felt like just the right mix between screeds of cool innovative code and deep talks.

It’s amazing what can be achieved in just 30mins !