Unfortunately I didn't have time to type this out longhand, these are just my rough notes of what happened. This is probably a better format anyway!

Sunday, September 10th
- flew to Vegas through Chicago
- checked into Hilton Grand on "the Strip"

Monday
- arrived for breakfast at SDN Day (for developers)
- welcome meeting, introductions
- table mixer: met Daniel McWeeney, Ed Herrmann, Ryan Quackenboss and Phillip Young from Colgate-Palmolive
- lunch
- demo of Scripting Language Tool (and code generation) by John Astill
- Dan's unplanned demo of his Rails app
- my Rails and RadRails demo (schedule)
- beer and sausage at Hofbrauhaus

Tuesday
- first day of full conference (5000 people!)
- arrived later and missed keynote, hung out in SDN Clubhouse
- talked to Craig Cmehil, Eric Wood
- DemoJam - Dan and Ed win!

Wednesday
- my BOAF talk went really well and they let it go long (thanks Craig)
- Apple Store in Fashion Show Mall
- club sandwich came with mustard (wtf?)

Thursday
- my Ruby on Rails and RadRails demo in the SDN Theatre
- when people found out it worked with SAP backends, that created demand for an unplanned demo of Dan's Rails app in the BOAF area!
- LOTS of people interested in Rails once they saw it
- GameWorks that night, kicked ass at motocross game ;)
- drinks with Craig and the Colgate-Palmolive boys, thanks!

Friday, September 15th
- woke up at 6am local (Pacific)
- flew back to Ottawa through Chicago, arrived at 9:30pm

I've been invited by SAP to speak about Ruby on Rails and RadRails at SAP TechEd '06 Las Vegas in just over a week. I've never been to a tech conference, let alone spoke at one but I have been to Las Vegas before. I'm a bit nervous but definitely looking forward to it.

I received the invitation from SAP through the RadRails team, which I just joined in June. Kyle and Matt (of RadRails) are in Switzerland working for IBM and can't attend the Las Vegas conference, so they asked me if I'd be interested. Kyle and Matt will be attending the SAP TechEd '06 in Amsterdam in mid October.

It looks like I'll be speaking for about 20 minutes plus a 10 minute Q&A: giving an introduction to Ruby on Rails and then a demo of RadRails to show it off. If you're attending the conference and you'd like to hear about anything specific in the presentation, leave a comment here and I could include it. I'll be giving this presentation many times, so keep your eye on the schedule.

I'm sure I'll be available to talk about Ruby on Rails and RadRails when I'm not presenting as well. I think there will be an area for me to setup and talk to people in person. I'm excited to have the opportunity to get more people hooked on Rails, so feel free to drop by.

My goal is to represent the Ruby on Rails and RadRails communities as best I can because I enjoy using them both in my work. I am certainly open to suggestions from the communities regarding the best ways to do this.

About Me

How am I qualified to talk about Ruby on Rails and RadRails at a conference? That's a fair question I think. I'm a Software Engineering graduate from the University of Ottawa and full-time Ruby on Rails consultant.

On the Ruby on Rails side, I am not on the Ruby on Rails core development team nor have I submitted patches to Rails yet -- but I have been using Ruby on Rails since May 2005 full time and I keep up with the community. I've worked on a variety of websites/webapps since 1996 and I've done lots of DHTML, PHP and ASP in the past. But I enjoy Rails above all else because of its pragmatic stance and its encouragement of good software engineering practises.

On the RadRails side, I've been an Java/Eclipse/RCP developer for a few years and I brought that experience to help the RadRails team, first by creating Ant build scripts to automate their build process. Next I'll be introducing some other best practises, like unit testing and continuous integration, to help make RadRails an even better product. Of course I dogfood RadRails with my Rails consulting projects.

Need a Ruby on Rails consultant? I'm based in Ottawa, Canada and I'll be available for telecommuting work. You can email me at blog(at)ryanlowe(dot)ca.