RubyConf 2009 Was Great

I had been staying in Burlingame, California to attend RubyConf 2009 and JRubyConf 2009.

I made two presentations there in English.

"Hacking parse.y"

First, I made 45 minutes presentation in English there.

Hacking parse.y (RubyConf 2009)

View more documents from ujihisa.

I talked about the parser part of MRI (Matz Ruby Implementation) with demonstrations including adding new syntaxes.

(I wouldn't like to say something negative, but I have to say that my presentation wasn't as well as I expected. I think the reasons were that I was sick at the time and I needed more safety nets of my demonstration.)

"Termtter the ultimate twitter client"

Second, I made 5 minutes short talk there.

RubyConf 2009 LT "Termtter"

View more presentations from ujihisa.

This slides were made by jugyo. He tried to make presentation, but he was so afraid of his English that he asked me to make it instead. So I did.

My roommates.

JRubyConf 2009

I also attended JRubyConf 2009 the day after RubyConf 2009. I really wanted to attend all sessions, but I couldn't because my body condition was worst at the time.

My Personal Impression

Small But Important Events

I went to Engine Yard twice. I went to eat lunch and dinner with great programmers. I talked a lot. I gave some presents to some people, and I got great things by them as well.

English

I was surprised to notice that I was starting to feel as comfortable with English as with Japanese. A few years ago, English was kind of cryptic language for me. To use English, I had to think a lot like calculating. I had to think and translate before I could understand what I was listening to.

When I lived in Canada, I didn't notice that I had stopped doing that. Maybe because my improvement was too gradual to be noticed. My one month stay in Japan made me realize this fact.

It's exciting. Even though I still can't speak English fluently or listen to English without having difficulties, but at least, now I don't feel like using English is so difficult.

Links

• Tim Bray's blog http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/11/21/RubyConf-2009
  • You can find me in the first photo.
• http://www.ruby-mine.de/2009/11/22/rubyconf2009-tag-1/
  • There's a comment of my presentation of "hacking parse.y"