Dreaming of Freshies

by Timmy Crawford

In a motivational talk titled 'Dreaming of Freshies,' Timmy Crawford explores the intersection of his passions: Ruby programming, experiencing fresh snow ('freshies'), and enjoying beer. He emphasizes the importance of finding a niche where passions align and discusses the transformative journey in his career, reflecting on how he learned to integrate his love for outdoor activities with technology. Key points covered include:

Ruby on Ales Lifestyle: Timmy introduces the concept of the Ruby on Ales lifestyle that embodies enjoyment of Ruby programming, beer, and the outdoors, particularly skiing fresh snow.
Personal Journey: He recounts his transition from a corporate job at Microsoft to a more passion-driven role at Mount Bachelor, leading to a realization of needing to reconnect with his passions.
Entry into Ruby: Timmy’s introduction to Ruby programming came through his work at G5, where he experienced a significant shift in how he approached coding, making it more enjoyable and fulfilling.
Community Involvement: He highlights the importance of contributing to the open-source software community and gives back through innovative applications like a snow alert service using Twilio and a weather data gem called Cooler Movers.
Balancing Work and Passion: Timmy now works part-time while maximizing his creative energy in coding, leading to personal and professional fulfillment, as seen in his work that generated a 70% sales increase at Longboard Store.
Finding Joy: He concludes by advocating for chasing passions in life and work, asserting that creativity and community enhancement are vital—echoing the notion that programming should be both fun and shared.

The primary takeaway is the encouragement to pursue personal interests and integrate them into one’s career, to stay engaged and find joy in both work and life. The talk reflects the essence of blending technology with personal interests to foster creativity, learning, and community engagement, culminating in the pursuit of freshies both literally and metaphorically.

00:00:23.039 So this talk is more of a lifestyle talk. To me, Ruby on Ales encompasses many wonderful things. We're here to talk about Ruby, but we also obviously like beer. And I'm going to focus on the third thing that creates the Ruby on Ales lifestyle, and that's freshies.

00:00:27.760 This is going to be a bit of a motivational talk, I think. When I was thinking about how I'd give this talk and how you guys might react to it, I pictured myself as Tony Robbins. I thought I was going to go out, bleach my teeth, and have a huge smile. But really, what it comes down to is I'm just drunk and happy.

00:00:39.760 You're going to stare at your laptops the whole time, and that's cool because it's a Ruby conference. I'm here to tell a story—it's a story about me, so it might be a little boring for some of you. But what I hope to do is inspire you to seek out the things that you're passionate about and hopefully combine them into something great, maybe with your code, and go write some cool stuff. I really want you to enjoy what you're doing.

00:01:00.560 I also want to leave extra time at the end of my presentation so you can get more beer. Okay, so what the hell are freshies? Who knows what freshies are? Freshies are outside the door right now—it's the wonderful fresh snow that's fallen in Bend and other ski towns like this. It's all about shredding fresh snow, approaching slopes with pristine snow that hasn't been touched yet, and slashing the hell out of it while leaving tracks behind.

00:01:30.560 So that's what freshies are. They're also the third powerful element that creates the Ruby on Ales lifestyle. Up there, you've got the beer, obviously, you've got Ruby, and then there's that funky-looking cone thing in the background— that's supposed to represent my bachelor life. I hope that if it clears up, you'll see it.

00:02:24.080 When these three powers combine, I achieve my happy place. I obviously enjoy beer and like to write code, although I won't claim it's fantastic all the time. I think Steven Baker is going to talk about that tomorrow, actually. I also like to ask questions, and to provide some background and hopefully inspire you, I'm going to go over my Facebook timeline.

00:02:47.600 Back in 1999, I was graduating from the University of Washington. Any other Huskies in the crowd here? Yeah, you're in the land of ducks; it sucks. Go Huskies! I was a business major at UW, and I took a lot of HR classes because that’s where all the chicks were! I also had a job at Vizio, which eventually led me to Microsoft. In college, my life primarily consisted of beer, outdoor activities, and chasing girls.

00:03:09.440 I graduated and got my first job at Microsoft. The first product I worked on was Windows Millennium Edition. I was also fond of a particular graph that's a bit of a joke, pointing out my strike price. I don't know if I'm to blame for that sharp downfall afterwards, but because of that, I moved to Bend, Oregon in 2001.

00:03:20.400 The reason I came here is pretty obvious for anyone who loves the outdoors—there are awesome things to do here, and it's beautiful. There wasn't quite as much beer back then, but some good brews were available. I came down to work at Mount Bachelor Ski Resort, taking about a 50% pay cut to be the IT manager there.

00:03:58.959 While I was up at Bachelor, I met this guy who's actually in the audience right now, Chris Trainer. He doesn't have quite as much hair anymore, but when I was working there, he wrote some PHP code and taught me a lot about it. That's when my programming journey began, which is super funny. My life at Bachelor consisted mainly of freshies— not so much beer, writing some code, and doing a lot of Windows administration, which was pretty boring.

00:04:38.560 Over the years, I climbed the corporate ladder at the ski resort, which really doesn't mean much. I think my final title was Senior Director of Resort Systems or something like that. I was in line to get this fancy Chevy pickup truck, which was cool, but my life became more about attending meetings than getting out to shred. As a result, I started drinking more, and by the end of my tenure there, I worked three straight months without a single day off. It was hell!

00:05:05.920 I worked on the gate system at Mount Bachelor, and it was an awful project. I started feeling like, 'What the hell happened to my lifestyle?' I really envisioned myself as this cool dude, all about snowmobiling and enjoying life, but that wasn’t the case anymore. After that, I became a bit of a wandering person.

00:05:29.680 I started to program more and dabbled in something called Cake PHP. To earn money, I also picked up some odd jobs. It was a painful time. In 2008, I went to a local meeting called Cowpoo Central Oregon Web Professionals User Group. There, I met Chris Craigel, who told me about a company called G5. That's where Ruby entered my life.

00:06:07.600 At G5, I learned Ruby, which was new to me coming from PHP. The things I was able to do with Ruby on Rails were mind-blowing. The team I worked with was hilarious; we listened to Glee all the time and had themed parties. Then a venture capitalist came into town, and my life changed. I started spending a lot of time on the phone with clients and attending meetings, which meant less time for shredding the snow and more drinking.

00:06:35.680 The programming I loved started to feel mundane. After this realization, I went back to my Facebook timeline to reevaluate. I started to see the patterns of what got me excited versus what let me down. This time, I decided to learn from it, and I came across a great quote by Ira Glass: 'When you don’t create things, you become defined by your taste rather than your ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. So create!'

00:07:18.400 I think people feel this a lot in their jobs; they get in a rut, grind away, stop innovating, and become disengaged. I've struggled with this too. I realized I need to keep learning and pushing myself. We need to keep creating, learning, and having passion. I love Tenderlove's Twitter posts, and I wish he was here instead of me. I enjoy when he tweets about sausage because I’m immature and think it’s funny.

00:08:14.880 I decided to go back to my roots, way before G5. I wrote an e-commerce app for a quirky company in Bend called Longboard Store, which sells skateboards. I’m currently working about 20 hours a week there and achieving cool results. I'm using new technologies like Backbone and Node. I know this is a JavaScript conference, but I love that stuff.

00:09:01.680 We've seen a 70% increase in sales over the prior year, which is awesome. I have a fusion of all these passions happening, and it feels great. One of the things I've done since freeing up time is create new apps. Here comes the pursuit of freshies again. I developed a Twilio application that scrapes snowfall conditions at local ski resorts, allowing people to sign up for alerts.

00:09:54.240 They can request alerts when there’s a certain amount of fresh snow. This morning, my phone rang, but I was already awake because my daughter woke me up at three in the morning. I always envisioned the Twilio robot calling me to notify me about fresh snow, and I’d get super excited to go shred. It’s fun, and I enjoy giving back to the community with this free service.

00:10:51.440 People have come up to me to say how they received text alerts and were excited about skiing, even if they didn’t go out. Another cool thing that came from this is I created a gem called Cooler Movers, which is the Norse god of snow. This allows you to send in latitude and longitude and get awesome weather data back.

00:11:41.120 For example, the snow forecast for Mount Bachelor today shows a 90% chance of precipitation with two to four inches expected at 22 degrees. Wow, I'm going through my slides way too fast! Who wants to ski? Yeah! Give me another beer!

00:12:23.440 In the spirit of Anthony Robbins, what I've found is that you should chase down your passions, stay in touch with them, keep learning, give back to your community, drink beer, and shred. My name is Timmy Crawford, and this talk was about dreaming of freshies. Thank you!

00:13:07.680 Any questions? What’s gnar?

00:13:36.720 That’s a great question. I had an alternate presentation I was going to do about the parallels between skiing and programming. Ironically, there's a famous skier named Shane McConkey who created a game called Gnar, which is about having fun and not taking skiing too seriously. It’s all about enjoying the ride.

00:14:01.120 Shane created this game for friends to have fun skiing together. He emphasized that people often take skiing too seriously. So, a similar concept could be making up your own games with your programming buddies, earning points for completing programming challenges, like refactoring a complex method into a simple one!

00:15:03.360 I work about 20 hours a week for a local skateboard store, a Rails app project where I'm the full-stack developer. I love when people approach me with ideas for apps. By making myself available to talk, I find that people often have really clever ideas.

00:16:20.800 I want to enjoy other aspects of life too, so I keep my hours around 20 a week. The first 80s theme party I threw at G5 was called 'Journey into the Man Cave,' where we played lots of Journey. It was a bit cringy, but oddly enjoyable.

00:17:00.000 In my journey, I'm actively skiing today. Anyone who wants to go skiing, I have a snowmobile and can take you out! It’s going to be super gnarly!

00:18:40.440 I skied today and if you’re interested, let's hit the slopes! It's all about having fun and creating a community around skiing and programming.

Explore all talks recorded at Ruby on Ales 2012