00:00:20
So, I have a pretty simple message for you. How many of you guys use Slack or some sort of collaboration tool that involves chat? How many of you say to someone, 'Hi'? When you do, notice that the other person is thinking. Here's the one message I want to convey: if you say 'Hi' to someone, you're trying to be polite, right? You're just saying 'Hi,' but now that person has to think, and say, 'Okay, why is this person messaging me? They're just saying 'Hi.' Are they gonna have an ask? Are you entrapping them into sort of forcing their attention or your attention to them?' I want everyone to consider this: when you tell somebody 'Hi,' actually mean 'Hi' and don't necessarily have an ask. If you haven't asked, just say what you want and they'll get to you when they can. So that's my talk. Yes?
00:01:21
Okay, this will make it fast. Audio participation! Anyone who thinks that they are the smartest person in the room or among the smartest in the room, raise your hand. Okay, we had a few. Now, if you think that you are among the least smart people in the room, raise your hands. Keep them up. Now, if you raised your hands, look around and see the other people who raised their hands. So the next time you think that you are not smart enough to understand something or to ask a question, or to fix a bug, or to have an opinion, or to give value to the community, or to have a seat at the table, I want you to remember all the hands that you saw go up. Those hands should say to you that yes, you can understand this thing, your question is worth an answer, you can fix that bug, your opinion does matter, you do have value, and you do belong at the table because everybody else in the room who raised their hands thinks you do.
00:02:27
Hi, I'm Jonathan Slate. I have one minute to make two requests of you. Number one, please support the Minneapolis Climate Action and Racial Equality Fund. To quote the fund, it will engage residents most affected by climate change by supporting solutions developed by those communities. I believe that when RailsConf comes to a city like Minneapolis, that city should be better off for having had us there. You could help simply by purchasing extra RailsConf t-shirts, or you can make a donation at the t-shirt station. Also, please come to the Up Yon Hell of Happy Hour so I can thank you for your donation! If you don't donate, come anyway. It's at 730 Lakes of Legends Brewing Company.
00:03:03
It's just for a minute walk, and there will be games and gift card giveaways. The location and time are also on the board out there, and if you want to come have a drink and then go to the Weed Maps thing half an hour later, that's totally fine too. Thank you!
00:03:32
What's up? Are you all tired today? I know, right? But also very excited?
00:04:02
Anyway, hello, I'm Morgan Fogerty. Hey, everyone! Hi!
00:04:11
I am a former dancer and choreographer turned web developer, and today I'm going to tell you who I am, why I'm cool, and why I love this community and why you should hire me. So, this is me now. This is me earlier today, really great years. I danced for about three decades in college at the University of Kansas, professionally in New York City, and as a choreographer and professor in Chicago. Then I decided that I wanted to see what a regular job would be like because although modern dance is fun and fulfilling, it pays in literal peanuts. Get it? Like it doesn't pay, okay? They didn't give me peanuts. It's like nothing.
00:05:43
So anyway, I moved to LA because it was warm there, and I worked in an entertainment law firm in Beverly Hills. The important thing I took from this experience was that it was not a place for growth. It was not fulfilling, it was not exciting, and so I moved on to the next thing. I left Beverly Hills and embarked on a road trip with my partner that lasted about a year and a half and spanned 38 states.
00:06:13
This part of my backstory was very exciting and fulfilling but not really sustainable forever. We settled in Portland, Oregon, in the beginning of 2017, and I took an HTML and CSS class. It was so exciting and my brain started lighting up like it did when I would choreograph, and so I knew that that was the next step I could take in my career, well to have a career. I attended a full-stack JavaScript code school, and after graduation, I was a TA there for a few months. I love doing that; I love TA-ing and teaching.
00:07:18
After my TA experience, we were relocated to the Bay Area, and I got into the blockchain space. Since I was a new kid at a big school in the Bay Area, I decided to jump on to the newest thing so that I'd have some knowledge that even senior programmers didn’t have, potentially. That led me to a work-study where I lectured about the Solidity programming language to students at Galvanize in San Francisco. Then I had a short-term React contract with the blockchain company, and during that time, I gave a talk at Waffle.js in San Francisco, and in it, I talked about and demonstrated how I choreographed the implementation of an algorithm.
00:08:10
This is just a little part of the dance. Also, during the events time, I was gifted a ticket to RailsCamp West. I'd only written a tiny bit of Ruby code, but I thought, 'I'll just go for it.' RailsCamp is so lovely, and you should all definitely go. Is Bobby Lee here right now? No? She's not supporting me right now, but I'm sure there are still tickets available and you should go.
00:09:25
I was struck by how welcoming and inclusive the community was. I got to watch a lemur-themed enumerable methods talk by Brandon Weaver, and we all talked about tech and community and life at this freezing cold lake. The experience convinced me to learn Ruby on Rails. So while at my events job, I read the Rails book, and then I decided that I would learn even more by building a thing.
00:09:53
I'm building and iterating on a thing, and it's called Dress Me. It's a virtual stylist. Users can build an inventory of all their clothes and then mix and match to make outfits, and there's still a lot to build because software’s never finished. Now, I will fangirl out about this community because it keeps showing up for me, and it's incredible when you're entering a new field.
00:10:50
So while building Dress Me, I've had the privilege of pairing with a few senior developers. They're generous with their time and are awesome people. Last month, I attended Ruby by the Bay. It's the West Coast version of Ruby for Good. Please learn about Ruby for Good and support it, sponsor it if you can, and go to it. It's amazing! There, I worked on a team with six senior developers, and together we scoped and architected and implemented a feature for an app in just a couple of days, and these team members were supportive.
00:12:38
And go listen, I'm looking for a job, so...
