Jesse Newland and I are back from the 2009 Ruby Hoedown, the South’s regional Ruby conference. We both had a blast! The talks were all enjoyable and very informative, and we had an awesome time hanging out with folks like John Nunemaker, Steve Smith, Matt Todd, and many, many others.

It was great seeing all of you there who did come by and say “Hi” at some point this weekend—we hope you enjoyed the conference (and your spiffy lanyards!) as much as we did.

The talks that really stuck out out in my mind were those given by Ben Mabey (Writing Software, Not Code With Cucumber), Leon Gersing (couldn’t find a link to his slides, but it was on Appcelerator Titanium), and Jim Weirich (Source Control for People Who Don’t Like Source Control). The talk on threading in Ruby 1.9 was also really interesting—it’s definitely something we’ll revisit when more people are using 1.9 (ie. right around the release of Rails 3.0). The lightning talks were particularly amusing, both for the fact that they’re very impromptu and also because the speakers were given props to play with during their presentations. Anyone who was there can tell you all about the guy with the kazoo. All of the talks were very well done, and I’d like to thank everyone who did speak this year for doing a great job.

If you’d like to read up on specifics of the talks themselves, take a look at one of the first recaps I’ve seen posted or at the hashtag on twitter.

While Jesse and I had a blast at the conference, I think I can speak for both of us when I say that I’m glad to be back home, working on your rails machines to make sure you get the best experience possible.