I Will Be Presenting at Aloha on Rails

I will be presenting at the Aloha on Rails conference in October. The title of my talk is “Staying Above the Ghetto.” The incendiary title has an equally incendiary abstract:

We’ve won! We’ve got a huge ecosystem and high demand for Rails developers, and as more people adopt Rails, you’ve commoditized yourself. How do you stay above the curve and continue to be worth top dollar? Topics include: watching Rails become the new PHP, skills developers don’t know but should, and how to follow through on those things you’ve been meaning to learn.

I’m honored to be in the company of such respected presenters as Chad Fowler, but it presents a challenge: Fowler’s keynote should have major overlap with my talk.

I plan to focus on action you can take today. I’ll name specific technology, explain the steps to marketing yourself, and describe exactly what I look for when interviewing candidates. If Chad’s keynote is like The Book of Five Rings, mine will be Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method.

The event runs from October 3-6; the first two days are training, the last two are talks. I visited Waikiki last year, and believe me when I say it’s gorgeous and the easiest place to learn surfing.