Post RailsConf Europe roundup

I had initally written a rather extensive write-up of the conference and proceeded to lose the whole thing while saving it. Great.

Here’s the slightly-late-and-rather-short-version instead:

RailsConf Europe was a completely different type of conference for me as I usually just go to Flash and Flex related conferences and events. One thing I can say up-front is these guys don’t know how to party; on the other hand the Flash community hits the spot pretty much every time.
You Flash peeps can give yourself a pat on the back for that, if you so please. It’s fine, nobody is looking.

This being a Ruby on Rails centered conference I was prepared to get a bit of stick for being a passionate Flash/Flex developer, but this wasn’t the case (well, except one guy who I’m pretty sure was still stuck in 2002, his hair certainly was.) Most people there were pretty interested in what Flex had to offer. I also blew a couple of minds with my 1 minute AIR demo’s. Flex 3 really does make it incredibly easy to create a simple AIR app in no time whatsoever.

The back of the conference T-shirt.

There were a couple of Flex sessions at RailsConf. One of them was during the tutorial days and was a half day session about using Flex and Ruby on Rails together. I must admit I was slightly dissapointed in this session as it only dealt with xml-rpc REST calls, something I’ve already been using for quite a while. I was hoping that the session would also show some examples of the other data-exchange possibilities such as RubyAMF and WebOrb which both use the Flash Player native ActionScript Message Format (AMF).

I almost didn’t go to Simeon Bateman’s Flex session which, in contrast, was a lot shorter weighing in at just an hour. I was pretty pleased I did eventually go as he gave an excellent overview of the different data exchange methods and even managed to sneak in a couple of examples for our viewing pleasure. Simeon did a good job of walking through the different options available to Flex and Rails developers covering RubyAMF, WebOrb and XML-rpc calls. The Flash Platform introduction could have been a little shorter, but I think he wanted to make sure everyone knew about the new AVM2 and the advancements the Flash Platform has made over the last year or two.

I’m not going to go into any of the other sessions. I think I’ll let Stuart Eccles take over from here as he has been a rather busy bunny indeed!

In some other related news, it looks like there is an early alpha version of RubySWX for you to play around with. It’s not ready for production and has some security issues, so you may want to wait a little while before you hop onto that boat. Aral’s SWX demos have been quite impressive, so I’m sure this will become a method you may want to evaluate in the future.

Flex sessions at RailsConf Europe

 @ Although the RailsConf in Portland, USA seemed to concentrate on AIR sessions (then named Apollo), it looks like RailsConf Europe in Berlin, Germany (17-19 September 2007) is concentrating on Flex with not a mention of AIR in the program.There will be a general session on Flex entitled “Building Rich Internet Applications with Flex and Ruby on Rails” by Simeon Bateman, as well as an additional tutorial session “Using Adobe Flex with Rails” by Aslak Hellesøy which will most likely be a bit more in depth.If you’re interested in seeing what else is on offer at RailsConf Europe, I suggest you check out the conference sessions.