Not quite a project, but still noteworthy. In November 2015, I had the honor of attending Ruby Conf 2015 as an Opportunity Scholar. As a scholar, I attended the conference as a VIP (hello, front row seats to all keynotes), was matched up with a [mentor](http://www.benjaminfleischer.com/), and received moral and technial support from Ruby Central staff and other mentors. I was interviewed by video folks doing a recap documentary of the conference, was able to attend a session given by the person who wrote the first coding tutorial I'd ever taken, lift weights with Sandi Metz, meet fellow The Iron Yard family members, meet Matz, get to know a fantastic group of aspiring Rubyists and beg Tenderlove for stickets of his cats.

Sessions I attended and valued, in no particular order:

  • How to stop hating your test suite by Justin Searls
  • Your own 'images as a service' by Andy Croll
  • Ideology by Gary Bernhardt
  • Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies ike a banana: parsers for greater good by Hsing-Hui Hsu
  • I estimate this talk will be 20 minutes long, give or take 10 minutes by Noel Rappin
  • The hitchiker's guide to Ruby GC by Eric Weinstein
  • Ruby's envrionment variable API by Jack Danger Canty
  • Messenger: the (complete) story of method lookup by Jay McGavren
  • Hardware hacking: you can be a maker By Christopher Sexton, Leah Sexton
  • The math behind Mandelbrot by David Bock
  • Ruby 2 methodology by Akira Matsuda