The first session I attended was an introduction to Ruby on Rails given by Kevin Lawver. I thought it was very cool that Kevin brought his son with him. He seemed to really enjoy the un-conference.

After that, I sat through a couple of good sessions on User Experience and Design Challenges. They were both very interesting discussions. The Design Challenges discussion was initiated and moderated by the folks at Viget. I really enjoyed this one from a non-designer perspective. It seems like a lot of the challenges they face are very similar to the ones a software developer faces such as communication with the customer.

Scott Mendenhall squeezed two talks into one session: Open Source CMS and Ajax Network Latency. The first one was a survey of Open Source Content Management Systems. There are a lot of them out there and a big consulting industry around them. Scott claims that some consultants charge as much as $50,000 to recommend a CMS. The Ajax Network Latency talk was of interest to me because I have been dealing with that issue at work with the Verizon FiOS project.

For the rest of the day I attended a session on the Mobile Web, a Ruby Crash Course, and a Rails open session.

When it was my time to talk, I presented on Ruby and Java cooperation. My slides are here or below:

Overall, I really enjoyed the day and I look forward to the next BarcampDC.