Greetings from blazing hot Austin, TX where Chris, Adam & I are attending Lone Star RubyConf 2008. We gave the Rails Refactoring — Triage, Prevention & Performance tutorial yesterday to about 25 attendees of the conference, which was quite exciting and enjoyable.

Personally, I really like the small regional-conference feel of Lone Star RubyConf. The ambiance is much more laid-back than the two Railsconfs and networking is effortless. It doesn’t hurt that the conference is located in Austin, which is a real foodie heaven (especially barbeque), with a very cool and friendly Ruby/Rails community.

This year, the conference seems to have attracted a good set of speakers — I saw many prominent Rubyists walking the halls, and talking to many of the speakers was quite informative. Matz is here, and we’ve taken to thanking him for Ruby every time we’ve run into him in the hallway, which is honestly the least we could do without feeling like stalkers.

Highly recommended if you’re thinking of attending next year.