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This morning on the train, I started to browse through the Jail Broken installer app, on my iPhone. In the past months I have installed a lot of cool little tools that have really integrated themselves into my life. LastFm, Locate Me, and SSH to name a few. I have passed over the Apache server every time, failing to see why somebody would need one on their phone. This morning it hit me–Freelance web designers! WOW! think about it. A designer is so vulnerable to having their designs ripped off when they make them available to show to a client. Now imagine instead that designer were to host the site from their iPhone and connect to the client’s network. For a controlled amount of time the developer would be able to show the design to the client and let them interact with all of the features. This is way better then watermarking a PNG file.

This was my first year ever attending a conference so I have no frame of reference. I do know that I enjoyed just about every geeky moment. I was able to connect with other people who have been through or are going through a lot of the same things that I am in my career.

A major benefit for me

was that since I do not work at at company that uses Rails, so I am not immersed in the culture like other developers. I am surrounded by some of the most accomplished front-end engineers and I am thankful. My back-end technology of choice however, is Rails and at times I start to feel like it only exists in a lonely little world of my own. I try to make a point of listening to podcasts and reading blogs to keep me in the loop but there is obviously no feedback there. 

What stood out to me

was the after-party scene. Don’t get me wrong, I got a lot of inspiration out of the couple keynotes that I was able to catch but I would have come here just to meet the Rails heros. I am leaving Portland with so much inspiration to try some of the things that I learned.

The hard part

for me is that I am not a Rails developer at my “Day Job”. I have to go back and try to apply what I can to better my job as it stands. I am also, going to do everything that I can to do some Rails stuff on the side so that I don’t loose my momentum.

One year ago…

I was working in a relatively small engineering group in a company where I had tons of creative control over my work and made crap money. Now, I work in a massive nationwide engineering group where my opinion makes a difference locally but inevitably ends up getting lost in the shuffle when up against the sexier, higher profile projects in the company. Add the fact that my desk was in front of a huge window with a view of mountains and is now a panoramic of three cloth walls and the most intense office lighting. I started to feel that i was hemorrhaging all of my creative energy.

As a first attempt to solve the problem,

I started working out ways to work from home. This helped a bit but not for too long. Turns out I can’t stand being alone for too long. I had no idea how much I needed the action of the office. I also like the 3:00 pm coffee banter. 

Okay, so it looks like I need more ideas.

Then it happened…

At the worst of my inspiration slump, I decided to take on a few extra credit tasks around the project. One constant throughout my career is that in every job I start a side project. Somehow that project manages to play a major part in my next career move.

Giving it some thought it makes sense:

Side projects are not controlled by the business. It seems without the influence of product managers I am left with full creative control. 

Disclaimer: I am by no means diminishing the contribution of Product Management. I just think it is useful for a developer to have some sort of skunkworks project where he/she is not regulated by our level headed friends. This is why we have hackdays, I am just not that competitive.

My little contribution is a useful little piece of code that everybody needs and nobody had time to do. I am proud of the results and I am seeing the effects in a lot of ways.

I do love taking the train to get to work. It is a rare chance to stop and think or read a book. I show up to work less stressed and more focused. Today however, I forgot my ear buds. That was the longest ride ever. I couldn’t even concentrate on my reading. I think I have become dependent on a random stream of my favorite songs. I could simply be a great way to escape the random sounds and conversations from the people on the train.