Attended RedSnake Philly mini conference on Friday. All the talks were ten minutes, which is shorter than I expected (maybe I should have looked closer at the schedule), but meant that things really kept moving. It was a good pace, but some of the talks could have used more time. Maybe 15 minutes is about right. Anyway, it was a nice contrast from the hour long talks I’m used to.

As far as content, ironically the C++ and lisp talks had the most technical content. The ruby python talks were split between introducing a framework one might find useful and describing a solution at such a high level it was basically language agnostic. If the event’s purpose was to gather a bunch of people in a room and introduce a few speakers to them, then I’d say it succeeded wildly. Three of the event’s scheduled six hours were dedicated to social time. That’s not a complaint, but it’s a little shy of their goal of being “hardcore”.

On an irrelevant note, a lot more women were present, proportionately, than at any other software conference I’ve attended. Maybe because women like ruby and python more? Maybe because the event was both free and pitched as more of a social thing? Didn’t feel like being the guy to go around and ask, but if somebody wanted to promote women in tech, more events like this would be a good start.