RailsConf always boasts an exciting variety of talks that highlight the creativity and interdisciplinary nature of the Ruby community. As a tech sector newcomer, I thought it would be fun to curate a series highlighting speakers whose stories about their experiences in tech captured my curiosity. Read on for today’s speaker spotlight…
Title of Talk:
Building an offline experience with a Rails-powered PWA
Speaker:
Alicia Rojas
How did you get into Ruby?
I started coding at a remote school during the 2020 lockdown. Ruby on Rails was in the study program so I did it :)
What’s your favorite part about working on Open Source Software?
The spirit of collaboration and collective learning that characterizes communities of users and contributors. In OSS communities you often find people willing to help who ask for nothing in return.
What’s your least favorite part about working on OSS?
The fact that some good projects cease to be sustainable because they lack a strong community to sustain them. Most companies do not consider contributing to OSS as part of their responsibilities even though they profit from it. Many great and useful projects die because maintainers can no longer work on them due to their paid jobs.
What inspired you to give this talk?
I am motivated to share what I have learned and encourage more developers to use technology to create products that improve the lives of people who are not normally considered by the industry, such as rural people, and also to use our tools to address the climate crisis. Additionally, attending RailsConf last year made me realize that my level of knowledge was not as basic as I thought, and also that the representation of Latin American women giving talks was very low.
What do you want people to take away from it?
- Basic and practical knowledge about how to turn a rails app into a PWA using the MVC pattern and Hotwire.
- To become more aware of potencial non-conventional audiences for our apps and their challenges.
What are you most looking forward to at this conference?
Sharing with the Rails community again :)
Do you have any other fun plans in Atlanta during the in-person conference week?
Nothing as of yet