Before I even *start* talking about the Rails group and the presentation, I feel the pressing need to discuss the incredible shirt of Curtis Schofield.  Beyond James Kovacs...beyond Kyle Baley's ruggedized style...*this* is the sort of thing that more developers need to have the *courage* to wear!!  If anything, it definitely does point out that this Rails stuff is all about *style*.  I would note that James Kovacs is in this room and looking *MIGHTY JEALOUS*. 

I have to say this had to be the most courageous presentation ever.  Not only did these guys pull stuff together in a *very* short time-frame, but then the projector did not seem to work with the Macs for whatever reason.  Kind of funny considering how awesome the Mac normally works with most displays and presentations.

James Kovacs update: keeps looking at Curtis and waving a fist?  Is that some sort of gang symbol? 

Anyway, despite this nearly turning into an ad-hoc Donald and Justice presentation for a brief point in time, the Rails guys pulled together admirably - installed Rails on a windows laptop and then basically winged the *entirety* of the presentation.  Thanks very much to Donald for loaning his laptop for the use of the presentation?

I kind of wish James would quit talking about how "I'm going to kick Curtis Schofield's honky ass for wearing *MY* shirt" so loudly...I'm trying to concentrate man!!

While a tiny bit of this built off of the previous Ruby presentation, the Rails guys really made it their own and considering *nothing* was working as planned this was one *HELL* of an improvisation.  Although holy cow guys, we need some bigger fonts!!  ;)

James is now in tears and sobbing.  Man, I just don't get these Calgary guys.  John doesn't look too thrilled about having to hold him either.  Oh well, James works pretty hard - the strain was bound to crack him soon.

Back to the presentation: this didn't admittedly look *quite* as simple as I was expecting but that's more due to the Rails guys having to use Windows instead of their native Mac stuff.  I really like the simplicity of Rails but I definitely need to explore it in greater detail.

Discussion of IDEs: this is maybe the main thing holding Rails back; no formal IDE.  RadRails for Eclipse, Sapphire Steel for VS.NET, and the unfortunately named RideME. 

Overall, this effort was *seriously* heroic!!!  I have seen presenters before who *crumble* when things go wrong, and these guys did not at *all*.  Definitely something I want to see more of.