Ruby Heroes Award Ceremony Gregg Pollack (Rails Envy)

Gregg gave out the Ruby Heroes Awards:

Brian Helmkamp for Webrat
Aman Gupta for EventMachine and AMPQ
Luis Lavena for One-click Ruby Installer (for Windows)
Pat Allen for Rails Camp and thinking_sphinx
Dan Kubb for DataMapper
John Nunemaker for HTTParty and RailsTips (the blog)

Keynote Timothy Ferriss (The 4-hour Workweek)

The keynote was run as a conversation between David Heinemeier Hansson and Tim Ferriss.

Tim worked from 7am to 9pm when he realized that his income had no meaning. He took some time off and during that time he limited his work to 2 hours every Monday of checking his email. Profits went up 30%. Turns he was way over managing everything.

I’ve read the 4-hour work week and it’s a fun and wild ride. The title is a bit of an eye-grabbing misnomer. It’s more about viewing time as valuable commodity.

Tim practices an information diet. There’s way more information in this digital world than you can possibly consume. He limits his consumption severely and it hasn’t affected his performance at his job.

“You want to have rituals and conventions for everything that is not part of your core competencies.”

The sound was a little low, so it was kinda hard to hear and I think that made the crowd a little restless. Oh well, I’m glad they keep trying to bring in outside people every year.

If you’re a Tim Ferriss hater, here’s an funny rant against him and his practices:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/01/08/5-time-management-tricks-i-learned-from-years-of-hating-tim-ferriss/