Last Friday and Saturday I was attending to the Locos X Rails Conference. I have had some time to reflect on my experiences and put a few photos online. This was the first Ruby on Rails related conference in Argentina I have attended and it was a truly enlightening experience. I had the pleasure of meeting some very interesting people who share the same passions and exchange experiences and ideas.

On the first day, Obie Fernandez open the conference with your keynote talk, later Fabio Akita talk about I18N in Rails, Evan Henshaw Plath provided an interesting insight into oAuth and your implementation on Rails, finally DHH via video conference participate in a Q&A session with the public of the conference.

On the final day of the conference Luis Lavena talk about the challenges to implement Ruby across platforms, later Emilio Tagua show some techniques to Debugging Rails applications following by Chad DePue and your session about ActiveResource and in the final session of the conference Yehuda Katz talk about the merge between Rails and Merb.

Regards the venue, facilities, and catering I think that the Locos X Rails organizers did a good job. Overall Locos X Rails was an excellent event, and I’m lucky to have attended.

Yesterday the Agile Open 2009 took place on the Centro Cultural Borges in Buenos Aires, this was an open space conference attended by around 100 agile enthusiasts, it was the first Open Space conference I participated and I must say, I really enjoyed the format.

I also had the chance to meet with many people who share the same problems, concerns and doubts and exchange experiences and ideas.

Many thanks to the organizers, I can’t wait for the next Agile Open.

The notion of apply “design” to software development is becoming more and more important, but this requires a process of adaptation, training and discovery.

The Design Maturity Model proposed by Jess McMullin describes five levels and their behavior to guide us in the way of a proper incorporation of the design in our development processes and identify where is our stage of maturity.

Level 1 – We are not aware of the design

• Design is not recognized as something of value
• We design without any basis
• Design is put aside for things more “important”

Level 2 – Style

• Design is added only to be “cool” or to follow some trend
• Design is added at the last minute for a question purely aesthetic

Level 3 – Form and Function

• Design is implemented to improve certain features
• We use “design” to add a limited functionality in small increments of development on existing applications

Level 4 – Design as a way to solve problems

• Design allows us to find new opportunities and approaches  to solve problems
• Design allows us to narrow down the options to attack a specific problem

Level 5 – Fully oriented design

• Design is redefining the challenges facing the organization
• Design sets the agenda
• Design is part of any strategy
• Innovation is embedded in the culture

This is my interpretation of the DMM, I hope will help you to know at which level are currently.