Code with Jason

In this episode I talk with Riccardo Carlesso, Google developer advocate and co-founder of Rubycon, a Ruby conference held in Rimini, Italy in May 2026. Riccardo explains how a joke about PyCon became the conference's name. He covers why they set it up as a Swiss non-profit, and what it's like to deal with taxes in several European countries as an unpaid organizer. He also describes the event itself: no paid speaking slots for sponsors, tagliatelle and free wine at lunch, and a toga party on the beach. We also get into the shared "red" root of Ruby and Rubicon, and SRE toil. Rubycon returns in 2028, after the team brings Euruko to Modena in 2027.

Links:
- Rubycon
- Rubycon 2026 Talks
- Riccardo Carlesso
- Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Travis Dockter, organizer of Blastoff Rails in Albuquerque. When Sin City Ruby and RailsConf both ended, Travis decided to start his own conference. We discuss how cheaply you can run a conference outside a big city (about $2,400 for a two-day venue), why roughly 40 attendees turned out to be the right size, and attendees who flew in from Brazil and Puerto Rico. We also talk about the "stone soup" way of having an impact on the community, giving people plenty of time between talks to socialize, and how a single-track conference gives everyone a shared experience.

Links:
- Blastoff Rails
- Blastoff Rails on X
- Blastoff Rails on Bluesky
- Travis on LinkedIn
- Travis on X
- Travis on Bluesky
- Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Julien Danjou, CEO of Mergify, about merge queues: why PRs that pass CI separately can still break main together, and how testing changes in a queue keeps main green. We discuss how Mergify grew out of OpenStack and open-source networks, why a "book a call" link beat a Stripe checkout for sales, selling on ROI after the 2022 budget cuts, and how AI-driven code volume is making merge queues more necessary.

Links:
- Mergify
- Julien Danjou's Blog
- The Origin Story of Merge Queues
- SaturnCI
- Nonsense Monthly

In this episode, I talk with Kevin Dias about his journey from investment banking to programming in Japan, building Ambiki for speech language pathologists, and tackling feature requests with a problem-first mindset.

Links:
- Ambiki
- Kevin's Personal Site
- The Problem-First Method (book)
- Kevin on LinkedIn
- ProZ.com
- Nonsense Monthly

In this episode I talk with Roy Tomeij, co-founder of AppSignal, about how AppSignal started in 2012 as a Rails-only APM tool when everyone used New Relic, and how it grew to support Elixir and other languages. Roy explains how its first customers came from co-founder Thijs biking around Amsterdam, why usability was the big selling point, and why aiming for "80% of what competitors have" works. We also talk about brand marketing for small companies: sponsoring conferences like Rails World, handing out stroopwafels, and investing in community without measurable ROI.

Links:
- AppSignal
- Roy Tomeij's Website
- Roy Tomeij on LinkedIn
- Nonsense Monthly