I landed in Berlin this morning for RailsConf Europe. On Thursday, I’ll be giving a slightly-rewritten version of my Small Things, Loosely Joined and Written Fast talk where I focus on using tools like single sign-on, multi-database AR and better testing to achieve more robust applications. Having never been to Germany before, I was happy to finally arrive. The most obvious difference between Berlin and my other European travels so far is that, even though everybody here speaks English (just like everywhere else I’ve traveled) they don’t subtitle all the signs and written material with English. Which is quite refreshing, but makes it difficult for the jetlagged and underprepared Americans fresh off the plane to navigate. Luckily for me, the bus terminals have great maps.

Tonight I’ll be exploring the city, and tomorrow I’ll be taking in some talks and getting ready for my own on Thursday. I’m especially interested in Frederick Cheung and Paul Butcher’s talk “Intellectual Scalability”, which, as described, sounds like a pretty close match to mine. Luckily, their’s is the day before mine, and I’m pretty good at changing my talks at the last minute. Should be fun!