My wife Emily and I have been living in the Washington, D.C. metro area for a few years now. We’ve absolutely loved the time we’ve spent out here - flying in to DC feels like coming home (a second one, anyway) at this point. We originally moved out here for Em to attend graduate school at GWU, and we’re thrilled to say she’s finally done! Graduation ceremonies all this weekend.

The DC area is lovely! Looking forward however, we’ve decided that at the end of May we’ll be returning to our homeland of Minnesota.

I don’t usually post miscellaneous personal things on this little blog, and I’m not going to sit here and reminisce about our time in DC. I’m not going to bore you with my experiences moving from the Twin Cities, in my opinion a rather sequestered mecca in the north, to a major city on the crowded east coast (but seriously - I’ve thought about the topic a ton and would love to grab a beer and chat about it if you care!).

Instead, I’ll just want to take one moment and thank a particular group of people that have influenced my life and career immensely in the short time I’ve been here.

Thank you, DC Rubyists!

The DC metro is absolutely spoiled with such fantastic Ruby user groups and events. I really enjoyed attending and giving talks at what I know is only a small subset of them! Arlington Ruby, the DC Ruby Users Group, United Silver Spring Ruby, Reston on Rails (new!), NoVA Code & Coffee (not specifically Ruby related, but many Rubyists attend), Alexandria Code & Coffee…the list goes on. DC is also home to events like RubyNation, Ruby for Good, RetroRuby, and Ruby DCamp.

At these events I’ve met the best kind of people. It’s a tightly knit, friendly, completely awesome group of people that unsurprisingly has a number of big names you’d recognize from the greater Ruby community.

There are too many names to truly thank here, but I’d like to especially thank Chris Sexton and Sean Marcia (Arlington Ruby, Ruby for Good, and RetroRuby organizers), Geoff Harcourt (aka Thoughtbot’s current one-man band in DC, DCRUG co-organizer), and a, number, of, engineers, at CustomInk too long to type out. They’re the best of the best and contribute a lot of their time to the local and greater Ruby communities.

In short, if you’re ever around the DC area make time to get to these events and meet these lovely people - you won’t regret it. I’ve already scheduled my return visit to this fantastic community that’s made me not only a better developer, but a better person.