Delightful Reveal #54

“I just wanna touch your hearts, though. I want to touch your hearts as deeply as I can.”

What we did:

• We’re taking Madison+ Ruby on the road in a series of pre-show events! We’re partnering with Whop, one of the new Rails companies Irina shared in her RailsConf 2024 keynote, for our first event on June 4th in Brooklyn, NY at Domino with W. Landon Gray on deck to speak and maybe a special guest or two. RSVPs required due to limited seating!
• A team of four of us represented as sponsors and attendees of RailsConf 2024 in Detroit. Met and spoke with so many #RubyFriends new and old
• Delivered a few last-minute design needs while on-site at RailsConf 2024
• Started creating a slide deck to showcase who Flagrant is/what we do so we can share it at future conferences/events
• Spoke at Midwest Music Expo #7 in Chicago on a panel exploring The Impact of AI on the Creation and Marketing of Music
• Experimented with a new recording/meeting software for our Developer Round Table
• Set up Pundit, a Ruby library for managing authorization in Rails applications
• Onboarded two additional tour operators / beta testers into production (for a total of 8 tour operators).
• Reviewed highlights from onboarding efforts thus far. Planned a “watch party” to review highlights from onboarding as a team
• Discussed API-related questions
• Interviewed two “supplier” interviews (with organizations that sell into the group travel and tourism space)
• Completed an initial round of seven interviews to inform a product management-focused consulting/coaching effort
• Exhibited Training Tracker at the Food Safety Summit in Chicago
• Two of us participated in the Doyenne Group’s Triple Threat Venture Training a 20-week virtual program designed to help women-led ventures scale their businesses, secure funding, and connect with essential resources and networks.
• Built out a new locations page on the Madison+ Ruby website showcasing some of the excellent things to do in Madison
• Building out marketing assets for a texting platform that was designed a few months ago
• Presenting and handing off to developers work that is trying to solve for user friction
• Last minute prep work for the Flagrant Summit happening in the Catskills (Upstate NY)!

What we’re reading:

• Loveless by Alice Oseman
• The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson
• The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami
• After The Quake by Haruki Murakami
• The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar
• Honor by Thrity Umrigar
• The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
• Sword Catcher by Cassanda Clare
• Pretty Good House by Michael Maines, Daniel Kolbert, Emily Mottram, Christopher Briley
• The Victorian Internet (because Yossef told me to)
• Camp! By Paul Baker
• I had a couple drinks and woke up with 1,000 nerds
• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
• Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside by Nick Offerman

What we’re watching:

• The School of Chocolate
•  The Giro d’Italia
• “Coded” documentary about J.C. Leyendecker
• NHL playoffs
• Make Some Noise
• Game Changer
• The Trial of Christine Keeler
• How This 300-Year-Old Pastel Stick Maker Creates Nearly 2,000 Colors — More Than Its Competitors
• Wish
• Dead Boy Detectives
• Bridgerton S3

What we’re listening to:

• “To Say Nothing of the Dog”, by Connie Willis (trying out audiobooks!)
• Taylor Acorn
• Mars by D.O 
• Good Luck, Babe! by Chappel Roan
• Blame Brett - The Beaches
• Sunnan - My Love For You (Official Music Video)
• [yeule - ‘Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl’ (From ‘I Saw the TV Glow’) [Official Visualizer]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PshxeE7Ot7c)
• Vaughn - “Supernatural” OFFICIAL VERSION
• [Jana Mila - “Somebody New” [Official Audio]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYv6S2s0Qp0)
• A playlist of 90’s hip/hop Rn’B hits that I(Kelly) made for the impending road trip with Amanda, whether she likes it or not
• Kid Pix 2 (All Sounds) - Mac Sounds
• Mystline by Nujabes

What we’re interested in:

• Starting Hades 2
• Future Anticipated Questions
• The Contestent
• Riot - The OCaml runtime for software artisans (the real “ML”)
• ​​Welcome to TILDE.CLUB
• The Grug Brained Developer A layman’s guide to thinking like the self-aware smol brained 
• PassivHaus / Passive House

What we’re struggling with:

• packing up and leaving a home behind
• the limbo feeling of selling one house and not yet purchasing another
• Needing to find a new dentist
• Standing desk setup
• Being away from the cat and the garden for a week.
• metadata
• deciding which book to read next
• Lots of break-ins in my neighborhood

What we’re buying:

• Foldable travel slides
• Travel size toiletries 
• Ticket to Cabaret in NYC
• A pomegranate tree

What we’re celebrating:

• Seeing each other in person!
• Freezer restocked with dumplings
• Friends finishing grad school 🎓
• A dog recovering nicely and not needing to be on antibiotics anymore
• A new professional certification in AR/VR product development
• New client opportunities
• Getting to see a full rainbow
• A new lemon mug by Stephanie Haines, and getting to learn about new ceramic ideas or techniques via touch and sipping coffee
• A nibling who’s gotten super into crafting paper dragon puppets
• Madison Reading Projects unveiling the new bus with Kelly’s illustrations on it: news

If you’re looking for a team to help you discover the right thing to build and help you build it, get in touch.