RubyNation

One of the interesting things that's happening in the Ruby community is the sprouting of regional conferences. Because Ruby is still nascent in the Enterprise space, it's hard to conduct conferences (especially regional ones like No Fluff, Just Stuff) because individuals probably have to pay for themselves (rather than having a corporation pay for them). This is a clear case of developers seeing the next thing they want to do, but companies lagging behind them. But Ruby (and Rails) has some pretty sophisticated stuff, which lends itself well to a conference. Thus, the rise of the regional conferences, many of them basically operating as a non-profit, trying just to cover expenses with the conference fees. And that describes RubyNation on August 1st & 2nd, where I'm delivering the opening keynote. It speaks highly of the Ruby community that the conference organizers are willing to put in a vast amount of effort (and believe me, putting on a conference is a huge undertaking) just for the love of the technology. That's a rare thing indeed, and shows what a wonderful place in general that the Ruby community is. I'm happy to speak at these regional conferences because I like the passion for technology on display. It's fun being around people who really care about technology, and love to debate it, discuss it, and generally wallow around in it (which is one of the reasons that I love ThoughtWorks so much). So, even if you have to get on a plane, come to Ruby Nation and wallow around with me. And, it that's no enough incentive, come because Stuart Halloway is making a relatively rare appearance as the closing keynoter. Should be a great couple of days.