Two Upcoming Ruby Events: Euruko and MountainWest RubyConf
Euruko 2009 - The European Ruby Conference - May 9-10, Barcelona, Spain
Euruko is Europe's annual Ruby conference. In 2008, it went down a storm in Prague, Czech Republic, with over 300 Rubyists attending, including Matz and the JRuby guys! Plans are now well underway for Euruko 2009, now scheduled for May 9-10, 2009 and being held in Barcelona, Spain. Matz is, again, confirmed as an attendee, so if you're a European Ruby developer and fancy meeting Matz, this is the ideal chance.
Registration is not yet open but you can subscribe to the event's feed (note to event organizers - please get some sort of pre-registration up before getting us to mention your event - you're losing registrations!). Last year the conference only cost about €30 or so to attend, so I expect the cost will be similarly low this year.
There's currently a call for papers. They're looking for people who want to talk on topics such as non-conventional uses of Ruby, interesting development practices and techniques, useful Ruby libraries, and cross-sector uses for Ruby. The call for papers finishes on February 28.
MountainWest RubyConf - March 13-14, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
The successful MountainWest RubyConf returns for a third year! It takes place on March 13 and 14, 2009 in the Salt Lake City Public Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. The line of speakers has already been announced with Jim Weirich, Jeremy Evans (Sequel), James Britt (with a potentially exciting presentation called "Wii Ruby"), James Edward Gray II, Yehuda Katz, and more.
Tickets are $100 and registration is open.
Support from: acts_as_conference; - A two day Rails conference in Orlando, Florida on February 6 and 7. Only $125, free food, a great venue, and lots of top Rails speakers including DHH. Click here to learn more.
January 17, 2009 at 9:42 am
It's worth noting that Scotland on Rails is returning on March 26th-28th this year after an astounding debut in 2008. We have an incredible line up of speakers, including Marcel Molina, Michael Feathers, Dave Thomas, Yehuda Katz and many more! It is going to be the best Ruby conference this year!
Tickets are £175 and registration is open.
January 17, 2009 at 11:18 am
Re: you're losing registrations - yeah... maybe not a big sample, but quite a few guys I spent some great time with during the last 2 EuRuKos are not coming, and I am starting to have serious doubts about participating too (attending FOWA Dublin and Scotland on Rails instead). EuRuKo used to be about the community and socializing (low cost, light organization, ad-hoc etc) rather than a 'real' conference w/ big name speakers (serious bucks, strict (possibly multi-track) schedule, strong up front planning).
I think the latest EuRuKo in Prague (kind of unintentionally) started to migrate from the community style towards a 'real' conference - but the current, 2009 one looks like neither to me. It is not a community effort for sure - it's absolutely opaque to non-Spanish Rubyists - and it also doesn't look like a RubyConf style conference to me (maybe it is, but it's not communicated at all) or something else (which is again not communicated).
All in all, I think it's a communication breakdown, which will distract many of the old-school EuRuKo guys (maybe new ones will replace them though) and I don't see this as a particularly good thing.
January 17, 2009 at 2:40 pm
@Peter
We'll do a community-driven conference, and we want to keep the tradition. There's going to be a single track and an upper bound of 250 people on purpose. We have not communicated much until now because really there has not been very much to announce. We've been bootstrapping stuff.
Now that things are taking shape we plan to keep people up to date via the mailing list. Of course there's the blog of the conference, we are all in twitter, etc.
January 17, 2009 at 10:29 pm
@Xavier
IMHO keeping up the tradition is possible only if you talk to/cooperate with guys who have "created" the tradition. I kinda miss that this time.
January 17, 2009 at 11:33 pm
@m4r14nn4
Yeah. We've been in contact with a few people indeed. We have chosen our dates and venue according to the tradition of the EuRuKo. Weekend, one track, small conference.
There was the option to go big. There were people that suggested we could do that because there's a trend. We didn't.
We are not being secretive or anything. Please don't take us wrong. We just see no point in discussing which is the better venue in Barcelona in an international mailing list. I've never seen that and wouldn't make sense to me. What we did instead was to stay in contact with veterans to know the most important guidelines and make the right choice for the venue. We think we've got a superb venue and at the same time we'll stay in the price range, which is another tradition we wanted to keep: cheap, 30€ with a very small expected variation (to be decided).
We appreciate your comments, they may signal there's a need to move things in public. We'll announce stuff as new things happen. Of course we'd be glad to receive your suggestions either in the mailing list or direct emails. Really, this is a conference for the community. It is being organized by volunteers from the Spanish Ruby community, and you can be certain we'll do our best to come with a first-rate EuRuKo.
January 18, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Barcelona is good, but sooth to say we need feeds and papers as well. Extremely interested into 'non-conventional uses of Ruby, interesting development practices and techniques
January 19, 2009 at 12:10 am
>What we did instead was to stay in contact with veterans
I happen to be in touch with a few Euruko veterans and none of them feels "contacted", nevertheless "stayed in contact with".
Flaming aside, good that you've finally cleared all the details and set the dates. :)
I'd really like to come, just please, make it worth the effort.
January 19, 2009 at 12:11 am
s/nevertheless/let alone
January 19, 2009 at 1:47 am
Guys, we don't really understand your reaction. Haven't we outlined a conference like it is customary in EuRuKo? We've just bootstraped the basic stuff, what did you expect at this point?
Respect for previous EuRuKos is a must for us, that goes without saying. That's why we've defined that kind of conference: small, weekend, one track, cheap. And for 30€ or so (that's the plan) we've come up with a beautiful venue that provides streaming, recording, wifi, etc. Even ~60 outlets!
So at this early stage, what's the complain exactly? Would you expect that we discussed the options for the venue with all the day to day details and mails going back and forth in an open international mailing list?
January 19, 2009 at 11:02 am
I can't speak for other people and I'm not a veteran anyway.
Just personally missed some early info about your progress, but now that you've put it on the 'site for everyone, I'm cool with that :)
My only remaining problem is the remoteness of Spain (at least for polish people), but that's not your falt ;)
January 19, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Hi all,
there may be a couple of misunderstandings goin' on? and a *strong potential* to a heated discussion I'd say :)
I guess people living 1000 km away from Spain generally don't have the need to participate in discussion "which is the best venue for Euruko in Barcelona". That would be ridiculous.
What seems to be the case, is that Rubyists lack the information about the whole thing. One thing I have discovered when organizing last Euruko is that *keeping the information flow* is absolutely essential. Even when there's not so much information to flow, that is. You still have to do it. Otherwise lots of people feel disenchanted and maybe even alienated.
Such is a sentiment I've met from time to time when in touch with different Rubyists recently. Of course, you can say it's not grounded and even stoopid, but the feeling is real and therefore a fact :)
(An example: Things like "EUR 30 (or so)" are precisely it. Last Euruko was EUR 20. The difference between EUR 30 and EUR 20 is *of course* negligible. But it is a difference and "or so" is also "further negotiable" :) So this is prime opportunity to throw couple of e-mails and other messages around and get feedback. The same for the venue. An the same for the whole thing -- otherwise you can end up on the defensive and have to explain all sorts of stupid things, like "it makes no sense to discuss venue in Barcelona"...)
Best!,
Karel
January 19, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I think a problem is that organizing things by committee is extremely difficult to orchestrate. It's nearly always better for someone to be "in charge" or leading the way and making tough decisions, even if those decisions are unpopular and need to be changed.
I seem to recall the discussions for Euruko 2008 were wavering around a lot until Karel stood up to the plate, put his neck on the line and took charge of the organization. He probably didn't make all the right decisions people wanted, but having one person who can act as a spokesman and direct the conversation really helps a lot.
January 19, 2009 at 3:42 pm
But we are going to do this. Please this has just started give us a little confidence! There was nothing relevant to say until now, that's all.
When I said "or so" about the price all I was saying is we have not closed the price (so I do not really know the exact figure) but we want to keep it in that range. And you have to read that in the context of this thread, which is to show that we are trying to define a conference within the parameters of EuRuKo.
The people in charge of EuRuKo is SRUG, the Spanish Ruby Users Group. We have a good tempo, have the needed patience to do the right choices, the needed pragmatism to move things forward as a group, and the right _values_.
The conference is in May and we have just setup the basic stuff that let us talk about "something tangible", which are dates, venue, blog, call for papers. From now on we'll publish and move more stuff as usual in any event.
We plan to open registration somewhere in February, but in the meantime dates are already known so people can reserve those days anyway if they are interested.
January 19, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Xavier: Yeah, just keep going on, keep releasing news, and keep on with the organization. If there is one thing I've learned from watching events being organized, it's that there are always complaints and grumbles in the organization. I don't know of any event that went 100% smoothly at this stage.
As long as you keep going and the event goes ahead, it will all work out! :) Good luck!