Ruby with an Accent - Organising a Regional Ruby Conference
by Alan Francis
This year, I co-organised Scotland on Rails ( http://scotlandonrails.com/ ) – the first regional
Ruby/Rails conference in the UK. We attracted around 100 delegates and 20 speakers from all over the
world – both local developers, and more famous names (including Koz, Jim Weirich, Bruce Williams,
and David A Black).
By all accounts the conference was a great success for the delegates, the speakers and us as
organisers.
We’ll talk about the basics – like choosing the venue and the dates, but we’ll also cover some stuff
that’s a little more involved – like choosing keynotes, collecting payments, organising a charity
day, and organising shirts and programs.
If you’re interested in community building, and you think your local user group could run a
conference, the talk will help you make your own mistakes instead of ours.
About Alan Francis
I used to be a process consultant working with XP and Agile. I was the third independent signatory
on the Agile Manifesto. I spent a long time working primarily with Java, and now I’m going to be
doing Ruby development pretty much full-time working with EdgeCase and FiveRuns.
I’ve worked for ObjectMentor, ThoughtWorks and eXoftware and with clients like Coca-Cola, JPMorgan,
Egg and AOL.
I’m proud Ruby/Rails contributor by way of three small patches for Rails and one for RubyGems, I
spoke on XP and Rails at RailsConf2007 and organised the Scotland On Rails conference in 2008 and
2009.