Communities, Publishers, and Conferences.

JavaOne [h]as a *very* different feel than that of a Ruby show, obviously :P — Leah Silber

Really starting to believe that small, short, regional conferences are the way to go. — Andrew O'Brien

I think events of many sizes can be worthwhile -- they just have different profiles and risks/rewards. — David Black

Some of the discussion recently on Twitter has made me think about how we organized MountainWest RubyConf. We've been very focused on keeping it intimate and engaging. From the comments I hear, it seems like we did a good job. It certainly feels like we've for the community behind us, and that can only help us get better each yer.

It also reminded me of some of my earlier writing about publishing. I think there's a lot of overlap in building community for a conference and for a book/publisher.

To me, I guess it boils down to conferences and books with strong ties to the community feel better. What do you think?

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This post is part of a collection of articles about Publishing, Growing Markets, and Books.

Summer Conferences

There are two conferences that I’m not going to be able to go to this summer that I really wish I could find a way to swing: The Erlang eXchange which will be in London on June 26-27 and The Ruby Hoedown in Huntsville, Alabama on August 8-9.

Erlang was a hot, swirling subcurrent at the 2008 MountainWest RubyConf. I get the feeling that there’s going to be a growing culture of cross-over between the Ruby and Erlang worlds. The Erlang eXchange is a two-track conference with a number of great looking talks covering topics like: Erlang D-Trace, Robotics and Erlang, Web programming and AJAX with Erlang, and Erlang Refactoring. The one shining light is that I’m hearing rumors of a Silicon Valley edition of this conference next April.

The Hoedown was a great success last year (check out the videos to see just how cool it was). And this year looks to be a great follow-up. With keynotes by David Black and Chris Wanstrath and talks about mocking, testing, and Ruby best practices, this should be a great way to improve everyone’s Ruby hacking skills.

EY HackFest at MWRC!

Some time ago, I told you that one of the sponsors was planning to do something pretty cool, and I think you’ll agree that they’ve done it in spades:

Engine Yard will be hosting a 24/7 Hackfest at MWRC 08’ – we’ve got a killer suite at the Hilton, expert developers of all varieties, and an open door policy. Hacking, Talking, TV watching, whatever – there’ll be good company, food and drinks, and a great space to hang. More details to follow closer to the conference – see you there…

the Engine Yard blog.

There are a lot of other great reasons to come too. But, there’s just over one week left to register.

Registration is going pretty well. We’ve registered folks from as far away as Norway and New Zealand, not to mention people from all over the USA. There are still seats left though, so if you’d like to come out and spend some time with a lot of great Rubyists don’t was any time … come on over and get your seats.

erubycon Contest

Continuing my happy tradition of letting readers win cool stuff, I have another contest to get started. Before I spill the beans (and tell you what you need to do to win), I’d like to fill in a little bit of background.

Last year, RailsConf and several smaller conferences joined RubyConf on the list of places discriminating rubyists might be found. This year, the regional Ruby conference scene has exploded offering a wealth of opportunities to get together with other ruby-folk and learn about what other people are doing with our favorite language. This summer promises something new though—erubycon. From July 16th until the 18th in Colombus, Ohio attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about using Ruby and Rails in enterprise settings.

Joe O’Brien and graciously put up some erubycon related prizes for a conference contest. All you need to do to enter is write a blog post about how you’re using Ruby or Rails in the enterprise, and post a link to it below. On 1st of June, Joe and I will read through all the entries and pick our favorite three. Our top pick will win free registration to the conference, and the two runners-up will receive erubycon T-Shirts.

Interested? Then get writing!