The registration for the – again – biggest Ruby-on-Rails conference in the US is now open: RailsConf 2009. O’Reilly organizes the conference again. but this time it’s not Portland but Las Vegas where the rails community meets again. Las Vegas is not only the US center of gambling and entertainment – it’s also one of the much sought-after conference locations
If you register before March 16th 11:59pm you’ll get an early-bird bonus and save 200 USD.
All rails-pros who want to share their knowledge and give a presentation at the conference, the Call for Participation deadline is extended to February 17th 2009. So you have to be fast!
The conference will be at the Las Vegas Hilton from May 4th to 7th 2009.

Viva Las Vegas!

Sources: rubyonrails.com, RailsConf.com

Pratik Naik from the Rails core team just published the announcement for a new Ruby on Rails hackfest: The person with the most patches merged into the core at the end of the month wins. In August, O’Reilly will handout a free pass to the RailsConf Europe. Keep on coding!

From Sept. 2nd to Sept. 4th 2008 the Ruby on Rails community will meet at the RailsConf Europe. It’s the third RailsConf in Europe and it will located in Berlin/Germany again. Last year, more than 800 Rails enthusiasts joined the conference – a great developer community event – and always the chance to drink your coffee besides one of the creative minds of the Rails Core team There is nothing that can replace the face-to-face communication within the community. So, I can warmly recommend joining the conference in Berlin to every Rails developer who is able to get there. And all those, who want to develop elegant web applications and do not work with Ruby on Rails yet – they should join us more than ever.
But there is an other group I miss a lot on Ruby on Rails conferences: Designers. Why? Because great application and interaction design and good web-application usability can only be achieved if developers and designers work closely together. That is why developers need to know something about design and designers need to know something about development.

So, I’m really happy that my  proposal, focussing on that issue, was accepted at the conference. In my double role as a designer and developer I’ll talk about

DESIGN ON RAILS FOR USABILITY … Or why designers should start to understand code and developers should start to sketch and use design methods.

I’m really glad be a part of the conferece in September – and to meet all these interesting people – and hopefully some codedifferent-blogreaders, too And please don’t forget to join Bratwurst-on-Rails on the evening before the conference starts.

The berlin Ruby User Group put their shoulders to the wheel for the Ruby-on-Rails-community: At the Kalkscheune, nearby the conference location of the RailsConf Europe 2008 they invite all Ruby-on-Rails-freaks to a socializing and networking event.

Last year it was a great and fun event – you’ll finde some pictures at Flickr. A great developer community shoud know how to party – and there is one thing I know for shure: Yes, we can

So, for all Ruby-on-Rails enthusiasts, who are in Berlin on the first of September – one day before the RailsConf Europe starts: Sign up for Bratwurst-on-Rails! See you there!

By now: Warm thanks in advance to the Ruby User Group Berlin for organizing this event!

Looking back into an extremely successful year 2007 with 1,600 participants at the RailsConf 2007 and 800 participants at the RailsConf Europe 2007, the year 2008 will be the year of the Rails-2.0 conferences.

April 4th/5th 2008: ScotlandOnRails, Edinburgh, Scotland
http://scotlandonrails.com
conference language: English

May 29th – June 1st 2008: RailsConf 2008, Portland, Oregon, USA
http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/
organized by O’Reilly – conference language: English

June 9th/10th 2008: Rails-Konferenz.de, Frankfurt, Germany
http://www.rails-konferenz.de
conference language: German

June 10th 2008: Ruby en Rails 2008, Amsterdam, Netherlands
http://2008.rubyenrails.nl
conference language: Dutch

September 2nd-4th 2008: RailsConf Europe, Berlin, Germany
http://en.oreilly.com/railseurope2008/
organized by O’Reilly – conference language: English

There are probably a lot more conferences focussing on Rails … just drop a comment so the list can grow