What's the best Ruby conference you've ever attended?

Community
1

Of all the Ruby conferences that you’ve attended before, which one stood out the most?

Share the name and year of the conference and what made it valuable for you.

Looking forward to hearing your experiences!

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I have attended two Ruby conferences so far: Balkan Ruby 2024 and EuRuKo 2024. EuRuKo was especially fun for me. It was held in Sarajevo. As a Turkish citizen, we can travel there without a visa, so many Turkish developers were able to attend the conference. The Ruby Türkiye community provided great support.

It was great to see old friends from Turkey and other countries. My wife and I also had the opportunity to visit Mostar and other tourist places in Bosnia.

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3

Probably dating myself here, but BaRuCo 2013 (! :grin:) still stands out in my mind. Single track, good venue, good food, Matz keynote, got to mingle with all the Ruby hotshots of the day, Barcelona is great.

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4

All the MagmaConf conferences were awesome back in the day! I attended a couple of years and had a blast with awesome speakers, venue and community.

Found this article by @vicmaster that summarizes the experience quite well.

I’m sure that @manuel.vidaurre and @igmarin can confirm too :slight_smile:

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5

The best Ruby conference (and truthfully, the only Ruby conference) I’ve attended was Rails World Toronto in 2024.

When I compare and contrast this to other conferences, the reason it stands out to me is two fold:

  1. The hallway track was amazing. Even pre-event, the Campfire was exceptional and I had the ability to meet some great people ahead of the conference. Post-event, I’ve been able to maintain many of those connections, forming some into friendships. A+.

  2. The event itself was fantastic. Coordinated shuttles to/from event + afterparty. Scheduled afterparties. A great venue. A great lineup of speakers. Fantastic food.

To ground this with a comparison, a few weeks prior I attended a very large tech conference in downtown Toronto, reportedly exceeding 30,000 daily attendees. It felt very unfriendly, with everyone being herded between rooms, with no seating, no personality, etc. The talks were all submarines, with only 1 of the talks I attended not just a talk masquerading as a sales pitch. I’m sure some people gained something from the conference, but it definitely wasn’t me.

Rails World tho? 100%.

I’m hopeful for an XO Ruby Toronto/Montreal/something as well, if it happens.

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