Press releases

RailsConf 2009 Opens Call for Participation: Extended Review Period Will Include Up-to-the-minute Materials

Press release: October 14, 2008

Sebastopol, CA, October 14, 2008--RailsConf 2009 will gather the Ruby on Rails community in Las Vegas May 4-7, 2009, at the Las Vegas Hilton. Ruby Central, Inc. and O'Reilly Media, Inc. have opened the Call for Participation, which will remain open an extra three months in order to accommodate the most up-to-the minute Rails topics. Program Chair Chad Fowler invites proposals for conference sessions, workshops, and panels from Rubyists, hackers, web developers, system administrators, and anyone else with a passion for Rails.

RailsConf, co-presented by Ruby Central, Inc. and O'Reilly Media, Inc., is the largest official conference dedicated to everything Rails. Through keynotes, sessions, tutorials, panels, and events, RailsConf is an interactive meeting ground for the most innovative and successful Rails experts and companies. The conference provides attendees with examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies to enable mainstream businesses and new arrivals to the Web and Rails to take advantage of this new generation of services and opportunities.

Proposals on any Rails-related topic will be considered, and proposals should focus on helping attendees by teaching from experience and using real examples. The program committee will also look for proposals in these specific areas:

  • Time-saving developer productivity tips, tricks, and tools
  • Patterns and best practices for developing maintainable Rails applications
  • Complex domain modeling with Active Record
  • Rails development case studies, including application rewrites and organizational bootstrapping
  • Heterogeneous systems integration
  • Real-world deployment and scaling
  • Making the most out of new Rails features
  • Gem and Plugin highlights
  • Extending Rails

RailsConf 2009 will draw together Rails and other web developers (independent, startup, enterprise/corporate); other open source developers seeking to expand their skill-sets; IT managers tracking emerging technologies; tech-savvy entrepreneurs with business ideas looking to implement web-based start-ups quickly in order to assess their ideas' potential for success; users at all levels, including new, intermediate, advanced, and expert; as well as others interested in web technologies and strategic implementation.

For the first time, this year's RailsConf will hold all events on weekdays, with no weekend events. The new schedule continues to offer attendees:

  • Four entire days dedicated to Rails
  • A program designed around all levels of expertise from novice to intermediate to advanced to expert
  • The most innovative and successful Rails thought leaders and companies showcased onstage
  • Opportunities to find solutions to the problems those in the trenches face
  • A forum for a wide variety of business people to collaborate and solve similar problems
  • Hands-on and in-depth guides for learning how to best employ Rails in a variety of situations
  • The chance to hear the latest updates, get information, and meet some of the Rails core development team
  • Ample opportunities for all participants to connect, contribute, and collaborate throughout the event
  • A gathering place for the worldwide Rails community, including an important network of experts, alpha geeks, and innovators

A bustling Exhibit Hall will also give attendees the chance to see the newest and most influential products and projects, while meeting the people behind them. Past RailsConf sponsors and exhibitors included Engine Yard, Sun Microsystems, FiveRuns, GotThingsDone, Heroku, ThoughtWorks, Atlantic Dominion Solutions, Blue Box Group, CodeGear, E-xact, ELC Technologies, EnterpriseDB, GemStone Systems, Intridea, Morph Labs, New Relic, RightScale, Amazon Web Services, beezwax, DemocracyLab, O'Reilly Media, Seattle Ruby Brigade, PDX.RB, and Powell's Books.

Proposals will be accepted through February 17, 2009, and speakers will be notified in mid-March. Early registration for attendees and media will open in January. Proposals may be submitted to:
http://en.oreilly.com/rails2009/public/cfp/46.

For more information on RailsConf 2009, visit:
http://railsconf.com.

If you have ideas about areas you'd like to see included at the conference, send a note to:
rails-idea@oreilly.com.

If you'd like to stay up to date on information relating to RailsConf, sign up for the conference newsletter (login required) at:
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/nl/home#conferences.

For articles, blogs, photos, and other coverage of RailsConf 2008, go to:
http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/public/content/news-coverage.

Download speaker presentation slides from RailsConf 2008 at:
http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/public/schedule/proceedings.

To view keynote videos from RailsConf 2008, visit:
http://railsconf.blip.tv.

See pictures of the conference at:
http://flickr.com/photos/x180/sets/72157605325511779.

To read Tim O'Reilly's take on the future, go to the O'Reilly Radar at:
http://radar.oreilly.com.

To read conference chair Chad Fowler's conference blog, go to:
http://www.chadfowler.com/conferences.

For information about sponsorship and exhibit opportunities at RailsConf 2008, contact Yvonne Romaine at yromaine@oreilly.com or (707) 827-7198.

For media inquiries, contact Maureen Jennings at maureen@oreilly.com.

If you would like to discuss forming a media or promotional partnership with O'Reilly for an upcoming event, contact mediapartners@oreilly.com.

More O'Reilly Conferences:

For a conference overview, visit: http://conferences.oreilly.com.

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About O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying “faint signals” from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.

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