Engine Yard Kicks Off Hackfest Series for Ruby Developers

Engine Yard Kicks Off Hackfest Series for Ruby Developers
 
Over 100 developers participated in inaugural Hackfest during MountainWest RubyConf; more expected
at upcoming events in New York and Toronto
 
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (April 4, 2008) - Engine Yard, provider of the leading Ruby and Rails
deployment platform, today announced a series of Hackfests, informal community events open to Ruby
developers, where sharing, learning, and hacking rule. The inaugural Hackfest was a resounding
success with participation from over 100 top Ruby and Rails developers. Two more Engine Yard
Hackfests are planned for the coming months.
 
The first event was held this past weekend alongside MountainWest RubyConf 2008 in Salt Lake City,
Ut., where Engine Yard's Ezra Zygmuntowicz and Evan Phoenix shared the opening keynote. After the
conference, folks generally look to talk tech, shoot the breeze, and hack. They split off into
small groups, grab dinner, and eventually end up in various hotel rooms, awake into the wee hours.
 
The Engine Yard Hackfest aimed to draw these small groups together, and facilitate a mid-sized,
casual, expert meeting of the minds. As an alterative to having Rubyists chat in the brief windows
between conference sessions, the Hackfest offered an open-all-night comfortable workspace, with
free wi-fi, dinner and snacks, and expert community leaders for company.
 
"Ruby is quickly becoming the new programming language to beat and the community coalescing around
it is growing even more quickly," said Lance Walley, CEO of Engine Yard. "Engine Yard is committed
to helping strengthen the Ruby ecosystem. The Hackfests, we believe, reinforce this. They're
designed to be challenging, instructive, and most of all, fun."
 
Rubyists are invited to participate in Engine Yard's upcoming Hackfests, which will be held
alongside GoRuCo in New York (April 26) and RubyFringe in Toronto (July 18-20).
 
Resources
GoRuCo: http://2008.goruco.com/
RubyFringe: http://rubyfringe.com/
Engine Yard news: http://engineyard.com/blog
 
About Engine Yard
Engine Yard provides the platform and expert support for deploying Ruby and Rails applications
quickly and easily to the cloud-giving customers their applications on demand and providing peace
of mind. The company's expertise is built on its track record of innovation, including stewardship
of the Rubinius (http://rubinius.us) and merb (http://merbivore.com) projects. Headquartered in San
Francisco, Calif., Engine Yard was founded in 2006 and is backed by Benchmark Capital. Visit
http://engineyard.com.  
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