RailsConf Europe 2008 Spreads the Power of Rails

For Immediate Release
For more information contact:
Maureen Jennings
maureen@oreilly.com
707.827.7083

RailsConf Europe 2008 Delivers Advanced Skills to European Rails
Community
Berlin Conference Showcases Successful Rails Experts from around the
World

Sebastopol, CA, Sept. 12, 2008--The third annual RailsConf Europe September
2-4 in Berlin gave the dynamic European Rails community exactly what it
asked for:  Technical tools to match its advancing skills. From the
ambitious novice to the experienced programmer, Europe's Rails users said
they wanted in-depth sessions and real-world solutions that would give
them an edge in innovation and productivity. Co-presenters Ruby Central
and O'Reilly Media gave them what they wanted. 

"It was particularly gratifying to hear from many attendees that they
found the program content more advanced and more instructive than last
year," program chair David A. Black said. "It's always hard to fine-tune
the level of talks across a big program like this, and I'm really glad to
have evidence that people overall felt it had gone in the right
direction."

Associate program chairs Chad Fowler and Rich Kilmer assisted Black in
planning RailsConf Europe 2008, which is the largest European gathering of
Ruby and Rails developers, with over 500 attendees this year." The three
also headed RailsConf 2008 in Portland May 26-June 1, the largest
gathering of Ruby and Rails developers in the world. 

The three-day RailsConf Europe 2008 program featured more than 60
sessions, including technically informative talks from experts in
everything from security to internationalization to deployment,
metaprogramming, database and UI engineering. It offered three-hour
tutorials that focused on in-depth, hands-on tools people could put to use
immediately. It demonstrated ways European Rails users are making money at
Rails.

RailsConf Europe also served as a meeting place where more established
Rails users could come together with unsung innovators and brand new
start-ups to inspire one another and generate fresh ideas. As speaker
Christian Lupp said, "There is nothing that can replace the face-to-face
communication within the community." 

Among the presentations during the three-day conference were:

- Keynote by David Heinemeier Hansson (37signals), who leads the
development of Ruby on Rails. Heinemeier Hansson spoke on the notion of
"legacy" code and how that concept plays out with respect to one's own
development and growth as a programmer. 

- Keynote by Jeremy Kemper (37signals), the most active contributor to
Rails. Kemper talked about performance, and he presented some very
specific and powerful techniques for evaluating and adjusting
performance.

- Rails Core Team panel discussion with Heinemeier Hansson, Kemper and
Michael Koziarski (Koziarski Software Limited), a Rails Core Team member.

- Carsten Bormann (Universität Bremen, TZI) and Steffen Bartsch (TZI,
Universität Bremen), "From Rails Security to Application Security."

- Neal Ford (ThoughtWorks) and Patrick Farley (ThoughtWorks),
"Meta-programming Ruby for Fun & Profit."

- Adam Keys (The Real Adam), "I Heart Complexity."

- Till Vollmer (MindMeister/Codemart GmbH), "Offline Rails Applications
with Google Gears and Adobe AIR."

RailsConf Europe continued Fowler's popular Community Project Code-Drive,
which debuted in Portland. People pitched their projects and the work they
hoped to get done, and interested developers rolled up their sleeves to
write code and make it happen.   

The conference also introduced the "symposimi," which Black described as a
town-meeting-like gathering of people who want to ask and answer questions
about a certain topic. At the Berlin conference, the symposimi was about
Ruby versions and implementations-who's using what, what's targeting what,
the pros and cons of moving to 1.8.7 and/or 1.9. 

The four companies that sponsored the conference were invaluable both for
their support and for the important resources they made available at
RailsConf Europe 2008: Engine Yard, Sun Microsystems, Brightbox and ELC
Technologies.

Conference sponsor Sun Microsystems quietly rolled out a beta version of
Project Kenai, an open source project hosting system which bills itself as
"More than just a forge" and was built using JRuby on Rails.  Atttendees
at RailsConf Europe received hints about the project at technical sessions
that provided glimpses into Project Kenai

The next Rails conference, RailsConf 2009, will be in Las Vegas, May 4-7,
2009, co-presented by O'Reilly Media and Ruby Central.

For complete information on RailsConf Europe 2008, visit:
http://www.railsconfeurope.com

For speaker presentation files, go to: 
http://en.oreilly.com/railseurope2008/public/schedule/pro...

For articles, blogs, photos, video, and other coverage of the event, go
to: http://en.oreilly.com/railseurope2008/public/content/news...

If you'd like to stay up to date on information relating to Rails
conferences, sign up for the conference newsletter (login required) at:
http://elists.oreilly.com#conferences

View pictures of the conference at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/x180//sets/72157607077916014

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

If you have suggestions for a speaker or a topic at the next Rails
conference, send a message to:  
railseurope-idea@oreilly.com

For information about exhibiting at or sponsoring RailsConf Europe,
contact Yvonne Romaine at yromaine@oreilly.com.

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

For experienced Rails developers who want to go to the next level, order
Advanced Rails by Brad Ediger: 
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510329/

For a handy reference work on Rails that users can consult anywhere
anytime, or to get up to speed on how Rails works, order Rails Pocket
Reference by Eric Berry, which is being released this month:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520700/index.html

O'Reilly Media's upcoming conferences:

-Web 2.0 Expo New York in New York September 16-19, 2008, co-produced with
TechWeb

-Web 2.0 Expo Europe in Berlin October 21-23, 2008, co-produced with
TechWeb

-Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco November 5-7, 2008, co-produced with
TechWeb

-O'Reilly iPhoneLive in San Jose, November 18, 2008

-O'Reilly Money:Tech Conference in New York City February 4-6, 2009

-O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York City
February 9-11, 2009

-O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Jose, CA, March 9-12,
2009

-Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco in San Francisco March 31-April 3, 2009,
co-produced with Tech Web

-MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, CA, April 20-23, 2009,
co-presented by Sun Microsystems and O'Reilly Media

-RailsConf 2009 in Las Vegas, May 4-7, 2009, co-presented by Ruby Central
and O'Reilly Media 

-Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose, CA, May 19-21, 2009

-Velocity Conference in San Jose, CA, June 22-24, 2009

-OSCON 2009, in San Jose, CA, July 20-24

For a conference overview, visit:
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