Alt:BrightonRuby: An Online Ruby Conference — June/July 2020

Brighton Ruby was a single-track, single-day conference held in July in Brighton in the UK. And I was happily plodding along in February when I started to hear about this virus… then organizing events got much, much weirder. So in mid-March I cancelled the in person event.

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Many of us organiser-types are changing our plans on the fly with scary financial things hovering over our heads. However, I’ve been very fortunate have a great support from my main sponsors Cookpad and FreeAgent which means I’m able to try a new and interesting thing.

Bloom & Wild & Consonance also deserve an honourable mention for their help.

So what is it this year? Well I figure if we’re not gonna get all the benefits of being together and all saying the same things at the same time and sharing the same corridors. I’m going to change things up a bit.

Don’t tell me your story, I’m ready to buy

There is a benefit, in that we can spread the Brighton Ruby love a little bit wider than it normally gets to reach. Delivering the talks over the Internet means more people can ‘come’.

There’s also no time constraint now so I’m going to expand time. I’m not going to force you to sit there on a particular day, with your kids at home, or having to squeeze in a four hour wait for “no yeast” at the supermarket.

Alt::BrightonRuby is video talks, a physical book, and a podcast. Oh and a donation to Shelter a homeless charity in the UK.

Video Talks

The first thing will be the content. I still reach out into the best minds of the Ruby community to bring you some excellent thoughts. all the videos of these talks or presentations will drop in mid June. For you to watch at your leisure. Maybe watch one a day. Maybe binge in a Netflix style.

The usual mix of Ruby, software engineering, thoughtprovokingness and me being an idiot. These’ll arrive in mid-June. I’m looking at the 15th.

A Physical Book

Now every year as part of Brighton Ruby I like to provide some useful swag that isn’t just throwaway nonsense. So I’ve put together a new printing of why’s (poignant) Guide to Ruby. why was a huge part of the early Ruby community and produced a lot of weirdness and wonder before leaving us and returning to whatever magical kingdom he came from.

One of the things he left us was his guide to programming with Ruby which Emma and her team at Consonance have beautifully typeset and I will get a real physical thing to your house, from a virtual conference. Magic.

The plan is for the book to arrive fairly soon. It is pretty close to done. But we’re reliant on the world’s postal services and our printer so all we can say is we’ll get this to you as soon as we can.

A Podcast

After a talk I often want to hunt done the speaker and get them to expand on the ideas in their talks. So I’m giving that opportunity to you. I’m going to take my vast quantities of comedy Zoom backgrounds and put your questions (filtered through me) to the speakers and create a series of podcast interviews. Which we’ll record in June and July and start to release in July.

A Donation

Plus, £2 of every ticket sold will go to Shelter. A homeless charity in the UK. The most vulnerable in our society are hit hardest by all this mad shutdown, so this is a way to send some money in that direction.

So all that remains is for me to ask you to buy now, and not be surprised when there isn’t much in there when you get access, but I promise there will be.

Buy Now!

In addition I would love for you to tweet about it, tell your friends and colleagues and generally let people know this is happening. Maybe do that multiple times.

Supporting this will help me come back stronger next year with an in-person event and perhaps I’ll even try and keep a virtual thing going too for people who can’t always get to the UK in early July.

Thanks a lot.

Still running UK’s friendliest, Ruby event on Friday 28th June.
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