The news on the street is that there's a European Railsconf 2006 in the works, set for September. DHH, Marcel Molina, Chad Fowler and others will be there. It'll be held at the TUC Congress Centre. I'd consider going, but they're having a "bubble bath" (rhyming slang for "laugh") with the prices starting from £400 a ticket (and that's early bird). $720 for a two day conference? What is this, a 1999 "web design" conference?
Save that £400 and learn about Rails with some hard graft, lurking on IRC, and using cool tools like Rails Weenie. Just £100 could buy you a pile of excellent books, and the other £300 can be spent on beer and snacks to get you through the way you really learn stuff.. actually coding, rather than listening to the same old spiel at yet another conference. If you want to press the flesh, then go to cool meetups like Pizza On Rails instead.. there's free pizza!
Yikes! That's insane. Great speakers, but I have no idea how they can justify that price.
Posted by: Alan at April 20, 2006 11:26 PMWow. £400 for an early bird ticket. Whatever happened to Getting Real?
Posted by: Krishna at April 21, 2006 08:05 AMThey'll sell out in a snap. Many companies would consider that to be cheap to send their employees to.
Posted by: Jamie Thingbox at April 21, 2006 09:43 AMLooks like an interesting conference but I agree with you Peter, get the Agile Rails book and the Rail Recipes beta PDF and give yourself a couple of days and you'll probably have a better understanding of Rails than going to this.
Posted by: Garth Oatley at April 21, 2006 04:14 PMCompanies maybe, Jamie, but more proof these conferences are really about money above community. I know lots of developers who couldn't afford that sort of money. I could afford it, but I'm not sure I see the value. Web Apps Summit was £80, which I thought was fair for a day, Perhaps up to £250 for a good two day community focused conference, but at £400 it's going to be packed with business-heads rather than real coders.
Not trying to be snobby, but it tends to be how they go. I hope they prove me wrong though!
Posted by: Peter Cooper at April 21, 2006 08:31 PMI'll probably end up going. But I agree with you Peter, because of the price the place is probably going to be filled with corporate types and suits curious about Rails rather than interesting Rails hackers which is a shame.
I sort of understand how the price thing works though, after all London is one of the most expensive cities I've ever lived in. Its just a shame really.
Posted by: Jonathan Conway at April 22, 2006 11:51 AMYeah, I can definitely see where the money is going. Those halls don't come cheap. I just think back to the best industry things I've been to and they've tended to be cheaper things in pubs, hotel lobbies, or, well, more 'getting real' type locations where you can get hammered and talk business at the same time :) Might be a bit of a British thing though..
WebmasterWorld.com's 'conferences' are always a blast!
Posted by: Peter Cooper at April 22, 2006 04:38 PMAs a side note to this, none of the audo/video (not even a simple mp3) of Canada On Rails is available. They are producing a DVD (which I don't mind buying) but what happened to the community focus? You mean I have to pay to hear about what's going on with an open source project?
Posted by: Tracey at April 25, 2006 04:48 AMReturn to the homepage.
Privacy Policy