Venue

Well, maybe I shouldn't be surprised that we didn't get the venue paperwork done this week. It was a holiday week anyway and my contact was out for two days. He did assure me over the phone, though, that the dates were set and there is nothing to worry about. With that in mind I went ahead and printed some marketing materials, set up a super simple site, and generally started moving forward with things that I was waiting for official dates on.

Site

I was originally going to use some jekyll template to get a site up quickly and easily but after the less than wonderful experience of doing this with my blog I decided to give "vibe coding" a chance. I paid $20 and fired up Claude Code after multiple positive reviews from friends and developers I respect. I started off allowing it to use a light-weight static site generator but after running into a few problems where it didn't quite know what to do with itself I quickly made it switch back to just plain ol' html and css. Once I simplified it in that way things got way smoother. The site doesn't look like it was designed by a professional, but it looks better than I would have been able to make it and we don't have the money for a design team this year so that is how it is gonna be. Check out https://blastoffrails.com

Sponsors

After interviewing Andy Croll (a conference organizing legend in my eyes) I decided to simplify sponsorship a lot and just go with 4 spots for $1500. I was planning on doing different levels and promising different little perks for each one (company name on badges, company name on videos, company name on coffee, etc) but Andy talked me into keeping it simple. My motto for this conference has always been to keep everything as simple as possible. Partly because it is my first time ever doing this and I am doing it by myself and partly because more complex doesn't necessarily mean better. Having said all that maybe no one will want to sponsor my conference anyway so why go to all the trouble of making fancy sponsorship packages.

RailsConf 2025

I am unbelievably excited for RailsConf. I am a volunteer this year, which is great because to be honest I always have more fun at events where I am working and I am looking forward to learning about how a big conference like this works. I am also excited to see friends that I have made at other conferences and also just the general good vibes and inspiration I always get from being in the same space as a bunch of people doing cool stuff. If you are at RailsConf and you see a bald white guy in a fuschia volunteer shirt, please say hello.