We checked out RailsCamp to see how a vibrant tech community does a camping trip.
RailsCamp is an Australian invention that is slowly being adopted by the Rails community worldwide. The basic premise is pretty simple: take a community of Rails developers to a campsite with no internet, provide food and drinks, and they will learn more Rails and bond with each other. Rails Camps have been going for years, and engaging with the Rails community usually involves getting told some war stories from Rails Camps past.
This Rails Camp was help at Woodman Point near Rockingham, and we went along to sample the atmosphere.
Photo Credit: Brett Jones of Pin
There were a ridiculous number of Australian startup development teams represented here, from locals like BuildBox, national startups like Pin, to international success stories like Envato. The links between Rails and startup development is close, and Rails is improving its popularity in the startup development world (there was a discussion of whether Melbourne is experiencing “Peak Rails” at the moment). Discussions at the camp were as likely to include startup business terms and methods as technical development jargon. This extended to also talking about other technologies surrounding the core Rails tech, like ember.js, Docker, Go, and other cool stuff.
Keith Pitt, founder of BuildBox, and organiser of the event, summed it up:
It was amazing to have everyone travel from interstate and overseas for Rails Camp Perth 2014. It was a great turn out, we got an amazing run with the weather (with a lot of people getting sunburnt), and some amazing technology was created. Everyone was really nice, and had a great time. We managed to get an Ice Cream truck to come down, and everyone loved it!
This seemed to be a fairly representative sample of the level of enthusiasm for the event 🙂
