Brooke Kuhlmann

Been thinking about the announcement of RubyConf 2026 in Las Vegas and my initial reaction is still: Why?

With all of the distasteful shenanigans they pulled off this year with no real public apology, I don't feel RubyConf is for me anymore. Even the latest articles are devoid of joy (mostly business speak). The tone is so much different now.

I've decided to focus on regional conferences going forward. I'm searching for that joy again and hoping to connect with others that share it.

#ruby

Nov 26 at 1:43pmWeb
Show threadcherry 🏳️‍⚧️ 🍒Nov 26
@bkuhlmann most global conferences are like that nowadays, a lot of them got dominated by the AI lingo also
Show threadBrooke KuhlmannNov 26
@cherryramatis Yeah, it's a true shame. More enshitification of the software industry. We've got to keep fighting back!
Show threadcherry 🏳️‍⚧️ 🍒Nov 27
@bkuhlmann local communities are the way to go! I wish I could visit the multiple European confs, but here in Brazil we have a bunch on ruby!
Show threadBrooke KuhlmannNov 27
@cherryramatis Yeah, I agree, the conferences in Europe are super interesting. Also need to get over to Brazil too. 😉
Show threadBradley SchaeferNov 26
@bkuhlmann same.
Show threadsoaprootNov 27
@bkuhlmann I had too much of a cold to thoroughly enjoy #SFRuby last week but seemed like there was a lot of joy there. I'll confess that it is harder to pick an event (because I'm always trying to figure out the shenanigan level), but I'm glad I went.
Show threadBrooke KuhlmannNov 27

@soaproot Ah, that's good to hear. Yeah, that one was heavily marketed by the Evil Martians.

I'm still looking for non-Rails specific events, though. Want to connect with folks leaning into the more functional side of Ruby. 😅

Show threadsoaprootNov 27
@bkuhlmann I'm not sure exactly how to rate SFRuby on an axis of how Rails centric. Definitely there were mentions of Hanami or aspects of Ruby (or even software in general) not really tied to a framework. And Dave Thomas's talk on classes in Ruby was about how we should be more functional and less object oriented (hope I'm not oversimplifying an excellent talk by saying it that way). If SFRuby organizers were trying to make the conference a big tent for Ruby in general, I think it worked.
Show threadBrooke KuhlmannNov 29
@soaproot Ah, that's good to hear. I will be on the lookout of Dave's talk once it's released. I'll be curious to see where he took this.
Show threadsoaprootNov 27
@bkuhlmann I'll be curious to hear what conferences you end up going to and how they rate on fun, business speak, marketing, functional side coverage, etc.
Show threadBrooke KuhlmannNov 29

@soaproot Yeah, I'm hoping I can speak at some but definitely want to encourage more thought around functional Ruby and moving away from Rails in general.

I'll be looking into figuring out how to get to more of these regional conferences in the New Year.