History
The founders of Ruby Central, Inc. (David Alan Black and Chad Fowler)
were individually involved in organizing the first annual International Ruby
Conference (RubyConf), held in Tampa in 2001. Shortly after that
conference, they realized that there was enough interest in Ruby that
the logistics for future events would only become more elaborate,
including the search for corporate sponsors, the choice of new
locations and venues, and the inclusion of a larger attendee base.
As such, Black and Fowler made the decision to establish a nonprofit
organization to handle conference arrangements. Thus, Ruby Central was
born. Ruby Central’s first official conference was RubyConf 2002 in Seattle,
and since then, annual RubyConfs have been held every fall.
In 2006, Ruby Central added a dimension to the world of Ruby
conferences when we produced the first official Ruby on Rails
Conference, better known as RailsConf. Since that first RailsConf in
Chicago, we have been holding RailsConf every spring. From 2007-2011,
Ruby Central partnered with O’Reilly to co-produce RailsConf.
Outside of these two signature conferences, Ruby Central has partnered
with organizations such as SDForum and Skills Matter (UK) to
co-produce additional Ruby conferences. Through the Regional
Conference Grant Program, established in 2006, we have also provided
financial support and guidance to many other Ruby conferences.
Though planning and holding these conferences takes up a lot of our
time, it is far from the primary goal of Ruby Central, Inc. We have
always strived to become a hub for the robust support of a variety of
Ruby activities. Our first non-conference project was the Ruby
Codefest Grant Program, through which we offered support for local and
regional groups of programmers working on Ruby library projects. Ruby
Central also hosts Ruby Gems, provides support for the Ruby Summer of
Code, and sponsors development of Bundler.