Blue Ridge Ruby 2026
who it's for
Ruby developers, Rails developers, open source contributors, engineering managers, platform engineers, frontend developers
topics
Pundit authorizations and feature flags; Hanami + htmx web apps for e-ink; Typesense search indexing with Ruby client; queue latency SLOs and auto scaling; Claude Cloud Code JSONL parsing; gem-contribute CLI for newcomer PRs; strangler fig refactor techniques; Ruby blocks, Procs and lambdas behavior; Turbo and HTMX state management patterns; LLM telemetry as a Rails concern; agentic stacks and review workflows; small shippable pieces with backfills
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 Opening Remarks | Jeremy Smith | 25m |
Announces logistics and concrete things that matter: an Ashvillagers app built by two Joshuas for attendee avatars with a URL shown, a Ruby Passport with… | ||
| Learning from Permaculture: Sustainable Software Development | John Athayde | 39m |
Argues that permaculture rules map to software: observe before acting, map domains like topography, and design from patterns down. Describes tools and… | ||
| State is the First Decision You Never Made | Joel Quenneville | 35m |
Argument: state is the first design decision and it determines UX tradeoffs. Shows concrete techniques: ping-pong state via hidden inputs to avoid server… | ||
| Yes, &…: Ruby’s Secret Talent for Improvisation | Ifat Ribon | 27m |
Explains concrete Ruby behavior: examples show blocks passed via yield, converting with &block into a Proc and calling with call, and using stabby lambdas… | ||
| How To Finish What You Start: Lessons From Actually Shipping.. | Annie Kiley | 28m |
A full-permissions overhaul lands safely in production: a Rails API and React front end move from old logic to a new Pundit authorizations implementation by… | ||
| Blue Ridge Ruby 2026 - Sponsor Typesense by Jeremy Smith | Jeremy Smith | 16m |
Builds a Ruby CLI called CloudSense Ruby CLI that parses Claude Cloud Code JSONL sessions, indexes them with the Typesense open-source search using the… | ||
| InstiLLMent of Successful Practices in an Agentic World | Kevin Murphy | 27m |
Claims that a company ships an agent stack where Power Prompt and Powerful Machine Rumble autonomously write features, demonstrated by generating a slope… | ||
| Opening Remarks | Jeremy Smith | 27m |
Two-hour open lunch at noon, an after-party at Burial South Slope starting at 8, and 10 lightning talks with gong for overruns set strict schedules; expect… | ||
| Terminus: A Hanami + htmx web application for e-ink devices | Brooke Kuhlmann | 30m |
Terminus is an open source Ruby app (Hanami + htmx) that actually renders slides to e-ink devices on a private network and it works live — devices wake… | ||
| Your First Open-Source Contribution | Rachael Wright Munn | 35m |
A clear playbook: find a repo you care about, read CONTRIBUTING.md, fork, reproduce the issue, then make a tiny, single-purpose change with tests and passing… | ||
| 5 Steps to Resilient Job Queues | Adam McCrea | 07m |
Five concrete ops rules: encode latency SLOs into queue names (e.g. 5s for MFA, 5m for thumbnails, 5h for legal mail), monitor the single metric that… | ||
| Lightning Talk: gem-contribute Building what you cannot find | Chris Hagmann | 05m |
A small CLI called gem-contribute exists that scans Gemfile.lock and surfaces dependencies with issues tagged good first issue instead of waiting for… | ||
| Lightning Talk: App | Katya Sarmiento | 04m |
The My Blue Ridge app is a working festival app built by vibe coded development where prompts drive changes without reading source, using Claude for conductor… | ||
| Lightning Talk: What makes a good lightning talk | Travis Dockter | 06m |
A Pokémon‑style browser game replaces monsters with Ruby gems and battles with code reviews, built in JavaScript not Ruby and demoed successfully; three… | ||
| Lightning talk: Beginner's Perspective Learning Ruby in 2026 | Joshua Wenning | 05m |
Begins learning Ruby started in January, while running a graphic design studio called First Pulse and after eight years as a novice monk. Claims Ruby unites… | ||
| Lightning Talk: A Conventional Ruby Talk | Joshua Paine | 05m |
Project builds a small app and ships a pair of utilities: a Tito Ruby gem that lists tickets (about ten lines saved versus the ad hoc code) and a color… | ||
| Lightning Talk: Teaching Claude Code to Upgrade Rails | Ernesto Tagwerker | 05m |
A Claude Code skill automates Rails upgrades by actually changing code, adding a gemfile.next symlink and letting a one environment variable switch select… | ||
| Lightning Talk: A Legacy App Strikes Back | David Hill | 05m |
AI is used to roast a real Rails codebase and it flags concrete issues: 4,991-line controller, 217-line method, permit_all params set true, YAML unsafe_load… | ||
| D2 LT 10 David Paluy | David Paluy | 02m |
Claims an automated workflow that creates new Rails applications from reusable presets and actually works: an opinionated gem reads preset YAML files or runs… | ||
| Lightning Talk: "Our revels are at an end" | John Paul Ashenfelter | 04m |
A method for retiring long lived systems that claims a deliberate final sequence rather than abandonment: a 23 year old app is finally finished with DNS taken… | ||
| Lightning Talk: Git Lint | Brooke Kuhlmann | 05m |
A small Ruby gem called Git Lint enforces commit message shape: a 72-character subject, a capitalized, punctuated body that explains why, and removal of fluff… | ||
| Lightning Talk: Meetups | Matt Polito | 04m |
Meetups drop off after COVID but can restart with two people in a coffee shop and regularity; small groups seed learning. Passport chips and seat donation tags… | ||
| Optimize Your Mindset (Without Overclocking) | Christine Seeman | 31m |
Four concrete, research‑backed tactics: a live mindfulness body scan to lower reactivity, habit design using the cue‑routine‑reward loop with immediate… | ||
| LLM Telemetry as a First-Class Rails Concern | David Paluy | 33m |
Rails app records every LLM call with Ruby LLM and stores prompts, responses, and token usage in Tracebook so cost spikes like a one day $150 bill become… | ||
| 5 ways to invest in yourself for the long haul | Thomas Cannon | 29m |
Claims five concrete habits that compound over years and gives exact wins: starting in 2015 and after a 2023 layoff the approach produces a consultancy, two… | ||
| Closing Remarks | Jeremy Smith | 07m |
Teardown needs volunteers to clear Suite A and B downstairs first and then the back of the venue, and five passports ready for pick up remain at Ruby Embassy… | ||
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