Ruby Kaigi is a big event in Japan for the Ruby community and has been held nearly every year after Ruby’s creation in the mid-90’s. Ruby Kaigi 2019 will be held in Fukuoka, Japan on April 18th, April 19th and April 20th. The exact location will be Fukuoka International Congress Center, Fukuoka, Japan. If you are living in Tokyo, it is understandably a bit difficult to attend. However, it might be well worth the journey if you are a Ruby developer.

If you haven’t been to Fukuoka, I highly recommend it. Fukuoka is Kyushu’s largest city and hosts the busiest harbor on the west coast. It’s definitely one of the most influential regions in Japan. Surprisingly, it’s well known for having the country’s best Ramen! I recommend checking out The Top 8 Must Try Ramen in Fukuoka even if you are not attending Ruby Kaigi but plan to visit Fukuoka in the future. Also, if you travel off the beaten path, the Fukuoka region has wonderful nature filled and relaxing sightseeing spots.

If you still havn’t bought a ticket, now is the time to do it! Buy your official tickets here. Then, if you need to make a reservation for the hotel, the Ruby Kaigi event site recommends booking a hotel through this website. Additionally, Ruby Kaigi has a twitter page that is regularly updated with necessary information.

As for the details of the conference itself, Ruby Kaigi is a gathering of Ruby enthusiasts from all walks of life that come to meet the Ruby team and contributors, to learn more about Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and other technologies developed for the Ruby programming language. If you are not familiar with Ruby, it is a dynamic, object-oriented programming language that was developed in Japan by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto. Matz created Ruby with the intention to increase programming productivity and to make programming an enjoyable experience for any type of developer.

In The Philosophy of Ruby, A Conversation with Yukihiro Matsumoto, Part I, Matz is quoted saying, “Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. They think, “by doing this, the machine will run faster. By doing this, the machine will run more effectively. By doing this, the machine will something something something.” They are focusing on machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines. We are the masters. They are the slaves.” As you can see, there is something more to Ruby than just being a programming language.

Matz, along with two other influential Ruby figures, Nagachika, and Jeremy Evans, will be the main keynote speakers. Nagachika is a CRuby committer and maintainer. Jeremy Evans is “is the lead developer of the Sequel database library, the Roda web toolkit, the Rodauth authentication framework, and many other Ruby libraries.” Check out the entire list of speakers here.

Lastly, one of the main reasons that I believe the trip will be worthwhile is the ability to interact with the Ruby community. A developer in the industry who attends yearly states, “I think just being able to interact with a large part of the Japanese ruby community and core contributers is tons of fun. Also, a lot of the talks are translated into both Japanese and English so there will be something for everyone.”

So, what better way to meet people in the industry than attending one of Ruby Kaigi’s many free parties? They have a list of all the free events held after the main conference that anyone can enjoy. For example, a night cruise at Bayside Place Hakata Futo Pier! I hope this post has given you enough information on this amazing event coming up next month. Keep in touch with us at MekaSmith and let us know if you will be joining!