Speakers
Albert Pazderin
Backend engeneer at Evil Martians
Building things
Alicia Rojas
Software developer at Telos Labs
Alicia is a software developer, musician and natural resources engineer from Chile. She has developed and contributed to digital products committed to social and environmental impact through consultancies and participation in open-source projects. She has experience in agroecology and environmental education.
Andrew Atkinson
Staff Engineer, Consultant, Author
Andrew is a Staff Engineer and Consultant for web applications, specializing in database performance with PostgreSQL and Ruby on Rails. Andrew wrote a best-selling book "High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails," published by Pragmatic Programmers in 2024. Andrew has spoken previously at RailsConf, Sin City Ruby, PGDay Chicago, and PGConf NYC.
Andy Andrea
Lead Software Developer at Panorama Education
Andy Andrea is a Durham, North Carolina-based dev with more than a decade of Rails experience and is currently an engineer at Panorama Education. As a former astrophysics major, he distracts himself from the fact that he _still_ hasn't seen an aurora in person by spending a lot of time thinking about how to improve the software development process through thoughtful documentation, tooling, patterns and processes. He's very passionate about both teaching and learning and has volunteered as a mentor for multiple non-profits as well as the Scholars program at RailsConf.
Ben Curtis
Co-founder of Honeybadger.io
Ben has been developing web apps and building startups since '99, and fell in love with Ruby and Rails in 2005. Ben co-founded Honeybadger.io in 2012 and spends his time at Honeybadger building the back-end code and infrastructure. When he's not working, Ben likes to hang out with his wife and kids, ride his road bike, and watch LSU football.
Caleb Hearth
Rails and Swift developer at Files.com
Caleb is a staff software engineer working at Files.com. He used to support customers at Heroku, and before that he built products at thoughtbot. From 2014-2018 I was the lead organizer for Keep Ruby Weird, a Ruby conference in Austin, TX that focused on the weirder and more wonderful sides of Ruby. In the Before Times, I spoke at conferences and traveled the world eating good food. I hope to do that again in the After Times. Now, I raise two children, cook a lot, and play Dungeons & Dragons, Mothership, and board games remotely a couple of days a week with friends.
Cameron Dutro
Staff Software Engineer, Core Productivity, GitHub, Inc.
Cameron Dutro works on the Core Productivity team at GitHub. He's been programming in Ruby for fifteen years and has held positions at Salesforce, Lumos Labs, and Twitter. Cameron can usually be found at home with his wife and two daughters.
Drew Bragg
Staff Engineer @ Within3 and Host of the Code and the Coding Coders who Code it podcast
I work as a Staff Engineer at a company with a 13+ year old codebase. It started on Ruby 1.8 and Rails 2.0. For years it's been a very small team moving very fast. Part of my job is getting into those dark corners that haven't been touched in years and getting them modernized. Needless to say I've seen some shit.
Edy Silva
Software Developer at Codeminer42
I'm a software developer who enjoys building things from scratch, just to understand how they are made. I've been writing software since 2015 and in the past two years, I've been contributing to open-source projects in Ruby and JavaScript. Recently I started committing to NodeJS.
Ian Lourenço
Backend Engineer @ CodeMiner42
Hello! I'm Ian, a Backend Developer @ Codeminer42, I love making API's and learning how computers can do so much for us! I stumbled on Ruby on Rails on my college days (not that long ago, actually!) and ever since I've fell in love with what some might call "Web Development", I mean, we are connected to the internet night and day, fair to say it would catch my attention! So I hope that I can help with clearing some mysterious and obscure concepts that are actually quite easy and simple to understand if we can explain it in fun way!
Irina Nazarova
CEO at Evil Martians
CEO at devtools consulting Evil Martians, co-founder of real-time framework AnyCable, based in SF. I believe that clients are friends, and we care about each other. Armed with wit, passion, and a sprinkle of mischief, I proudly steer Evil Martians toward extraordinary achievements!
Joe Leo
CEO, Def Method and Co-author, The Well-Grounded Rubyist
Joe Leo is the founder of Def Method, a New York City-based software consultancy dedicated to building high-quality, thoughtfully crafted software. Over the course of 20 years as a software developer and engineering leader, he has helped shape and mentor teams across industries, always with a deep focus on software craft and building beautiful, maintainable code. Joe is co-author of *The Well-Grounded Rubyist* and a respected voice in the Ruby and Rails communities, frequently sharing insights on engineering leadership, AI-driven development, and sustainable software practices.
John Athayde
Designer and Developer. Borderline Unicorn.
John Athayde is a designer and developer who spends his days fighting bad coding practices in the Rails view layer. He runs Meticulous, a product design & branding consultancy that has been shipping with Rails since 1.0. He also is a partner in Ocufii, a startup focused on improving safety through movement notifications. He lives on a small permaculture farm outside of Charlottesville where he can garden and play in the dirt with his wife and four children, chickens, goats, and dairy cow.
Joël Quenneville
Principal Developer at thoughtbot
Joël has been writing Ruby for over a decate and is a fan of of the language's focus on developer happiness and productivity. He co-hosts the podcast "The Bikeshed" where he and his co-host Stephanie discuss the technical and social issues that surround our industry. When away from his computer, you'll find Joël on a bouldering wall or buried in a history book.
Kasper Timm Hansen
Solo Fractional Rails consultant
Kasper is a fractional staff-level Rails consultant, who runs Office Hours for teams helping them level up faster. He was on the Rails core team from 2016 to 2022 and the top 11th contributor when he left. He shipped several major features, and reviewed & merged over a thousand contributor PRs.
Kayla Reopelle
Lead Software Engineer
Kayla is a Lead Software Engineer at New Relic on the Open Source Ruby agent team and a maintainer for the OpenTelemetry Ruby core and contrib projects. Her current mission is to bring the OpenTelemetry signals to stability for the Ruby project, with a focus on logs and metrics. Outside of work, you can find her attempting to transform her yard into a native plant garden.
Maciej Mensfeld
Karafka author, Shoryuken maintaner
With 16+ years in Ruby, Maciej is a Software Architect, a key contributor to the Karafka ecosystem, and a member of the RubyGems security team. He specializes in building high-performance systems and improving OSS supply chain security. A passionate Rubyist and seasoned gem maintainer, Maciej is dedicated to advancing the Ruby ecosystem and sharing practical insights for creating robust and scalable applications.
Marco Roth
Independent Consultant & Open Source Contributor
Marco is a passionate full-stack developer and a dedicated open-source contributor. As a member of the Hotwire and StimulusReflex contributors teams he has open-sourced, maintained, and contributed to several libraries in the Hotwire/Rails ecosystem.
Nick Quaranto
Director, Platform Engineering @ Wistia
Nick started rubygems.org a while back, and hasn't stopped writing Ruby since, but has picked up a few other skills along the way. Today, he's leading the Platform teams at Wistia, organizing a food co-op just outside of Boston, and sailing on the Charles River whenever the weather permits. Nick is a short, sturdy creature fond of drink and industry.
Ratnadeep Deshmane
Founder & Software Craftsman @ BetaCraft Technologies
I'm Ratnadeep (rtdp), a software craftsman and entrepreneur with 17 years of experience building software using Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I currently run BetaCraft Technologies, a consulting company specializing in high-quality Rails applications. I've shared my passion and knowledge by speaking at over 13 international Ruby and Rails conferences. Previously, I spent several years as a digital nomad, changing locations every few weeks—coding Ruby on weekdays and exploring new cities on weekends. Before this nomadic journey, I co-founded AppSurfer, a venture-funded startup. I'm always eager to chat about Ruby and Rails best practices, startups, remote work, travel adventures, or even mechanical keyboards!
Robby Russell
Planet Argon, CEO
Robby Russell is the CEO of Planet Argon, where he leads a team focused on modernizing Ruby on Rails applications and helping businesses maintain long-lasting software. With experience in Rails since version 0.11, Robby understands the value of evolving code without starting over. He also hosts Maintainable.fm, interviewing experts on tech debt and sustainable software. People might know him as the creator of Oh My Zsh, the open-source framework that enhanced countless terminals. Through the Ruby on Rails Community Survey, Robby tracks the trends shaping the future of Rails development.
Samuel Giddins
Security Engineer in Residence @ Ruby Central
Samuel is the Security Engineer in Residence at Ruby Central, leading security efforts across RubyGems and RubyGems.org by day (and sometimes by night, CVEs never sleep). He's been working on Ruby tooling for the past decade, and has shipped hundreds of bugs across RubyGems & Bundler.
Svyatoslav Kryukov
Backend Engineer at Evil Martians
Dedicated to bridging the gap between backend and frontend worlds. Creator of tools like Skooma to define strong interfaces and TurboMount to enhance Hotwire with modern frontend widgets. A passionate contributor to Inertia Rails, making it easier for the Rails community to embrace modern frontend development.
