"Honey, I shrunk the conference"
In 2025, XO Ruby hit the road—bringing local, one-day Ruby events to communities nationwide. With support from partners like Cisco and DNSimple, we proved smaller, people-first gatherings spark deeper connections. Now, we’re taking those lessons into 2026.
Last year XO Ruby was on the road across the U.S. in 2025 showcasing The Unexpected Magic of In-Person Conferences.
We decided to do something different and found support at multiple levels from folks like Cisco, DNSimple, Sidekiq and many more ...
We didn’t throw a massive conference in a major city – asking everyone to hop on a plane, book a hotel, and burn their travel budget.
Instead, we hit the road.
We wanted to see what would happen if conferences were easier to say yes to. Easier on budgets. Easier on calendars. Easier FOR humans.
Spoiler, it worked.
By hosting one-day events in regional hub cities, we kept travel costs down, attendance size more intimate and let local tech ecosystems lead the way. Every destination, its own personality. unique local venues, authentic local food, real local people, having conversations relevant to their community, not generalized topics that matter somewhere else.
As the 2025 road trip unfolded, one thing became crystal clear, small conferences just hit different. With fewer people and more breathing room, we could slow down.
We listened.
In Atlanta, speaker Thomas Cannon gave a talk entitled, Empty Pipeline, Empty Future, sending the message loud and clear junior developers should be included in the spaces we were creating.
We made feedback actionable, and tweaked things as we went.
As a result, at our next stop, New Orleans, we made sure junior developers were front and center.
We reached out to local software coding bootcamps to explicitly invite their students to our event. In a room of seasoned developers, UX/UI designers, and adjacent tech professionals alike, junior devs added new eyes and fresh perspective turning technical presentations from peers into educational roundtables that inspired deep thinking across experience levels.
We kept listening.
The talks we featured reflected what we heard people wanted to see.
Think tech brain meets human heart.
Some skewed highly-technical: real-world architecture lessons, Ruby meeting AI in the wild, and the messy trade-offs that show up in production systems.
Some took a creative approach: learning to play with code and building tiktok using Ruby on Rails for the fun of it.
Others, tackling the human side of tech: designing with empathy, communicating better, building sustainable careers, and having honest conversations about values, burnout, and long-term impact.
And some zoomed out, taking a philosophical perspective: discussing the vibes of the tech industry, and feeling of being lost at sea in the age of AI.
As we ramp-up what’s next with XO Ruby 2026, we’re holding tight to what last year's experiment taught us.
We’re reconnecting with partners who value community, authentic human-to-human connection, and people-forward gatherings in the tech space. Folks who care less about fitting in and more about supporting spaces where people and ideas are cultivated.
We've found that’s the sweet spot.
If staying connected or exploring how to support an upcoming event sounds interesting, we’d love to talk.
