Raise money, get training

Posted by joe Tuesday, June 12, 2007 18:11:00 GMT

Dave Thomas put out the challenge and we responded.

Last year Dave and Mike in conjunction with the Pragmatic Studios came up with a stellar idea, hold a one day guide book training session. The only caveat was that in order to attend you had to donate money to a charity. They raise over $12,000. This year, they did the same thing. When they combined it with the conference at large, they were able to bring the total up to $33,000.

The beauty of this idea was two fold. First, was the obvious idea of raising money for a good cause. In our case, we are supporting an individual charity that is responsible for helping fight hunger in children. Each $50 donation supplies enough to feed on child for a month in one of their theraputic food centers.

The other reason I love this idea is because it has identified a need that every conference has, to get people on the same level. Especially with new technologies, we have a problem of brining on new developers. The ‘guide book’ name was coined by Dave and Mike to represent a day of training that acted as a travel guide. When you visit Moscow, you take a guide book, not to give you the entire history of Moscow, but one that will give you enough to make your trip more enjoyable.

We have followed suit. We have added another ticket to erubycon called charity training. This gives you full access to the conference, in addition to a one day training course offered the day before the conference begins. erubycon will donate $50 from your ticket to the Action Against Hunger. We have are running a charity drive through ChangingThePresent.org

So take the opportunity to help us raise money, and make sure you get the most out of erubycon. Register today, seating is limited to the first 50 people.

The training session is an introduction to Ruby and Rails. It will give you enough of a background to allow you to get the most out of the conference and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. After the training, you can join us for three days of packed content showing you what you can do tomorrow to have an impact in your organization.

If you cannot make the dates, please consider donating to the cause anyway. RailsConf raised over $33,000, let’s see how close we can come.