I’m happy to announce that we finalized the keynote line-up for this year’s RailsConf and I can’t believe the great names we got (especially that last guy on the list, I hear he’s awesome :)):

• Kent Beck: Few people have had a bigger influence on the modern software industry principles, patterns, and practices. I’m reading his new book Implementation Patterns right now and can’t wait to hear him speak.
• Joel Spolsky: Joel on Software has always been a source of thought provoking, inspiring, and sometimes downright infuriating advice and opinion on software development. Joel is a great thinker and a lucid speaker on all things software and he’s been running his own software business for almost a decade to back it up.
• Jeremy Kemper: If Rails was an army, Jeremy would be the 5-star general who always made sure the job was done. He’s been a tireless force for improvement and implementation of the Rails framework since way back in the early days. Jeremy probably touched most of the features you enjoy in Rails every day. We’re finally getting him to talk about it too!
• David Heinemeier Hansson: Yes, I will most certainly be speaking at RailsConf again this year.

This lineup is of course in addition to the wealth of wonderful sessions planned. RailsConf ‘08 is shaping up really nicely. We have a brand-new version of Rails (2.1) scheduled to premiere not long in advance of the show and a whole year of collective learning to digest. It’s never been a better time to be programming with Ruby on Rails.