I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with something to say about The Rails Edge that isn’t already obvious. The problem is that everyone already knows that Dave Thomas and Mike Clark have been delivering top-notch Ruby on Rails training since last year, so I don’t have to say what a good deal this event will be. All the speakers are already famous Rails peeps in their own rights and don’t need their virtues extolled (even Marcel). And I certainly don’t need to tell anyone how much fun it is hanging out with a bunch of Rails folks for three days.

One thing I can offer is a personal testimonial as to the quality of the Pragmatic Studio programs. I took the Rails Studio back in January. Up until then I’d only dabbled with Rails. After taking the studio I had the knowledge to build real applications, and now I’ve got a job doing Rails development full time and am an author on the official Rails blog.. One can never know what might have been so I can’t say I owe it all to that training, but I certainly got a lot from it and happily give it credit for getting me going in the right direction.

This year, RailsConf and RubyConf both sold out in a matter of hours. There is a huge demand for conferences - people want to learn what’s up in the Rails world, to meet other Rails developers, and to improve their Rails development skills. We’ve started to see some regional conferences being organized which could potentially be pretty cool, but there is always a place for a professional production like The Rails Edge. If you’re looking to get more involved in Rails, you should check it out.