All the talks from Rails World 2024 are now available online! Revisit your favorite sessions or catch up on ones you missed on the Rails World 2024 YouTube playlist.

On to the recap

Just over 1,000 Rails devs from 57 countries gathered in Toronto for two days of technical talks, workshops, networking, evening parties, the Rails 8 beta release…and one glorious neon sign.

We packed a lot into these two days, so here’s a quick run down of the highlights:

• Rails Core launched Rails 8 beta live from the audience during DHH’s keynote.
• We followed 24 technical talks (and a workshop) by 28 great speakers on two tracks hosted by GitHub and AppSignal.
• Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke invited DHH and Matz to a fireside chat on Ruby, Rails, and the joy of working with both.
• DHH surprised Matz with his first-ever award - the Rails Lifetime Award.
• Xavier Noria awarded Akira Matsuda with the 2024 Rails Luminary Award.
• Clio and the Toronto Ruby meetup hosted an awesome Day 1 party.
• Eileen Uchitelle got heads nodding with a Day 2 keynote on the potential pros and cons of a modular monolith.
• Shopify hosted the first Lightning Track, with 14 attendees giving quick talks on topics from gaming to Hotwire Native.
• Two attendees won brand new Framework laptops, plus others won a ton of amazing raffle prizes from sponsors.
• Aaron Patterson delivered a memorable closing keynote on speeding up the Rails router (with “30 minutes of bullshit” - his words).
• Shopify’s epic closing party spanned three floors of fun—food, drinks, games, music, and skyline views.

And did we mention the neon sign? We’ll stop talking about the sign. …soon.

Based on the feedback survey, here is what you thought worked well:

• The people/hallway track, the energy, new Rails feature announcements, the after parties, the venue, the focus on technical talks instead of “soft” talks.
• All-inclusive feeling. Shuttles, great food, pre-registration, the match-making service.
• Amazing venue, loved the chill out areas, food, music, etc.
• The atmosphere built was really good (loved track 2’s open air), and the after parties were pretty great as well.
• Great coffee. Food trucks. Emcees from the community. Shopify’s after-party. Good balance of talks and breaks in a full-day schedule.

Was there anything that didn’t work? The most reported answer by far was: chairs. You really hated those chairs.

Fun backstory: Those were not the chairs we ordered. The day before the event the furniture company told us they didn’t have enough of the one we ordered, so they sent different chairs as a replacement. Sometimes that’s the way things play out with events.

You also weren’t crazy about the wasps out in the Pavilion, which, you know….fair. (Note to self: no wasps next time.)

Humor aside, you also shared a lot of feedback about things we can control (schedule, content, parties, etc) that we will take into consideration for next year, so thank you for all of your suggestions!

Thank You Sponsors!

None of this would have been possible without the generous support of the Rails Foundation Core and Contributing members, and this year’s fantastic list of sponsors:

Platinum Sponsors and Track Hosts: GitHub, AppSignal City Host: Shopify Gold Sponsors: Clio, Huntress, Valkey Silver Sponsors: Crunchy Data, Framework, Happy Scribe, MongoDB, Paraxial, Sentry Podcast Program Sponsor: Buzzsprout Speaker Support Sponsor: Fullscript Rails World App Sponsor: Telos Labs Double Up Lab Sponsor: Test Double Coffee Cart Sponsor: Cedarcode Workshop Sponsor: Coder Financial Support Sponsor: ODDS, Saeluon

What’s next

Save the date - Rails World 2025 will take place in Amsterdam in early September! We’ll share a blogpost soon about the decision to return to Amsterdam, but until then, we hope you enjoy catching up with this year’s talks online!

See you next year! Amanda