Registration Oct 1 — 7 Competition Oct 13 — 14 Judging Oct 16 — 18

The 2012 Winners Have Been Announced!

Oct 19, 2012

The winners of 2012 Rails Rumble have been announced, so go check them out!

Winners will be receiving a number of awesome prizes from our sponsors (thanks, sponsors!), and all teams that made it into the judging round will be receiving 2012 Rails Rumble stickers courtesy of Sticker Mule. Additionally, many of our sponsors have provided coupons for their services that you can get from your team’s dashboard.

Teams, you should now feel free to deploy any updates you have waiting in the wings. We’ll email you soon with a quick survey and details regarding your Linode server and GitHub repository. And if you won, you’ll also be hearing from us with details on how to get your prizes.

Thanks to everyone for being a part of the 2012 Rails Rumble!

- @tsmango

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We've Started Tallying The Votes!

Oct 18, 2012

Wow, what a week! Competitors, you should be extremely proud of yourself for making it this far! The experts were hugely impressed with what you were able to build in just 48 hours and a ton of public judges came to the site and let their voices be heard as well.

And while we know how badly you want to fire off a deployment, please wait until the winners are announced before deploying anything new. It won’t be much longer, we promise!

So, what comes next? Well, we’ve broken out our TI-83 Plus’s and casino visors and have started to tally the votes from our experts for the overall winners and from the public for the public favorite award.

We’ll be announcing the winners as soon as we’re done (about 24 hours or so), so keep an eye on the @railsrumble Twitter account and our blog for updates.

If you’re looking for something to do in between refreshes of our blog, please spend some time checking out our awesome sponsors and then drool over the prizes going to this year’s winners.

Good luck to everyone!

- @tsmango

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Let The Judging (Officially) Begin!

Oct 15, 2012

The judging portion of the 2012 Rails Rumble has officially started! Please take some time over the next three days (judging ends on October 18th at 23:59 UTC), to browse through the 300 completed entries and pick your favorites. When you’re done finding the ones you like the best, go to the favorites section and get it down to your top ten, put them in order, and click the finalize button to lock in your picks!

Note: Participants and public judges aren’t required to lock in their picks, but if they do, their top ten will appear on their profile page after the winners are announced.

As a public judge or participant, you’ll be making your picks alongside our incredible panel of expert judges. Expert judges will be deciding the top 1 through 10 winners and who’ll be getting the “Best Solo” award, while public judges and participants will be determining who gets the “Public Favorite” award.

Oh, you didn’t realize there were prizes? Well, there are. Serious ones!

Lastly, we urge you to leave feedback for the competitors. What did you love about their app? What didn’t you love? How can they make it better? How brilliant was their app? Competitors love feedback, so send it their way!

- @tsmango

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Teams - You've Made It!

Oct 14, 2012

The competition period of the 2012 Rails Rumble is officially over. Phew! Wipe that sweat from your brow, remove the leftover pizza from your shirt, text your loved ones to tell them you’re still alive, grab a beer and chill.

There was an amazing turnout this year and although running the Rails Rumble is a lot of work, you all make it incredibly worth it. The fact we had so many entries, impressed us to no end. Now that we’ve finished and have seen everyone’s hard work come to fruition, it just impresses us even more!

The Judging period is next. It’ll be from the 16th through the 18th. However, feel free to start favouriting and sharing the apps you enjoy. Don’t forget to leave any comments you feel could help the teams. They all put in a lot of hard work, so let them know they did well!

If there are any Rumblers with questions still, then feel free to contact us and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible.

I think it’s time we all got a lot of sleep now. Goodnight!

- @zachinglis

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Prizes! Prizes! Prizes!

Oct 13, 2012

If you’ve been wondering: “Will there be prizes for the winners of this year’s Rails Rumble?”, worry no longer! In fact, when you see this list, you’ll probably realize why it took us some time to get it together. It’s huge!

Okay, okay, okay, without further ado:

First Place

Second Place

Third Place

Fourth Place

Fifth Place

Sixth Place

Seventh Place

Eighth Place

Ninth Place

Tenth Place

“Best Solo” & “Public Favorite” Bonus Awards!

In addition to the top ten winners above, we have two Linode-Sponsored, bonus awards. So how do you win one of these special awards? Well, the Best Solo award is based on expert judges, and the Public Favorite award is based on picks from the competitors themselves as well as anyone from the public.

Members of the teams that win the “Best Solo” & “Public Favorite” bonus awards will be getting the limited edition “Rails Rumble Winners” t-shirt as well as physical prizes — they’ll be able to pick from gadgets including iPads, iPods, Apple TVs, Kindles, and Nexus Tablets!

Everyone’s a Winner!

Even if you don’t place or get one the special Linode-Sponsored awards, a number of our sponsors have been generous enough to provide coupons for their services. Read more about those details here, and get your coupons by visiting your team’s dashboard.

Thanks very much to our sponsors and good luck to everyone!

- @tsmango

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Meet The Expert Judges!

Oct 12, 2012

Every year, the Rails Rumble manages to put together an incredible panel of expert judges to pick the winners, and this year is no different! We encourage you to check out the newly released experts page and see just who’ll be judging your apps. It’s really an incredible collection of judges including people like: Ze Frank, Leah Silber, Garry Tan, Jeff Atwood, Leah Culver, Garrett Murray, and so… many… more. Really, you have to see it, to believe it.

Thanks so much to all of our judges!

- @tsmango

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How to Win the Rails Rumble

Oct 12, 2012

Getting excited for the weekend? Want to win some prizes? Or is it the taking part that counts? Everyone’s motivations are different. Some want to win at any cost, some want an excuse to work on a project idea they’ve had for ages (which has been known to turn into full-time businesses before!) and many do it for fun.

Whatever your motivation, it is possible to ‘win’ at the Rumble. We have prizes and awesome expert judges ready to pore over your entries. So let’s assume you do want to win, how can you improve your chances this weekend?

Winning Wisdom

Hackathons are nothing new and the Rails Rumble itself has been going for years so there’s plenty of wisdom to extract from earlier winners. And in a nine part series called How to Win a Hackathon, Brian Burridge has done just that with his own experiences.

Here are the core areas Brian addresses:

Getting the Presentation Right

I’ve taken part in several hackathons, online and in real life, and the biggest thing I’d add is that presentation is everything! I’ve seen potential winners go down in flames because the sign up system didn’t work, the live presentation bombed, or the UI was arcane. And I’ve seen quirky ideas like ASCIIPoint send an audience into spontaneous applause when presented in the right way.

Getting the presentation right online is different to giving a speech in-person. You won’t be able to use your charisma to give a 5 minute demo (unless a screencast is part of the mix) so your app will be speaking for you. Be sure your app’s homepage clearly explains what your app is and why it’s useful with the fewest words necessary or, if possible, launch straight into an interactive experience with no formalities at all. Keep the sign up process simple (this is crucial for judges to get into your app quickly) and focus on building a great experience rather than on arcane features buried away where few judges will reach.

Don’t Forget The E-mails

Last but not least, Adam Howell shares some Rails Rumble tips of his own with the significant suggestion of collecting people’s e-mail addresses. If you ever plan to turn your creation into a fully fledged business one day, having e-mail addresses and the permission to contact them could provide a handy shortcut to success.

Good luck and, most importantly, have fun!

- @peterc

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Leveraging Our Sponsors During The Rumble

Oct 11, 2012

In addition to Linode & GitHub, who we told you about earlier today, we have a ton of other amazing sponsors this year. If you haven’t already seen them, go have a look!

Back? Okay then, let us tell you about how you can leverage a number of our amazing sponsors during the Rails Rumble itself. Many have special offers, just for you!

Design with Divshot

Divshot is a brand new, drag-and-drop, interface builder. With Divshot, you can quickly build, design, and export a beautiful, responsive layout, that’s built on Bootstrap. After the competition starts, you’re welcome to use Divshot for your app, so go sign up!

Grids with Gridset

Need to design a fully responsive grid system? Look no further than Gridset! Gridset is as easy as dragging guides in Photoshop and exports beautiful CSS, ready to use in your app. To use Gridset for free during the weekend of the 2012 Rails Rumble, check the “special offers” section in your team’s dashboard. They’ve even provided a 50% off coupon if you’d like to keep using Gridset on your other projects for another month. And really, why wouldn’t you?

Learn with RailsCasts

The clock is ticking, you only have 24 hours left, and you… you… forget how to implement tagging? Don’t worry! Head over to RailsCasts, brush up with a quick how-to video from Ryan, and get back to your coffee without losing a step. Just try not to get engrossed in the mountains of amazing content while you’re over there. Wait until after the competition for that!

Email with Mandrill

Email doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, it can be easy! With Mandrill, a brand new transactional email service from MailChimp, you can quickly integrate with your Rails app, start sending HTML email, and painlessly track opens and clicks in no time. Your send limit will even automatically scale up as your send more email.

Plan with Sprint.ly

Create stories, tasks, and bugs with Sprint.ly and don’t miss a beat this weekend! Sprint.ly’s unique, ridiculously useful, real-time updating dashboard, lets all of your team’s members keep your planning in sync. Something need fixing? Create a defect! Think of a feature? Create a story! Tag, reorder, assign, and discuss everything — all without refreshing your browser.

Test with tddium

Did Joe check in broken code? Well if you were using tddium from Solano Labs, you’d know! Get your very own continuous integration server up and running in minutes. They’ve even provided coupons for a month of free service! To get your team’s coupon, be sure to head over to your team’s dashboard.

Deploy with Deploy

Deploy makes deploying your app incredibly simple! Connect your GitHub account and server, and deploy with a single button. It’s so easy, even your designers can do it! (Sorry, designers.)

Chat with Jaconda

Is your team working remotely this weekend? Or maybe you’re all just wearing headphones? Either way, Jaconda is there for you! Sign up and get chatting with your own private room. And with the coupon in your team’s dashboard, you can use Jaconda past your trial and get 25% off!

Measure with New Relic

The Rumble is coming to a close, your app has been deployed, your team is furiously putting it through its paces in your production environment, the only thing left is to measure all the things! Well, with New Relic, you can do just that! New Relic is the all in one performance tool you always wanted. Configure it in a minute and see what’s really going on with your app.

React with Honeybadger

Let’s be honest, you’re going to deploy bugs this weekend. What matters is how quickly you track those bugs down and squash them into oblivion. That’s where Honeybadger comes in! Honeybadger is the modern error management service for Rails you’ve always wanted.

Monitor with PagerDuty

What happens when you build an incredible app for the Rails Rumble and after the competition, your entire team passes out from exhaustion without realizing that your site turned off and judges can’t see your app? Well, that shouldn’t have happened! Do yourself a favor: set up PagerDuty and catch some z’s knowing they’ll watch over things for you and ring your phone if something goes wrong. Sleep all the way up to the 19th when we announce the winners — we won’t mind!

Track with GoSquared

You’ve designed your app, you’ve planned everything, you’ve tested, you’ve deployed, you’ve measured performance. You might be asking: “What’s left?” Real-time analytics of course! Head over to your team’s dashboard, get your 3-months-free coupon for GoSquared, and watch your site’s traffic unfold while you recover from your caffeine overdose.

So, Will You Be Ready?

All of these amazing services offer a free way for you to take them for a spin this weekend, some with special coupons in your team’s dashboard. So take a few minutes before the competition and get yourself signed up for all of them! They’ll be a huge help, not only this weekend, but for every app you develop from here on out.

- @tsmango

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Linode - Up & Running With StackScripts

Oct 11, 2012

Linode, our wonderful infrastructure sponsor that’ll be providing every team with a server during this year’s Rails Rumble, has a great feature called StackScripts. Simply said, StackScripts let you get a server up and running faster than fast. A StackScript can be as little as installing Ruby, or something much more involved that sets up and configures everything you need to run an app.

This year, we’re happy to announce three optional StackScripts for Rails Rumble competitors.

The Full Stack

The Full Stack is a deployment ready script for Rails 3.2 apps that sets up Ruby 1.9.3, RubyGems, Rails, MySQL, Apache, Passenger, Git, Memcached, and more. It even comes with a corresponding capistrano deployment recipe, official Rails Rumble verification keys already installed, and pre-configured deploy keys ready for your team’s GitHub repository. Unless you’re allergic to MySQL, you’ve found your winning StackScript! (View Instructions)

The Short Stack

Prefer Nginx? Not using Rails? Well the Short Stack may be just the thing for you! With this script, you’ll get Ruby 1.9.3, RubyGems, MySQL, Git, Memcached, and a bit of Rails Rumble configuration (verification keys & pre-generated deploy keys). (View Instructions)

The Mini Stack

A little Ruby 1.9.3 & RubyGems, Git, Memcached, and a dash of official Rails Rumble configuration (verification keys & pre-generated deploy keys). This StackScript will lay down a nice foundation, but rest is up to you! Install your favorite data store and web server and you’re off! (View Instructions)

Going Stack-less

The above StackScripts are totally optional. You’re welcome to pick from any of Linode’s available distributions, roll up your sleeves and configure your server on your own. The only thing we ask is that you remember to add our public key so the Rails Rumble verification system can do its thing. You can do this by sshing into your server and running the following command as root:

mkdir -p ~/.ssh && curl http://railsrumble.com.s3.amazonaws.com/rumblebot.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && chmod 0644 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Linode Access & Configuration

Roughly 12 hours or so before the competition starts, we’ll make your Linode access details available in your team’s dashboard (sign into railsrumble.com, click your account button on the top left, then click “Team Dashboard”). We’ll also email you to let you know those are available. Prior to the competition, you’re welcome to sign into Linode with the credentials we provide and configure your server using their management interface. However, you won’t be able to boot your server until the competition starts on October 13th at 00:00 UTC. To configure your Linode with one of our pre-made StackScripts above, check out these instructions.

GitHub Access & Deploy Keys

GitHub, our other awesome infrastructure sponsor, has a great feature called Organizations. Organizations is how we’ll be providing your team access to its private Rails Rumble repository. Shortly before the competition begins, you’ll have access to our Organization on GitHub’s site and your team’s repository will appear there — like magic! When the time comes, just sign into GitHub and click the account switching menu on the top left, then click into your team’s repository to get started.

There are a few rules regarding your GitHub repository:

  • Don’t push to your repository before the competition starts.
  • Don’t rename your repository.
  • Don’t remove our post-commit hook.

All three of the StackScripts above will pre-generate a deploy key in /root/.ssh and configure your /root/.ssh/config to use that deploy key for github.com. You should add the public key at /root/.ssh/github-deploy-key.pub to your GitHub repository’s Admin / Deploy Keys area once you get access to your GitHub repository.

It’s Almost Time!

We’ve very close to the start of the 2012 Rails Rumble and know how excited everyone is to get going. And while we hope that your team’s planning is already complete and that you’ll be spending the next 30 hours centering your chi, we suspect you’ll be drinking way too much coffee and sketching endlessly on your whiteboards. It’s normal, don’t worry!

So, keep your eyes open for our email and remember to make sure your teammates have accepted your invitations before the competition starts. Good luck!

- @tsmango

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500 Teams - The Biggest Rumble Yet!

Oct 08, 2012

After a week of open registration, we’re extremely happy to announce that this year will be the biggest Rumble yet! We had 500 spots available for teams this time around and they filled up fast. But it didn’t stop there! A ton of teams came later in the week and were placed on our waiting list.

So what happens next? As you know, the competition starts on October 13th at 00:00 UTC — you have until then to add members to your team, combine teams, change teams, or drop out. But don’t wait until the last minute, get in there and get it done.

Something Come up? No Longer Able to Compete? Drop Out!

Spots are a precious commodity! They’re in limited supply! Teams are on the wait list hoping to get yours! If you have a reserved spot and can no longer compete, please leave your team so a team from the wait list can have your spot. To do this, sign in via GitHub at railsrumble.com, click your account button at the top, and click “Team Dashboard”. From your team’s dashboard, just click the “Leave” link next to your name. If you’re the last member of the team, your team will be deleted and your spot will be given to the next team on the wait list.

Invite Members to Your Team

You can add up to three other people to your team, so long as you do it before the competition starts. To do this, sign in via GitHub at railsrumble.com, click your account button at the top, and click “Team Dashboard”. From your team’s dashboard, you’ll be able to invite others to your team.

Ditch Your Friends & Switch Teams

If you have a team of your own or are already on a team, you can leave yours and join another before the competition starts. To do this, sign in via GitHub at railsrumble.com, click your account button at the top, and click “Team Dashboard”. From your team’s dashboard, just click the “Leave” link next to your name. If you’re the last member of the team, your team will be deleted and your spot will be given to the next team on the wait list.

Find More Teammates / Find Teams to Join

If you’re looking for someone to join your team, or looking for a team to join, please check and update the community wiki. Don’t be shy! It’ll be okay. Just add your info and contact others on the list. There’s still time!

See You Soon!

We’ll be emailing everyone later in the week with additional details regarding Linode and GitHub access, but don’t forget: the competition starts promptly on October 13th at 00:00 UTC.

And don’t forget: to stay up to date with the Rumble, follow @railsrumble on Twitter, and to hang out with other rumblers, use the #railsrumble IRC channel on Freenode.

- @tsmango

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Looking for older posts? Why not browse the archive?