Hey there, and welcome to the 2008 Rails Rumble.

For those of you who weren’t involved last year, the Rumble is a 48 hour design/develop/deploy competition. Basically, you get one weekend to exploit the awesome power of Ruby on Rails to create and launch the best web-based application that you can. Then, the general public gets to vote for the best by rating them in a number of different categories—design/aesthetics, completeness, uniqueness, and overall usefulness. The winners get some pretty great prizes, thanks to our sponsors (who will be announced shortly).

Oh yeah, it’s also a lot of fun . . . Really! Think of the event as a miniature startup incubator, and use it as an excuse to deliver a v1 of that idea you’ve been sitting on for 6 months. Or, if you’re new to Rails, use it as an excuse to test drive a new technology and see just how far you can get with it in a very constrained timeframe.

This year, the Rumble will be happening over the weekend of October 18th and 19th. Note those dates, as they’re different than the originally projected/tentative dates that were mentioned for September. They’ve been updated so as to not interfere with other Ruby-related conferences and events.

Registration will open shortly. We’re currently working with our two primary event partners, Linode and GitHub, to determine the number of seats that will be available for the contest this year. More information about that, and many other event-related details, is coming very soon. Stay tuned! If you use a news reader, make sure to subscribe to our feed. Registration, sponsors, prizes, and other information will be posted here first!