The Rails Rumble is a distributed programming competition where teams of one to four people, from all over the world, have 48 hours to build an amazing web app, with Ruby on Rails or another Rack-based Ruby web framework. After the 48 hours are up, everyone picks their favorites and the top ten winners are revealed!

As many of you have already noticed, registration for the 2014 Rails Rumble is now open! To reserve a spot for your team, simply head over to railsrumble.com and click the big Sign in with Heroku button. After signing in, you’ll be able to register a team, thus reserving a spot in the most action packed weekend of typing into a text editor since last year’s Rails Rumble! After reserving a spot, you’ll be able to invite up to three others to join you on your team.

If you’re in search for others to join your team, or a team to join yourself, use the hashtag #rumbleteamvacancy on Twitter. (I apologize for the use of a hashtag, but it seemed to work okay in the past.)

There are a few things you should keep in mind:

• Spots are limited. Reserve a spot for your team early so that you don’t miss out. You’ll be able to add and remove people from your team up until the competition starts.

• People judging can’t sign up for hundreds of Rails Rumble entries, whether it’s by email or via Twitter. It’s important to remember this when designing your entry. The easier it is to try, the happier the judges will be. It’s proven. It’s science! If you need user accounts, employ a Guest User Record style system.

• If you reserve a spot for a team and later want to join a different team, realize you’re unable to compete, or just want to change teams, go to railsrumble.com, sign in with Heroku, click the account button on the top left, click Team Dashboard, then click the Leave link next to your name under the Team Members section. If you’re the last member of the team, your team will be deleted and your spot will become available for another team that will no doubt be eternally grateful to their anonymous patron.

• If you aren’t already, get familiar with Heroku before the competition! Here’s a great place to start.

• To keep up to date with everything Rails Rumble leading up to the competition and during the competition, you should follow @railsrumble on Twitter.

• To hang out with other rumblers before, during, and after the competition, fire up your favorite IRC client and go to #railsrumble on Freenode.

• And speaking of IRC, please be sure to read our official Code of Conduct. The Rails Rumble has and will always be a place for everyone. Don’t screw it up.

• Help spread the word about this year’s Rails Rumble! Take to Twitter and let everyone know that you’ve registered and are ready to knock their socks off.

If you need help with anything or have any questions at all, please feel free to contact the organizers. Otherwise, the competition starts on October 18th at 00:00:00 UTC, so don’t be late! We’ll be emailing you about 6 to 12 hours before the competition with more details about your Heroku app and optional GitHub repository.

And finally, while the Rails Rumble is a competition, it’s also about the Ruby community. Be nice. Make friends. Build something you’re proud of. Have fun.

- @tsmango