Ten Ruby Conferences (and Three Camps) in Eight Weeks

FTFA:

'Other developer communities should be taking notes. There’s no reason in particular, it seems, for this to not be possible with Javascript, Python, Clojure, Scala, or any other “progressive” language. But it hasn’t happened. The thriving open-source platforms like Ubuntu and Android are hampered by having central authorities in Canonical and Google. Maybe the regional conference phenomenon will always be unique to Ruby.

How the Ruby community got to this moment is utterly fascinating, at least to me. But beyond the reasons above, there must have been other contributing factors. What have I missed?'

I'm curious about this as well.

Some (many) of the listed Ruby conferences are one-day, single-track events, not full-blown confs per se. Still, there's time and effort involved in arranging even "simple" gatherings.

Do other language communities really not have this level of self-organized activity? I'd love to go to a one-day unconf on Closure or Haskell or JavaScript, but I can't really afford to fly off to some remote city to do it.

What I like about the proliferation of Ruby events is that there's some variety. Many of these events have a notable personality. You can find a conference that suits your interests (I happen to think MWRC is about the best.)

Ruby has become less interesting to me over time, but I'm impressed by the people arranging these events.