a short note about the focus of the event
Many of the team members behind Isle of Ruby were also involved in founding and organising eurucamp in Berlin which, in addition to the standard ‘Ruby conference fare’ focussing on the Ruby language and its ecosystem, had a heavy emphasis on Rubyists as people.
At eurucamp we attempted to address social issues in the Ruby community and software industry, including the notable lack of diversity in the industry, and issues that programmers as individuals might face, like mental health and parenthood. Indeed we are proud of many of our achievements: we believe* that the majority of both attendees and speakers at the final edition of eurucamp in 2015 were women. We also put in place a mentorship programme for first time speakers and there are testimonials on how eurucamp has helped newcomers get into programming.
The focus of Isle of Ruby is a little different. We still strive to be a diverse conference and the aforementioned topics are always present in our objectives but we are less concerned about discussing diversity in our community, per se.
Rather than looking inwards at the make-up of the ‘Ruby community’, we want to concentrate efforts in looking outwards and see how our work affects the world we are in. For example, instead of looking at some of the difficulties that a person with a mental heath condition might face while working in the tech industry, we would want to focus on what those working in the tech industry can do to help improve the condition of people with mental health problems in society as a whole.
Likewise, rather than stories about women programmers starting out in industry, our conference will put an emphasis on hearing from those who have ideas about how programmers might be able to improve things for women universally through technology. Of course it is women with first-hand experience of life before Ruby who are best placed to offer ideas and solutions for women outside the tech industry.
You might argue that this is putting the emphasis in the wrong place — that we need first our Ruby community and the tech industry to be diverse and better reflect a just society in order to make subsequent change happen. We would argue that, because our work does not exist in a vacuum, we need to discuss both who we are and what we do. We really encourage proposals to consider society-at-large and those without the same depth of technological knowledge (the ‘non-techies’) first and foremost.
* Statistical information was not given by attendees, so this is based on direct observation and feedback.
Updated to emphasise that women are best placed to solve women’s issues.
