Howdy Y'all!
I think ruby has always had some of the coolest events and people. It's been great seeing some of the smaller and regional conferences come back to life the past couple of years. This is an idea that I've been thinking about for a while now and think it's finally time to push it out into the world and want to say thanks for helping make that possible.
The Idea
I'd like to rent out an entire ranch for the event. In other words, we would have the whole property to ourselves with no outside guests.
The location I have in mind is 17.5 acres so we should have plenty of space to stretch out. The property has a mix of accommodations, a few private bedrooms, glamping tents, RV sites with full hook ups and tent sites.
I would like to rent some large campers (sleeps 4-6 people) for each site. If you’re a team and would all like to stay together, this is probably your best option.
While there are tent sites available, I would really like for that to be something someone specifically chooses to do. Weather is unpredictable out here and don’t want people dealing with the elements if they’re not properly prepared for it. I still need to confirm with the venue if they’ll allow it but I would like to have some small teardrop style camper trailers for an option somewhere in between an RV and a tent.
The prospective venue provides continental breakfast with coffee each morning. Besides that we’re on our own. I'm planning to have dinner provided by either a local caterer or private chef each night.
Any dietary restrictions should be able to be accommodated without issue.
I’m not sure about lunch. The venue offers a ‘stock the fridge’ service which would fill the kitchen with snacks, sandwich stuff, fruits and veggies and other items. Letting people fend for themselves for lunch may be the easiest option.
The venue also provides some options for events and entertainment like a mobile axe throwing trailer, a vintage camper photo booth, and beverage burros (this is a hard front runner for sure)
With this being a completely new event, there’s really no telling what will develop but I think having a lot of options will let things emerge organically. Roping contents, barrel bronco trainers, Nerf quick draw competitions, salon style poker tournaments and whatever else we’d like to think of.
However, I know that sometimes things sounds great ahead of time but never get used during an event so I’m open to suggestions.
While I have a lot of ideas for things, I would like to be more of a facilitator and give things a chance to develop organically.
When?
Colorado is home to a brief but wonderful summer time and would probably happen sometime in between June and August 2025. June may have some occasional chilly nights and it’s certainly not out of the question to see snow, but as summer goes on, the higher chance for fire restrictions. Sometime in June is probably the best bet for having some great times by the campfire.
Why so far out?
With this being a brand new event, I wanted to make sure there was plenty of time to make sure things go as smoothly as possible.
There are also a lot of great Ruby events already scheduled for this year and I didn’t want to schedule something that might impact attendance for another event. Getting things started early will hopefully allow some coordination for scheduling as to not conflict with other events next year.
Programming
I was initially planning on having a few talks during each day. However, I think the draw of the outdoors and location might be too strong to focus on talks. That’s not fair to the speakers and don’t want the attendees to feel obligated to attend any talks.
With this being a new event, I think this is a great opportunity to let the attendees help shape the programing. A couple options I was thinking of are:
Un-conference style talks - If you have an idea for a 15 minute talk you would like to give, write it down on an index card and post on the board. Attendees will be given 5-10 stickers and place a sticker on talks they would like to see. The talks with the most stickers are chosen and will be presented in batches.
Fishbowl sessions - I think ruby conferences bring such a great group of people with diverse experiences, it’s a resource. These sessions would be breaking up into groups of 8-10 and asking for opinions from the group. These would be questions like:
How do I succeed transitioning from an IC to management?
How do I find a mentor?
What’s the best team structure you’ve worked with
These can turn into some great conversations and breaking into smaller groups helps facilitate the discussion and allows everyone to get to know one another better.
Please let me know if you have any ideas or have done something in the past you really enjoyed!
What's next?
In the coming weeks, I’ll be sending out a survey getting some feedback after having narrowed down some options.
Until next time!
Cody
