MARTYHAUGHT

This year we’re trying out something new for RubyConf. We’ve introduced a new kind of registration called the Supporter. At $1,000 this is in between buying a regular ticket and being a sponsor. We’re offering this as a way for the community to contribute back to RubyCentral as well as for businesses that don’t want a full blown sponsorship but would like some recognition.

You may ask why anyone should contribute back to RubyCentral. We’ve slowly been working on our new rubycentral.org website for the past several months to clarify what our mission is and how we’re going about it. One vital service that we provide is RubyGems infrastructure, it’s not cheap running servers that deliver all the functionality the RubyGems provide.

RubyCentral also runs community support through our conference grant program and the new Opportunity Scholarship program. The conference grant helps new regional conferences get up and running, allowing those not able to travel to either RubyConf or RailsConf the exposure to our community-centric conference culture. The Opportunity Scholarship is a new program that I brought in from Rocky Mountain Ruby. We ran it at RailsConf 2013 and several other regionals have run similar programs with RubyCentral support this year. This program will help introduce new programmers to Ruby and our conferences. We hope this gives them a welcoming entrance into our community and sees them blossom as contributing members in the coming years.

By choosing to register as a Supporter at RubyConf 2013, you’ll be helping fund these programs going forward. RubyCentral is a registered 501c3 non-profit in the U.S. and makes sure those funds go back to helping our community improve.

We already have two such supporters, Wayne and Stark and DNSimple. Check them out on our sponsors page. I look forward to seeing more of you listed there and thank you for the support!

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