Last year, we launched the official Rails World conference app, an open-source event app built in collaboration with Telos Labs to help attendees connect and up to date. (You can read more about the original build here and here.)
From the beginning, this was a project for the community, not just Rails World. So it’s been fun to see Tropical on Rails and Baltic Ruby also use the app for their events this year. That’s exactly what we hoped for when we made it open source. ❤️
This year, we asked Bram Janssen, a junior developer in the community, to take the lead on upgrading the app in collaboration with Telos Labs, getting it production-ready for this year’s event.
Under the hood, the event app uses a modern, vanilla Rails stack, relying on default features like Hotwire, Solid Queue for background jobs, SQLite3, Import Maps, and Kamal 2 for deployment. It also uses Tailwind CSS for styling, Avo for admin, AppSignal for monitoring, Mailpace for email, and AWS S3 for file storage.
But a lot has changed in Rails since last year’s release: Rails 8 and Hotwire Native were both announced just weeks after the app first shipped. So, it was time for an upgrade.
What’s new for 2025?
Upgraded from Rails 7.2 to Rails 8
The app now runs on the latest version of Rails, benefiting from all the framework improvements and updated defaults launched last year.
Native app support via Hotwire Native
We now have native iOS and Android apps, powered by the same Rails backend. They’re live in the App Store and Google Play, thanks to Hotwire Native.
Coming soon:
And there’s still some work to do before Rails World. If anyone wants to help, check out the Issue board. If there’s a feature or issue you’d like to work on, feel free to jump in.
Thanks to Bram, Telos Labs, Tropical on Rails, and Baltic Ruby for making this such a fun, ongoing community collab.
We’ll be rolling out the upgraded app to Rails World attendees soon, so attendees should check their inboxes tomorrow.