Our Speakers
Meet the industry leaders and experts who will be sharing their knowledge
Keynote Speakers
Obie Fernandez
Shopify
Principal Engineer
Obie Fernandez is a Ruby and Rails pioneer, and best-selling author of The Rails Way. With three decades in software and a string of successful startups—including Hashrocket and Andela—he’s helped shape the Rails community from the start. Obie now leads AI and developer experience initiatives at Shopify, and still finds time to DJ and make music in Mexico City.
Carmine Paolino
Chat with Work
Founder and CEO
AI engineer and open source contributor, Carmine has built large-scale systems at OLX, Capgemini, and the Alan Turing Institute. He’s the creator of RubyLLM, bringing modern AI tooling to Ruby, and has co-founded startups like Freshflow, and Chat with Work. Carmine loves Ruby, deep learning, and producing electronic music in Berlin.
Marco Roth
Independent
Consultant
Full-stack Ruby on Rails developer and open source enthusiast, Marco is a core contributor to Hotwire and StimulusReflex. He’s passionate about pushing the boundaries of real-time, server-rendered apps with HTML-over-the-wire, and maintains several key libraries in the Hotwire and Rails ecosystem.
Speakers
Justin Bowen
Active Agent
Founder
Justin Bowen is the creator of Active Agent, the first truly Rails-native AI framework, where Agents are Controllers. Since 2015, he’s been building real-world AI products in agriculture, healthcare, HR tech, and more, with a specialization in computer vision. His work with Active Agent combines his extensive experience in Python and Next.js, bringing it to Rails with the goal of making Ruby the language of choice for new startups in the AI age.
Noel Rappin
Chime Financial
Staff Software Engineer
Noel is the co-author of Programming Ruby 3.3 and other technical books in the Ruby Community. He’s dedicated to making Ruby joyful and productive for developers, and is known for building community and championing better tools and practices. You can find Noel online at noelrappin.com.
Ngan Pham
Gusto
Distinguished Engineer
Ngan is a prolific open source contributor and Rubyist with a knack for scaling systems and building strong engineering teams. He’s known for mentoring developers and sharing insights on everything from Rails architecture to developer happiness. Outside of work he loves traveling with his family.
Svyatoslav (Svyat) Kryukov
Evil Martians
Senior Backend Engineer
Svyat is passionate about bridging backend and frontend worlds in Ruby. He’s the creator of Skooma for strong interfaces and TurboMount for bringing modern widgets to Hotwire, and a key contributor to Inertia Rails. When he’s not coding, Svyat is a true coffee geek, always searching for the perfect pour over setup.
