Yesterday was the first day of RailsConf (perhaps you’ve seen the videos). My lunchtime conversation focused on managing, deploying and scaling Rails apps. For my lunchmates, Amazon’s EC2 & S3 were the solutions of choice. TunesCore is using RightScale (recently spun out as an independent company) to manage their systems. Another stealth startup is exploring Capazon, the new branch of Capistrano (a Rails deployment tool), that is designed to work with Amazon’s webservices. You can see how Twitter and Scribd are trying to work on their issues with these online presentations (Twitter’s, Scribd’s)
Also of note is that over $12,000 was raised for charity yesterday. Dave Thomas and Mike Clark taught their second ever GuideBook class. They requested a $75 donation to attend their intro to Ruby & Rails class. Mike and Dave have raised over $20,000 doing these courses. Chad Fowler just made the call to the conference that the donation link is still open. Give!