This weekend was Ruby Retreat (a re-branded Rails Camp) where we gathered 60 people from Australia and New Zealand at a camp ground in Warrnambool, the town where I live. Ruby Retreat is an un-conference event where Rubyists of all skill levels come together to hang out from a Friday night until a Monday morning. There may have even been some non-Rubyists there too. We provided catering and beds, they provided the activities.
The idea for this event came out of a Ruby Australia conference earlier in the year when a group of Ruby friends pulled me aside and said “we should have a camp again!”. We’ve had about 27 of these in the past, with them dating back to 2007. Covid threw a spanner in the works and we ended up not running one for a while.
After a few suggestions of locations, I suggested Warrnambool, pitching that there’s a venue there that’s close to the beach and there’s plenty of activities near by. It sounded enough like a good idea that I was suddenly made de facto organiser of the camp. Others such as Jupiter Haehn, Kieran Andrews, Ed Tippett and Richie Khoo helped out too and offered very good advice.
Selling tickets
We sold tickets to the camp by advertising them at https://retreat.ruby.org.au by recycling a previous version of the website, and selling them through Tito. We eye-balled a rough estimate on what the camp would cost us and used that to set the ticket prices ($350 full price, $300 concession). We weren’t too far off, with the debt (measured in < $2,000 terms) being covered by Ruby Australia’s sponsors for the year.
I think we could’ve done a better job with marketing the camp, probably by having organisers (or proxies) visit each meetup around the country and spruik the benefit of it.
We ended up selling 60 tickets to the event and also gave an option for people to put in for an Opportunity Ticket cost. This was enough to bring one extra person for free along to the camp. We didn’t make a big deal about it at the camp but I reckon it is a big deal! Generosity like this is awesome to see from this community.
Location, Location, Location
The camp site was Warra Gnan Coastal Camp, located 600m from the ocean. Liasing with the camp site owners was a relatively straightforward affair with tours given early on in the planning process. Big “ticks” for why we picked that place (besides it being 3km from my house) was the location, the kitchen area and the sufficient beds down the back area. Some of the rooms contained en suites with toilets and showers, while the others had a pair of shower rooms, one for men and one for women.
Other perks included the grassed area at the back for tent setup (some people like to camp away from the snorers!), and ample outside room for people who wanted to catch some sun during the day.
Closer towards the camp the camp site also installed a projector in the main space as well as two heaters. We made ample use of this projector for talks at beginning and end of camp. We didn’t end up needing the heaters but in the colder months they’d be a necessity.
The location also meant people could get to Thunder Point, Stingray Bay, the main beach, Lake Pertobe and the Sunday markets by walking. Having it so close to town as well meant supplies could be easily gathered if people needed anything that the camp didn’t have. Warrnambool’s a big enough town that there’s multiple Coles, Woolworths and Aldis.
Catering
Catering was provided by the Beach Kiosk Cafe. After being inflicted with Tinned Spaghetti Bolognese In A Big Pot and Some Toast with Spreads masquerading as dinner and/or lunch at a long-ago past event, I wanted something better for catering options this time around. I reached out to the Beach Kiosk who I know through a family-connection and they were happy to provide the catering. We catered for lunch and dinners with this menu:
DF = Dairy Free, GF = Gluten Free, V = Vegetarian, VG = Vegan
Dinner 18th October
Slow braised lamb shoulder in with tomato paprika sauce(DF GF)
Grilled chicken with onions, capsicum, and olives(DF GF)
Roasted half eggplant w tomato and paprika(VG)
Ratatouille(VG GF DF)
Green beans, feta and pine nuts(GF V)
Garlic mash potato(GF)
Banana fritter with vanilla ice cream Sticky rice w cinnamon coconut sauce with banana and berries(VG DF GF)
Lunch Oct 19
Stir fry egg noodles with chickened veggies(DF VGA)
Pork belly fried rice(GF DF VGA)
Fruit Salad
Dinner Oct 19
Ginger soy braised beef with shitake mushroom (DF GF)
Crispy tofu with miso chilli with cauliflower, mushroom and herbs (VG GF DF)
Asian Greens w soy and garlic(VG)
Fragrant rice(VG DF GF)
Strawberry panacotta with coconut chocolate mousse and fresh berries (VG DF GF)
Lunch Oct 20
Roast pumpkin, roast cauliflower, mushroom, beetroot hummus, haloumi, seeds, and cashew aioli (VG GF DF)
Fruit Salad
Dinner Oct 20
Roast cauliflower and fennel paella (VG GF DF)
Chicken chorizo paella(GF DF)
Salad with mix lettuce, carrots, red onion, cucumber and fennel, with vinaigrette dressing(VG DF GF)
Raspberry Cheesecake(GF)
You’ll notice that most meals were suitable for vegans or vegetarians. This is so that we could include as many people as possible for lunches and dinners. This food worked out to $60/head/day. It was exceptional each night and as someone who has been called “food-oriented” on more than one occasion, I really appreciated the quality and good mix of healthy veg and meat. And desserts! Other camp attendees rated the food highly too!
On top of this, we also bought breakfast cereals, milk, coffee, bread and spreads so people could build their own breakfasts. Jupiter also bought an absolute wealth of snacks from Costco for cheap. Kieran cooked trays of scrambled eggs on the morning. On the Sunday and Monday mornings we also made a tray of pancakes for early risers. Next time I’d bring a second pan so I could cook them faster!
All 3 mornings had the coffee van turn up for 2 hours (8-10 Saturday/Sunday, 7-9 Monday) where people could order their coffees and we covered the cost of those too.
I was arranging the washing up on Friday night and outta nowhere an attendee, Michael Morris, self-organised a schedule for the rest of the camp, taping a laminated piece of paper to a wall with a whiteboard-marker schedule on it. I damn near cried it was that nice of an offer. The cleaning up on Saturday/Sunday/Monday was a lot easier than Friday to the point where I didn’t need to think about it for the rest of the camp.
In terms of drinks, we catered by buying some juices and milk, and others brought their own soft drinks or alcohol and put them into the shared fridge. Rails Camps in the past have catered for their own alcohol but we decided not to this time. We spent the alcohol money on kick-ass food instead. Those that wanted to drink could still do it, just on their own dollar. Nobody complained.
Transport
We had a few people fly in from New Zealand and one guy flew in from Japan (!), but most people came in from around Australia and ended up arriving in Melbourne. Warrnambool has a private airport, so there’s no direct commercial flights in.
Some of those people drove over from Melbourne (despite the stormy conditions on Friday afternoon). The remaining group of around 20 caught the train over, with the camp funding the $20/ticket/day cost for those tickets. We had Brent Chuang from Fat Zebra being the “ticket holder” for the train tickets as he was catching the train from Melbourne. I didn’t mind this too much, but I would’ve preferred V/Line offered an electronic option that was easier to manage than paper tickets.
As the camp approached it became clearer and clearer that the weather on Friday was going to be very bad, so we ended up booking a bus at $10/head for that day. And glad we did, as the weather was stormy all day. Attendees who caught the bus ended up being treated to a (surprise) mini-tour of Warrnambool too thanks to the bus tour company. They arrived dry at the camp, which is always a nice way to get a start to an event.
There was no bus back on the Monday afternoon as the time of venue departure was 9am and the train was due to depart at 12pm, and the weather was exceptionally sunny. This left people able to explore Warrnambool more and find their own way to the station.
Inside the building itself
Internet: This time there was no internet access at the camp by choice rather than from past camps where it’s absolutely an impracticality due to location (i.e. the last Ruby Retreat, held up the top of a mountain in New Zealand). I ummed and ahhed about setting up a proper router with a 5G sim in it from Telstra but ultimately decided people could sort out their own access with their hotspots on their phones. It seemed to work alright. I think with a shared router between 50 people you’d run into people/machines being greedy, or random network issues like “this router has handed out 32 DHCP addresses and refuses to do anymore”. Perhaps we dodged a bullet.
Tables & powerboards: Some of the attendees setup the tables and powerboards with minimal direction (thank you!!). We found that we were mildly short of powerboards for the number of people, but ultimately other people ended up bringing their own and making up the numbers. There was just enough power sockets in the walls for these and we ran out extension cables from these sockets to power the boards.
We were at capacity for the tables at the camp as well (but strangely, not the provided chairs…), and perhaps if we were to use this venue again we’d have to hire some more tables. Fortunately, I found an events hire company that would do that for a reasonable rate of $18/table. We didn’t end up needing them this time, but I imagine with higher attendance it’d be high on the list of stuff to organise. There’s room in the venue for more. Not only was this where people sat and worked, but it’s also where they had dinner. We also had tables outside that people made use of for this too.
I couldn’t imagine having an attendance above about 75 adults at the camp because it’d be super cozy in the main hall.
Activities
As it’s an unconference we’re extremely loosey-goosey when it comes to actually scheduling anything in. We had the welcome on the Friday night, a Ruby Australia AGM on Saturday afternoon, and a demo night on Sunday night. That’s it. If anyone else wanted to do anything else, they had to make up their own plans. A lot of people spent the weekend hacking on things, and a similar number spent the time just hanging out. You make the event how you want to make it.
I ended up playing Magic for a few hours on Saturday against Kieran and whoever else wanted to join us. I also extended my Magic project with a few new cards.
Jupiter ran a few sessions on Blood on the Clocktower, which is more than a spiritual successor to the traditional Werewolf. That was really fun to play! I love the diversity of the roles (instead of a few sporadic “specials”), the interplay between alive & dead people, and the mechanics of the imp + minion. Definitely recommend!
A group formed around a table-top game like DND but not DND (I didn’t catch the name!) on Sunday afternoon and played that long enough for the guy who was running it to turn a great shade of red from his sunburn.
Other attendees ended up touring around Warrnambool doing things like riding the flying fox at Lake Pertobe, walking around the coastal walk at Thunder Point or visiting the nearby beaches. Some people were even able to make bookings at the Deep Blue Hot Springs. Others spent time further afield going out to Tower Hill and other locations.
Would I do it again?
Yes. This was really fun to organise and be a part of. I don’t think I’d run one again in the next 6 months, but perhaps in a year? We’ll see.