July 16th, 2026

It's still about the people...

I recently came across a list of events Iron.io was a part of in some way. It got me thinking about the before times. San Francisco felt so small, and there was this optimism that we were building the future of the whole developer stack. So much of it revolved around events. Docker was announced at a GoSF meetup (hi, Solomon!). Heroku was racing onto the scene at events like Aloha on Rails (hey, James, Blake, et al.!). Developers were discovering Twilio (hi, Carter!), SendGrid (hi, Tim!), PubNub (hi, Todd and Stephen!), Firebase (James!), and so many more great companies at AngelHack and events like it. More than anything, they were meeting great people. I stay in touch with many of them to this day.

I'm older now, with a bunch of kids, so I'm not bouncing from meetup to meetup anymore. But when I do pop into the city, the vibe feels... different. There's still optimism, but also isolation and uncertainty because of how rapidly engineering is changing.

What do you think?

On the positive side, I'm also seeing a revival of things that connect us in person: meetups, coffee shops, Church attendance, run clubs, and more. I see that continuing as AI divides and isolates us.

Anyway, I wanted to archive this list, so here it is!

(Special thanks to Ken for keeping both SF Rails and GoSF going for years!)

A packed, standing-room-only meetup in San Francisco

Winning teams in 3D glasses at eCommerce Hack Day, NYC

Travis with Docker's Solomon Hykes at OpenStack Summit 2013

54 meetups
24 conferences
14 hackathons
10 drinkups
3 hangouts

20118 events

Feb 2, 2011
SFRails meetup group founded
meetup
The Iron.io crew starts the SF Ruby on Rails group — Chad, Ken, and Travis all co-organizing.
Apr 2011
Data 2.0 Conference
conference
San Francisco
The SimpleWorker team attends.
Apr 12, 2011
Ruby on Rails Oceania Meetup
meetup
Sydney, Australia
Travis gives a SimpleWorker talk down under.
May 2011
MongoSF
conference
San Francisco
Attended, handing out IronWorker coupon codes.
Oct 6, 2011
SFRails: Automating RoR Deployments
meetup
Chef, Capistrano, Git, Puppet & SVN — 90 people.
Oct 24, 2011
GoSF meetup group founded
meetup
Travis and Ken start the GoSF meetup group.
Oct 27, 2011
SFRails: Building RESTful APIs + Go for the Rubyist
meetup
62 people — early Go evangelism to the Ruby crowd.
Dec 7, 2011
Iron.io Launch Party
drinkup
Burritt Room, Crescent Hotel, 417 Stockton St, San Francisco

201243 events

Jan 12, 2012
Heroku Waza
conference
Yoshi's, San Francisco
Chad and Travis at the first-ever Waza.
Jan 26, 2012
SFRails: Heroku and Cloud Services
meetup
119 people.
Feb 23, 2012
SFRails: Groupon and Scaling Development
meetup
Engine Yard, 500 Third St, San Francisco
~60 people.
Mar 2012
AngelHack 2.0
hackathon
San Francisco
Sponsor.
Mar 12, 2012
SFRails Protonight — Hack Session
meetup
Pair-programming night; 34 people.
Mar 27, 2012
SF Beta: Platforms & APIs
conference
111 Minna St, San Francisco
Demo table alongside SendGrid and PubNub.
Mar 29, 2012
SFRails: Bundling the Future + RESTful Clients in Rails
meetup
159 people.
Apr 3, 2012
Data 2.0 Summit
conference
San Francisco
Chad on the “Real-Time Data Stack” panel.
Apr 7–8, 2012
Claremont Colleges Hackathon
hackathon
Claremont, CA
Sponsor.
Apr 9, 2012
SFRails Protonight — Hack Session
meetup
ModCloth, 651 Brannan St, San Francisco
Apr 18, 2012
GoSF #1: Two Top Go Developers Share Code
meetup
The first-ever GoSF — Brad Fitzpatrick and Blake Mizerany sharing code; 70 people.
May 2, 2012
SFRails: Employer-Dev Speed Dating
meetup
Partner event.
May 8, 2012
Ubuntu Cloud Summit
conference
Oakland, CA
Chad speaking, hosted by Canonical and RedMonk during UDS week.
May 9, 2012
Citrix Synergy
conference
Moscone Center, San Francisco
Chad on hosted task and message queues.
May 14, 2012
SFRails Protonight — Hack Session
meetup
48 people.
May 24, 2012
SFRails: Yehuda Katz
meetup
“Why It's Harder Than It Looks” — 253 people, the biggest SFRails of the era.
May 31, 2012
Iron.io Drinkup #1 w/ MongoLab
drinkup
Southern Pacific Brewing Co., San Francisco
Jun 2–3, 2012
Hack the Midwest
hackathon
Kansas City, MO
Sponsor, with a GoPro prize for best use of the Iron.io API.
Jun 8–10, 2012
xHack: Hack to the Future
hackathon
RadiumOne, San Francisco
Sponsor + API prize; won by Team Healthify.
Jun 11, 2012
SFRails Protonight — Hack Session
meetup
50 people.
Jun 21, 2012
GoSF: Rob Pike, Evan Shaw & Andrew Gerrand
meetup
Heroku, 321 11th St, San Francisco
Iron.io's Evan Shaw alongside Rob Pike and Andrew Gerrand of the Go team; 129 people.
meetup.com/golangsf/events/59833112
Jun 21, 2012
SFRails: Employer-Dev Speed Dating
meetup
Partner event.
Jul 12, 2012
Iron.io Drinkup #2 w/ MongoLab
drinkup
Southern Pacific Brewing Co., San Francisco
Jul 25, 2012
SFRails ??
meetup
Aug 4–5, 2012
eCommerce Hack Day
hackathon
AlleyNYC, New York, NY
Prize sponsor at the Dwolla + Etsy hack day; two winning teams used IronWorker.
Aug 11–12, 2012
Box Hackathon (Iron.io sponsoring)
hackathon
Box, 4440 El Camino Real, Los Altos, CA
Aug 11, 2012
Box Hackathon: Iron.io API training session
hackathon
Aug 15, 2012
SFRails: Special Meetup
meetup
Ben Willis (Manilla.com) on migrating Rails views to Backbone.js without a full rewrite, plus a remote Q&A with David Heinemeier Hansson over Google Hangouts.
Aug 22, 2012
GoSF
meetup
Rackspace, 620 Folsom St, San Francisco
meetup.com/golangsf/events/73250332
Aug 23, 2012
SFRails
meetup
The Climate Corporation, 201 3rd St, Suite 1100, San Francisco
meetup.com/SFRails/events/73246932
Sep 18–21, 2012
Dreamforce
conference
San Francisco
Travis: “Create a Massively Scalable System with Force.com and Heroku.”
Sep 20, 2012
GoSF
meetup
CloudFlare, 665 3rd St, Suite 200, San Francisco
meetup.com/golangsf/events/74897362
Sep 22–23, 2012
Big Data Hack Day
hackathon
San Francisco
Sponsor and mentors, alongside Couchbase and Firebase.
Sep 24, 2012
DataWeek Conference
conference
SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission St, San Francisco
Platform & API Lab — panel: “The Emerging Cloud Stack.”
Sep 27, 2012
SFRails
meetup
One Kings Lane, 1355 Market St, 4th Floor, San Francisco
meetup.com/SFRails/events/73248892
Oct 4, 2012
Iron.io Drinkup #3 w/ SendGrid
drinkup
Southern Pacific Brewing Co., San Francisco
Oct 8–9, 2012
Aloha Ruby
conference
Oct 9, 2012
BoxWorks
conference
Westin St. Francis, San Francisco
Box's first Developer Day — Iron.io had a partner booth and a 10-minute API session, at Box's annual customer conference. Afterparty featuring Weezer.
Oct 25, 2012
SFRails
meetup
BillFloat, 417 Montgomery St, Suite 500, San Francisco
meetup.com/SFRails/events/77881422
Nov 9–11, 2012
Compute Midwest — Conference & Hackathon
conference
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, 1601 Broadway, Kansas City, MO
Speakers included Dan Levin (Box), Scott Chacon (GitHub), Zach Kaplan (Inventables), Brad Abrams (Google), Jason Hoffman (Joyent), Michelle Munson (Aspera), and Ben Milne (Dwolla).
computemidwest.com
Nov 15, 2012
SFRails
meetup
Nov 27, 2012
Iron.io On Air
hangout
Dec 7, 2012
Iron.io Drinkup #4
drinkup
Mars Bar, San Francisco
One year to the day after the launch party. Guest of honor: Dezso Molnar and his gyrocycle.

201324 events

Jan 23, 2013
GoSF
meetup
TBD
Jan 24, 2013
SFRails
meetup
Seed Blocks
Feb 13, 2013
GoSF Hangout
hangout
Feb 21–22, 2013
API Strategy Conference
conference
Westin Grand Central, New York, NY
Originally set for Nov 1–2, 2012 — postponed by Hurricane Sandy.
Feb 21, 2013
SFRails
meetup
Mar 13, 2013
SFRails: Couchbase + Iron.io
meetup
Heavybit, 325 9th St, San Francisco
Mar 21, 2013
SFRails: CircleCI + HotelTonight
meetup
The Climate Corporation, 201 3rd St, Suite 1100, San Francisco
Mar 27, 2013
GoSF
meetup
Rackspace, 620 Folsom St, San Francisco
Apr 6, 2013
Hack Upstate
hackathon
235 Harrison St, Syracuse, NY
Iron.io sponsored this hackathon for the Upstate New York area.
hackupstate.com
Apr 6, 2013
FoodHackathon
hackathon
Apr 13, 2013
UB Hacking
hackathon
SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
Iron.io sponsored, with swag and API prizes on hand.
ubhacking.com
Apr 18, 2013
SFRails
meetup
May–Nov 2013
Civic Data Challenge
hackathon
Online / national
Sponsor — prizes and free compute for the NCoC + Knight Foundation challenge.
May 9, 2013
GoSF: Five 9s
meetup
May 23, 2013
SFRails
meetup
Jun 15–16, 2013
Hack the Midwest 2013
hackathon
Kansas City, MO
API sponsor + GoPro prize; won by “Half Empty?”
Jun 19, 2013
GoSF: Google OnAir
hangout
Jun 20, 2013
SFRails
meetup
Aug 1, 2013
SFRails
meetup
Oct 2–3, 2013
API World (DataWeek 2013)
conference
San Francisco
Chad on the real-time web panel with PubNub, Firebase, and Mashape.
Nov 12–13, 2013
DevBeat
conference
San Francisco
Travis on Go in production — a speaker roster that included Richard Stallman, DHH, and Rasmus Lerdorf.
Nov 13, 2013
Exosphere — party at AWS re:Invent
drinkup
Palazzo Hotel, Las Vegas
Co-hosted with Airbrake, Copper.io, and Storm Ventures.
Nov 14, 2013
SFRails
meetup
TBD
Dec 23–30, 2013
Iron.io Holiday Hack (#IronHack)
hackathon
Online
Iron.io's own week-long hackathon, with New Relic, SendGrid, GitHub, and Twilio; won by “Iron TicTacToe.”

201419 events

Jan 22, 2014
SFRails
meetup
Jan 30, 2014
Iron.io Drinkup NYC
drinkup
New York, NY
Feb 19, 2014
GoSF: Go + Mesos | Stream Multiplexing
meetup
Heroku, San Francisco
Feb 19, 2014
Drinkup: “Booze Queues' Happy Data Hour”
drinkup
Heavybit, 325 9th St, San Francisco
Co-hosted with Keen IO.
Feb 20, 2014
SFRails
meetup
Blurb, San Francisco
Mar 5, 2014
Go Session 1: Programming in Go
meetup
Sourcegraph, 531 Howard St, San Francisco
GoSF's pair-programming program for experienced devs.
Mar 19, 2014
GoSF: Serialization | OpenStack | Raspberry Pis
meetup
Rackspace, 620 Folsom St, San Francisco
Apr 24–26, 2014
GopherCon
conference
Denver, CO
Sponsor of the first GopherCon, plus a pre-conference party with Docker, CoreOS, Pivotal, and Sourcegraph.
May 14, 2014
Pre-Laracon Drinkup
drinkup
Whiskey Tavern, New York, NY
Co-hosted with Laracasts and SendGrid.
May 14, 2014
GoSF
meetup
San Francisco
May 15–16, 2014
Laracon
conference
New York, NY
Sponsor + booth, with Iron.io Q&A sessions during the breaks.
May 21, 2014
Go Session 2: Programming in Go
meetup
Sourcegraph, San Francisco
May 27, 2014
LaravelSF: First Meetup
meetup
San Francisco
Jun 23, 2014
Gopher SummerFest
meetup
Google, 345 Spear St, San Francisco
Co-sponsored with Google; Evan Shaw on “Go at Iron.io” — covered on the official Go blog.
Sep 8, 2014
CoreOS Meetup (hosted by Iron.io)
meetup
Heavybit, 325 9th St, San Francisco
Iron.io's Sam Ward speaking, with CoreOS CTO Brandon Philips, DigitalOcean, and Citrix.
Oct 22, 2014
Data 360
conference
Santa Clara Marriott, Santa Clara, CA
Chad on the “Resources for Real-time Results” panel.
Nov 2014
Exosphere 2014 — party at AWS re:Invent
drinkup
Las Vegas
Round two of the re:Invent party — Iron.io ice sculpture included.
Nov 2014
Heavybit Show & Tell
meetup
Heavybit, San Francisco
Chad on microservices and tasks as the atomic unit of work.
youtube.com/watch?v=HfNiE7KQtMU
Dec 4, 2014
RocksDB Meetup
meetup
Facebook HQ, Menlo Park, CA
Reed Allman: “Building queues that are Rocks solid.”

201511 events

Feb 11, 2015
Docker in Production Meetup
meetup
Heavybit, San Francisco
Travis and Reed Allman: “Lessons from Launching 500M Containers,” with Docker's Jérôme Petazzoni.
Apr 2015
Heavybit Show & Tell
meetup
Heavybit, San Francisco
Chad introducing DockerWorker.
youtube.com/watch?v=Oh60UE8cDUU
Apr 23, 2015
IoT StreamConf
conference
Bentley Reserve, San Francisco
Sponsor; Chad on microservices and composable services in IoT.
May 26, 2015
GopherFest 2015
meetup
San Francisco
GoSF's big one — Aaron Schlesinger on Go concurrency, alongside Rob Pike, Andrew Gerrand, and Steve Francia; 300+ in the room, 1,800 on the livestream.
Jun 23, 2015
DockerCon SF
conference
San Francisco
Travis: “Docker After Launching 1 Billion Containers.”
Sep 14, 2015
@SCALE
conference
San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, CA
Sep 2015
Container Summit
conference
Palace Hotel, San Francisco
Oct 2, 2015
GothamGo
conference
New York, NY
Oct 22, 2015
GoSF
meetup
Betable, San Francisco
Brandon Philips (CoreOS) on OAuth2 + dex, David Calavera on Docker plugins, and more.
Nov 16–18, 2015
QCon San Francisco
conference
San Francisco
Travis: “Go After 4 Years in Production.”
Nov 18, 2015
Gopherfest SV
meetup
Silicon Valley
Travis on a bill with Rob Pike, Blake Mizerany, Parse, and Dropbox.

It's still about the people...

20118 events

SFRails meetup group founded

Data 2.0 Conference

Ruby on Rails Oceania Meetup

MongoSF

SFRails: Automating RoR Deployments

GoSF meetup group founded

SFRails: Building RESTful APIs + Go for the Rubyist

Iron.io Launch Party

201243 events

Heroku Waza

SFRails: Heroku and Cloud Services

SFRails: Groupon and Scaling Development

AngelHack 2.0

SFRails Protonight — Hack Session

SF Beta: Platforms & APIs

SFRails: Bundling the Future + RESTful Clients in Rails

Data 2.0 Summit

Claremont Colleges Hackathon

SFRails Protonight — Hack Session

GoSF #1: Two Top Go Developers Share Code

SFRails: Employer-Dev Speed Dating

Ubuntu Cloud Summit

Citrix Synergy

SFRails Protonight — Hack Session

SFRails: Yehuda Katz

Iron.io Drinkup #1 w/ MongoLab

Hack the Midwest

xHack: Hack to the Future

SFRails Protonight — Hack Session

GoSF: Rob Pike, Evan Shaw & Andrew Gerrand

SFRails: Employer-Dev Speed Dating

Iron.io Drinkup #2 w/ MongoLab

SFRails ??

eCommerce Hack Day

Box Hackathon (Iron.io sponsoring)

Box Hackathon: Iron.io API training session

SFRails: Special Meetup

GoSF

SFRails

Dreamforce

GoSF

Big Data Hack Day

DataWeek Conference

SFRails

Iron.io Drinkup #3 w/ SendGrid

Aloha Ruby

BoxWorks

SFRails

Compute Midwest — Conference & Hackathon

SFRails

Iron.io On Air

Iron.io Drinkup #4

201324 events

GoSF

SFRails

GoSF Hangout

API Strategy Conference

SFRails

SFRails: Couchbase + Iron.io

SFRails: CircleCI + HotelTonight

GoSF

Hack Upstate

FoodHackathon

UB Hacking

SFRails

Civic Data Challenge

GoSF: Five 9s

SFRails

Hack the Midwest 2013

GoSF: Google OnAir

SFRails

SFRails

API World (DataWeek 2013)

DevBeat

Exosphere — party at AWS re:Invent

SFRails

Iron.io Holiday Hack (#IronHack)

201419 events