Developer marketing is important

Here's something that's been on my mind lately about the Rails ecosystem.

For the past 10 years, there's been massive investment in dev tooling, especially for JavaScript and TypeScript companies. They take some of that funding and deploy it to marketing. And whether we like it or not, marketing has a huge impact on what technologies developers choose, what stacks they pick, what frameworks they use day-to-day.

Meanwhile, Rails has been quietly building incredible things. But we haven't been as vocal about it.

That's why I'm passionate about Rails events, conferences, and meetups. It's our way of moving the needle in the marketing department. People need to see that Ruby's alive, Rails is alive, things are happening, new features are being released, people are getting together.

I love the "one person framework" narrative, but I'd also love Rails to be the "thousand employee company framework." We need large and medium-sized companies pushing things forward like Shopify is doing.

These events—from large conferences to smaller meetups—this is our marketing push. This is how we show the world that the Rails ecosystem is alive, breathing, and growing.

The technology speaks for itself. Now we just need to make sure people hear about it.

What's your take? Do you think the Rails community is doing ok in the marketing department or it needs to get better at marketing itself?