Behavior Driven Development using Cucumber (http://cukes.info/) and other tools (WebRat, Selenium, RSpec).

Based on the work of Kent Beck identify idioms, implementation patterns, Rails Way and best practices for RoR

This is a must have for Railsconf 2009. Who can we call?

tips and tricks to play nice together when you can’t 0wnz0r the database

participants solve a software problem together – format is described in detail at http://codingdojo.org/ – essentially, participants take turns pair programming in front of the group with structured commentary/feedback allowed – this is an absolutely fantastic way for people to get a chance to see (and learn from) how other people work and think moment to moment – something we rarely get from presentations.

Is it enough to use acceptance testing at different levels to guarantee the correct functioning of the system? are mocks necessary always or only in specific situations? is there a better way to improve the design of our application than writing tests? what are the tools available to help us in improving our design? All these questions should be addressed in specific contexts and not be left to the "style" of each programmer.

How fast a page render is become more and more critical as the line between the desktop and web start to blur. One speaker I would like to see is Nicole Sullivan who has given a number of talks based around perceived performance impacts on page rendering, how to solve improvement page rendering speed, and what effect this has on the user.

Image processing and possible java replacements for rMagick could be discussed in the JRuby tutorial or as a separate session.

Any subject that he would be willing to discuss, 5 string cello included. The man has an incredible ability to communicate. I would love to see him do a session on Restful Routes.

the Agile conference has a room set aside where anyone can come in and sit down and pair program on a real project for a non-profit that might not have the money to pay for such development. Requires selecting a worthy project and setting aside a room with 5 to 10 pairing stations.

Spend three hours getting your head around MVC, Ruby/Rails differences, what files are where, etc. to get newbies on board and ready to dive in to the sessions. This could be a walk through of the example apps in AWDWR (maybe the PragProg guys would want to host it?), or any kind of building a basic app. Lots of people come to RailsConf without having been a part of the culture for long, and providing a basic on-ramp to the deeper level topics would be a great service.