Harlan Wood, one of our client developers, has founded a monthly hackfest project that may be of interest to the Rails community. From Harlan:

“I am putting together a monthly Hackfest for the Light, kicking off in late January. The idea is to put some of the great skills in our community to use on socially responsible software projects of any sort, with a preference toward open source, ruby/rails, and great testing, but open to just about anything. Participants will introduce projects of interest, or just bring their coding/UI skills, and developers and designers will work together on whichever projects inspire them.

An example project I’m working on is a creative collaboration remixing engine — like a github for creative commons licenced creative works. More on that here: http://enlightenedstructure.info/pub/WikiDragon.

I’ve created a meetup group ( http://www.meetup.com/Hackfest-for-the-Light/ ) — this is the best way to stay in touch if you’re interested.

H@rlan Knight Wood”