The Making of a Selfie Wall

Discover the secret sauce to a fun, funky backdrop

Picture of the RailsConf themed selfie wall at the confernce


At the final RailsConf in Philadelphia, Flagrant wanted to provide attendees with a fun and unique selfie wall where they could capture their conference memories! The goal of the design was to give a nod to the Rails community and some of the tools that developers use in tandem with Ruby and Rails. Some of them were kind of tricky, so we decided to make a key to explain all the little easter eggs in the design.

Here is a breakdown of all the references in the selfie wall.

A picture of the selfie wall at RailsConf



  1. This is a combination of two concepts: Capybara and Unicorn, both used by developers within the Rails community. They also combine to make a really cute Capycorn (yes, we have stickers)


A drawing of capybara with a unicorn horn and blonde hair in a gold frame.


  1. A train (Rails…Train…duh)

  2. This pickle jar represents Cucumber.io and also has the year of the first RailsConf on the label (2006).


A drawing of a toy train, a stack of books and a jar of pickles on a shelf.


  1. The Rails/Ruby connection is Octocat from GitHub (separated into its two animals, the cat and the octopus) and Rake, a Rails task runner created by Jim Weirich. This is also a reference to the American Gothic painting by Grant Wood.


A drawing of a yellow cat in a brown dress and and a orange octopus holding a rake in a green frame.


  1. A map of all the RailsConf locations throughout the years


A drawn map of the United States with red pins scattered throughout the map


  1. Ruby 256 is a book that an attendee posted a picture of in the Ruby Central Slack. It was the title of one of the books brought over from Japan to a conference in Seattle in 2006.

  2. The LOVE miniature statue is in reference to Philadelphia, the final RailsConf’s host city.


A drawing of two rubies, a miniture of the LOVE statue from Philadelphia, and a stack of books, one of the books being titled "Ruby 256"


  1. Another combination reference, Flipper (like the dolphin movie), and Ahoy.


A drawing of a dolphin waving with a pirate hat on its head with a ship's helm hanging behind the dolphin on a green striped background, framed in a green frame.


  1. De Bugs… Debugs… 😜


A drawing of three pinned bugs in a vertical wooden box with a yellow label saying "De Bugs"


  1. Paperclip, a tool devs could use for attaching documents (although its repository has been archived as of 2023)


A drawing of three paperclips hanging on nails.


  1. Duck Typing…It is what it is?


A drawing of a mallard duck typing on. a desktop computer in a red frame.


  1. A portrait of Jim Weirich, the creator of Rake, inside a snow globe.

  2. A pear (pairing with Jim 😉)


A drawing of a man with a white beard and glasses in a snpw globe next to a yellow pear, witting on a shelf


  1. Last but not least, we’ve got the combo of Sidekiq (their logo is doing martial arts) and FactoryBot in our fighting robot


A drawing of a robot in a karate gi on a piece of paper, tacked to the wall.



How many of these did you catch?

Overall, there were more than 200 photos taken at RailsConf, how awesome is that?! We were so proud and honored to be a part of the final RailsConf and be a meaningful part of people’s conference experience. ♥️

If you or your team are looking for design assistance, get in touch :D

If you’re looking for a team to help you discover the right thing to build and help you build it, get in touch.

Design
#Selfie
#RailsConf
#Rails
#Philadelphia
#Conference

Published on July 31, 2025

By
Valenzia Cina Valenzia Cina