Venue information

2019 Ruby by the Bay will be held April 3rd - April 5th (Friday - Sunday) at NatureBridge in Sausalito, California.

What is this beautiful place??

NatureBridge is a nonprofit that focuses on educating kids about the environment. They have school groups during the school year, and run day camps during the summers.

Seriously how is it this beautiful??

NatureBridge is lucky enough to lease their space from the National Park Service. It’s housed in Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The campus was originally created by the Army.

What will sleeping arrangements be like?

We will be housed in multi-room bunkhouses. There will be an all-women’s, all-men’s, and all-gender’s room.

All bunkhouses have shockingly clean bathrooms attached. Toilets are in stalls and showers have curtains. At least one bathroom and shower will be all-gender. Some of the spaces may have (coin-operated) laundry available.

The bunkhouses have hot water and are heated.

While we can’t make any promises, we will do our best to accommodate snorers separately. Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns around the lodging, so we can provide answers and update this page!

Many of the bunks have fantastic views of the outdoors!

Important note: The beautiful outdoors includes raccoons which love to break in and steal your food. Please talk with the organizers before bringing any food into the bunkhouse.

We’ll provide a bucket of earplugs, though please feel free to bring your own.

There is a small medicines-only fridge available; please talk with the organizers if you need access.

How about dining?

Please let us know your dietary restrictions at registration so we can share them with the dining staff. They make many delicious and healthy meals, and while they make no promises they have worked hard to help us accommodate dietary restrictions.

Most meals will take place in the large dining hall. Most of the meals are buffet-style. There are many small-group tables and chairs. We’ll be sharing the dining hall (and the venue) with one other organization during Ruby by the Bay.

The dining hall includes a small alcove inside if you’d like to be in a slightly more isolated space. Or consider taking your meal on their terrace?

Note: we will not have access to the dining hall outside of mealtimes.

Where will we be when we are not sleeping?

We’ll be using a few function spaces very close to each other around the small campus. While some of the spaces have single-gendered bathrooms, many of the spaces have all-gender bathrooms.

If you and/or your pair would like to get away, you can always check if wifi will reach some of the outdoor seating spaces!

After dinner, set the coding aside for a little while and get to know your fellow gooders! Use the basketball or volleyball court, play board games, sing karaoke, or pull up a seat at the firering (no promises there won’t be a rousing game of Werewolf happening by the fire though!). Have another idea for a fun activity? Bring it along. We’ve had great fun in the past with dance and yoga lessons, meditation, coloring books, and bubble parties all organized by attendees.

What about accessibility?

Great question, and thank you for asking us about it! We’re still learning about what we need to learn around accessibility, so please let us know so we can learn both what to share today, and what to look for in future years. Your questions have led us to adding this section - and while the answers are a little embarrassing, we’d like to be honest about what to expect and what we didn’t notice, because that is how we will all learn as a community to do better for everyone.

On to the overly honest answers!

Both the dorm and the work building are two-story structures.

The work building manages to have both steps up and down into the building from the road. There is conference room space on both the first and second floor. There is a bathroom on the first floor, but it’s cramped and has no grab bars.

The dorm building includes a small conference space. The dorm building has bunkrooms on the second floor, and a few bunkbeds on the first floor. There is a bathroom on the first floor with a shower (unknown accessibility status). The primary entrance to the dorm building includes several stairsteps down from the main road.

The dining hall has a non-steps walkway to it, but the door has a small lip. Meals are served buffet-style. While most people eat inside, a few people do enjoy eating on the small dining terrace, which is only accessible through a heavy sliding door. There is no bathroom in the dining hall.

How do I get there? What do you recommend for transportation?

There is ample parking but we strongly recommend you carpool. We will help attendees self-organize rides in our Slack.

For those coming by plane, your two closest airports are SFO and OAK. NatureBridge is about an hour away from either airport.

For those coming by plane from the east coast, note that timezones are in your favor! We won’t be starting the event until 4pm on Friday. If you take a 6am flight out of BWI, you could be in OAK by 9am and have the entire day to explore SF, cycle or hike in the area surrounding the venue, take a surfing lesson at Bolinas Beach, or even give yourself a tour of the local cheese makers! We strongly recommend coordinating and asking for advice on Slack as the time gets closer.

(Reminder: Southwest Airlines does not show up on most flight searches, and they give two free bags - great for if you want to pack that down comforter!)

What should I bring?

• Laptop + power supply
• Clothes
• Pillow, sleeping bag, towel
• Earplugs
• Games

Historically weather has been between 40-70°F, so please bring clothes appropriate for the weather. Layers are great.

I have more questions!

Please ask away! We’d love to update this page with any missing information.

Please read our Code of Conduct prior to attending.