The challenges in scaling Rails applications for high-traffic sites are the subject of much debate and discussion. Too often, the people doing the debating really don’t have experience in trying to do so, which, in my mind, makes their conclusions questionable.

If you’d like to get some real insight into these issues from people with deep experience, check out the Ruby on Rails: To Scale or Not To Scale event in San Francisco next Tuesday. There’s an impressive lineup of speakers, including:

• Jeremy LaTrasse from Twitter, which encountered, and overcome, some significant scaling challenges
• Ian McFarland from Pivotal Labs, a contract development shop with deep experience in both Java and Rails
• Jason Hoffman from Joyent, which has perhaps more Rails hosting experience than any other company
• Bryan Cantrill, a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems

Tickets are $15 and include an open bar, which is quite a deal. The meeting starts at 6:30 at the City Club in downtown San Francisco. There’s a limited number of tickets available, so if you want to go you probably can’t wait until the last minute to sign up.

This is, incidentally, the inaugural event of GeekSessions, a new series of monthly meetings on web technology organized by Christian Perry, who also organizes the SF Beta events, and Shon Burton.