RailsConf 2008, along with the informal CabooseConf, is set to commence in Portland, featuring various talks from GitHub developers and notable figures in the Rails community. Attendees can look forward to a panel discussion titled "The Profitable Programmer" and a session on real-life deployment experiences by Chris Wanstrath, who promises to share lessons and disaster stories from launching a Rails site. Saturday's schedule includes talks on building a distributed Rails cluster with Erlang, presented by Tom and KirinDave, and a session on using Git for managing and deploying Rails applications by Git expert Scott Chacon. Participants are encouraged to visit the Engine Yard booth for merchandise and networking opportunities.