This weekend, hundreds of teams of Rails developers from around the globe will participate in Rails Rumble, a competition to see who can build the best Rails app in a single weekend and win cool prizes.

Last year’s winners included findthin.gs (now findseri.es), revision.io and there have been hundreds of useful applications created over the five previous editions of Rails Rumble.

As with every Rails Rumble, you can expect a high level of competition and a lot of fun. To make sure you are ready on the 19th of October at 12:00am UTC, here’s a list of tips and advice to give you a head start on the competitions:

Be realistic. A weekend is not all that long to build a web app, so keep your expectations realistic about what you can actually build. Avoid the unknown. Going into the competition you should feel confident that you know all the details about what you will be building. Plan, Plan, Plan. Spend a couple of hours planning everything and split the team members up into their strong points. It will save you a lot of time if you already know who is doing what and when. Don’t burn out on day one. Get an early night and start fresh next day. Keep a few hours at the end to polish your app. Make sure your server is setup for deployment on day uno. Don’t binge on junk food. Try to eat healthy to avoid sugar crashing Take shortcuts where you can because you can always fix it up after the competition. Help your team members. Some of them might be stuck on a problem because they are tired and you can solve it in seconds. Set up a timer showing up how much time you have left until the dreaded deadline ( 11:59pm UTC on October 20th ) Collect emails. if you build something that is not quite prime time ready but that people recognize as potentially useful, get their emails address to updates them as you improve the app. Plan to iterate afterwards. Now that you’ve shipped and got all this momentum from a fun, productive weekend; don’t squander it and try to push the project forward!

If you plan to use Pusher (and you should) you ought to checkout our quickstart guide to familiarise yourself with our Javascript Library and our Ruby gem. If you don’t already have a Pusher account, be sure to sign up! (Psstt.. use the RUMBLED13 coupon to get a free Startup Plan for a month)

We’re looking forward to seeing what you come up with even if you don’t use Pusher. Remember, if you need help, Adam will be doing support during the event so don’t be afraid to ask. To get the fastest reply, tweet him something on @adamyeats or on @Pusher.

Ready To Rumble?