"Developing skills in this rapid development platform could become a competitive
advantage for NB organisations and is worth checking out."

I was at the conference and was very pleased with Bruce Tate's delivery.

1. Ruby on Rails does represent a feasible new export niche and because it is relatively easy to quickly develop
Ruby on Rails expertise. One can quickly move into offering development, training and other services.

2. In some situations, Ruby on Rails could bring down development costs. Most web applications being built today are trivial.
Basically they consists of simple screens used to capture data that is sent to a database from which a few report screens are produced.
RubyOnRails is very efficient for these types of applications. PHP is also very efficient but RoR's built in Ajax and ActiveRecord functionalities does give RoR a definite edge.
Of course if you already are fluent in PHP it is probably not worth your while to learn RoR. Most web sites/applications built in New Brunswick
could be advantageously developped with RoRs. My logic here is that simple web applications can be built in less than a week with PHP and mySQL.

3. Rails generates an elegant and very solid software architecture. Getting such a solid structure without rails usually requires the services of
an experienced software engineer. There aren't very many software engineers in New-Brunswick so, on the architecture side, Rails could be a great benefit.

Warning: Ruby on Rails also represents a danger. It is not always the best tool to use. I have seen someone push RoR
when it wasn't proper to do so.

If what you are building is complex, must be extremely performant or extremely scalable, might lead to a commercial product...
etc I would strongly recommend that one contacts a software engineer with experience in
RoR,J2EE,.NET,PHP, ColdFusion and other platforms.

If you can't find anyone to answer your questions contact me via www.productivitytree.com.

Gilbert