More than Metrics: A Marketing Coordinator's Look at 2025

There's no shortage of marketing metrics to keep track of. Leads, subscribers, conversions, traffic patterns, blog output, and everything in between. All of those numbers have their place, and they help guide our decisions. But what really sustains my work is feeling connected to the people behind the scenes and believing deeply in what we offer. Without that sense of purpose, the metrics would feel a little empty.

As a Marketing Coordinator, I get to see Planet Argon from many angles and help shape the way we share our internal happenings with the community. I interact with the team on internal projects, coordinate conferences and give feedback on talks, launch merch or gift guides, plan and promote podcasts, track what’s happening across the Rails community, and bring the team together through Culture Club.

When I sit back to think about how I’d sum up the year, I’d say the common thread in all of it is simple: We’re all working quietly and thoughtfully to help software (and each other) thrive.

Here are a few of my favorite parts of this year, moments that stuck with me, taught me something, or reminded me why our work matters.

Shout Out for Team Wins!

Actually, most of our wins happen quietly. Internally. Or we share them in our #wins Slack channel. We don’t typically shout our achievements, though we do share what we’ve learned or how we worked through challenges- mostly to help someone else who might encounter something similar.

What I love about our internal wins is that everyone on our team participates. We are good at recognizing the hard work each other puts into a project or a challenge, and we’re excited to call each other out with pride and appreciation. Sometimes, someone will ask for help and not only get their question answered, but learn something valuable in the process.

There’s something beautiful about watching people cheer each other on for the small, steady wins that might go unnoticed anywhere else.

A Rails Community Moment

Working remotely, we all spend our work days at our desks, missing some of the face-to-face interactions we used to have (well, that was before my time here…). Some teammates in Portland meet for coffee or attend local Ruby or Rails meetups, but most of our connection to the broader community happens through events and conferences.

Here are some of the events we either attended, supported, or sponsored this year. Every event had its own personality, yet each one reminded me that the Rails community is built on curiosity, care, and a willingness or vulnerability to share what we know.

• Rails World 2025: Three of our team members trekked to Toronto for this annual two-day, two-track community conference. This was where Rails 8.0 Beta was released, and Robby spoke on why you should never ever rewrite your legacy codebase, but instead, steer your Rails app out of technical debt.

• SquiggleConf: As Oh My Zsh passed its 15th anniversary, its creator and our CEO, Robby Russell, shared insights into its success and valuable lessons you can apply to your own open source projects.

• Rails Girls: Though we didn't attend, we were (and are!) proud sponsors of Rails Girls and their initiative to invite more women into the world of coding.

• Tropical on Rails: We were not only sponsors of this event for the second year in a row, but we also sent fellow Planet Argonauts Jaison Coelho and Evaldo Klock to attend.

• MenderCon2025: MenderCon is a virtual "unconference" dedicated to the craft of maintaining and improving software over time. We collaborated with the MenderCon team to create their marketing materials leading up to the event for the second consecutive year, and Ben Parisot delivered a helpful talk titled “Building a VS Code Extension in 30 Minutes.”

• RailsConf 2025: This year, Robby Russell took the stage with his talk, "The Rails Features We Loved, Lost, and Laughed At". Fellow team members Liz Pantalone and William Mena joined the conference this year, making the most of every opportunity to learn, connect, and give back to the community that continues to inspire our work.

• Rails World 2025): Robby Russell hosted Ruby & Rails, a Chat with Maintainers, bringing together Aaron Patterson, Jean Boussier, and Hiroshi Shibata for a lively conversation about the future of Ruby and Rails. (The talk is available now on YouTube.)

• XO Ruby: Planet Argon was proud to sponsor XO Ruby in Portland, Oregon. Robby was even there in attendance.

• SF Ruby: In November, we sponsored and attended the SF Ruby Conference, a gathering that reminded us why this community has so much heart.

Something I Learned About Software Teams

Although I am not an engineer, I spend enough time around them to see patterns in how teams find momentum. The more time I spent listening to our developers, the more I realized that the healthiest software teams treat their work like a shared journey. The code matters, of course, but the relationships around it matter just as much.

Here is what I observed this year:

• Momentum often comes from small and steady improvements.
• Software isn’t just about code. It is also about communication, trust, and the patience to keep moving together.
• Mature software thrives when teams treat it like a living story rather than a problem to be fixed.
• Real progress inside a long-lived system is not just technical. It often begins with people understanding each other a little better.
• We all embody Planet Argon's core values.

This shifted how we talk about our work. We aren’t rescuing broken systems. We’re helping long-lived applications enter their next chapter with confidence and care.

Planet Argon LIVE

Planet Argon LIVE is a LinkedIn webinar series we introduced this year. Our team has a wide range of knowledge, and their problem-solving methods always impress me. Robby and I felt this would be a helpful way to share what our team knows with others who might face similar challenges.

Each webinar features someone from our team walking the audience through a tutorial, a demo, or a challenge they navigated.

I had never hosted a webinar before, so this was new to me, but like our developers, I’m up for a challenge! The hardest part for me was learning to set up the livestream correctly, but now, once the technical part is done, it’s always smooth sailing. Facilitating learning and giving our team a place to share their insights has been a highlight of my year.

Culture Club!

Remote work challenges us to find new ways to feel connected. Culture Club is one of my favorite ways to make that happen.

Every quarter, I invite two or three team members to join me in Culture Club. We meet for a brainstorm and look through upcoming holidays, even the quirky ones. Then we choose activities for the months ahead.

Some activities are simple, like a Slack thread in honor of National Kindness Day. Others are more elaborate, like our Hot Cocoa Recipe Exchange/Secret Santa party. We’ve even hosted haunted Halloween Meet the Week sessions, run virtual office scavenger hunts, and created holiday playlists together.

These moments change the feel of a workday. They add warmth to the routine and remind us that community can exist anywhere we choose to build it. I think these activities make our remote work feel more human, more connected.

Our Summer Digital Marketing Intern

I don’t work directly with clients, so I don’t always interact with people outside of our team. One exception each year is when we bring in a summer digital marketing intern, which gives me the opportunity to exercise some mentorship skills. But it’s actually much more special than that. I get to watch our intern grow with the guidance of our entire team.

The support our interns receive shows me how committed the team is to teaching and mentorship. This summer, they shared resources, feedback, and encouragement throughout Filipe Castro’s internship. It’s beautiful to see how the team rallies behind newcomers, and I think it helps strengthen our community.

Commit Goods Launch

One of my favorite projects this year was helping launch Commit Goods, our community-centered merch shop for open source projects.

This launch involved coordination among designers, developers, Shopify, dropship companies, and open-source maintainers. I worked on forms, emails, product coordination, and the storytelling behind the collections. This was also a great opportunity to collaborate with Robby, Michael, and Brian on building a shop that feels both fun and functional.

The best part was seeing the community respond. People are excited to support open source tools, and we’re excited to build this new brand.

Wrapping Up the Year 🎁

We monitored a lot of marketing-related metrics this year. Those were all good to track, but I wouldn't hang all our success on those metrics alone. The heart of our work showed up in quieter places, such as shared wins, thoughtful collaborations, and the way our community continued to grow around us. I am grateful for every one of those moments and look forward to seeing what we create together next year.