While web applications dominate much of the computing landscape, sometimes you just want to open a window on your desktop. Enter Shoes! With a long history in the Ruby community, Shoes is an easy to learn, fun to use framework for writing and packaging GUI apps. It's ideal for kids, beginners, and anyone look for a simple way to build apps that run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. After many years of development, a release candidate for the new version (4.0) of Shoes is ready! Come learn how to get Shoes, how it builds on the cross-platform power of JRuby, and how you can get involved in the project.