Merb is a ruby web development framework that is fast, lightweight, and powerful that can be a great alternative to Rails. Merb doesn't have any opinions: you can use any ruby database abstraction library, any javascript library, and any template engine. In this presentation we'll take a look at the history of merb, how to get up and running, and when you should replace a heavy Rails action with a merb equivalent. We'll also do a live code demonstration where we build a sample application.