Friday Happy Hour Planned!
The image below says it all. Check out the Travel link to read about the Hotel Sierra. We have arranged for discounted hotel rooms there. Since that is the location of the happy hour, and it is very near RubyNation, it would be a perfect place to stay.
Posted: July 21 2008
RubyNation Is Sold Out!
RubyNation 2008 has sold out. Thank you all for the great response. As Dave Thomas said during his recent visit to the Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group, the Rubyists in this area "never disappoint".
However, there is still hope. Our sponsor EngineYard is planning to give away two tickets through their blog. Take a look at their web site (click on their icon to the right). Perhaps you can still get a ticket that way.
Posted: July 20 2008
RubyNation Near Sellout
RubyNation is quickly approaching a sellout with just over ten regular attendee passes remaining! Register now and be sure to be a part of the very first RubyNation conference. 10 great speakers in an intimate, comfortable, venue, some great giveaways (we have boxes of Ruby books to give out), a t-shirt, and food.
After July 16th, the early pricing of $175 expires and goes up to $200, so act now!
Posted: July 9, 2008
Extra Speaker Michael Furr Announced
We are pleased to announce the addition of Michael Furr as an extra speaker. Michael will act as an official backup speaker and will have his Ruby Puzzlers presentation available should the need arise. Regardless, however, Michael has offered to present at least a few of his puzzlers during the lightning talk sessions.
Michael's Ruby Puzzlers cover Ruby language related pitfalls with examples showing how bugs can hide in innocent looking code. As part of Michael's research, he discovered quite a few abnormalities that are not mentioned by most of the Ruby documentation (online APIs, the Pickaxe book, etc...). This talk presents various syntactic and semantic corner cases in the language that most people might not be familiar with.
Micheal is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland where he is researching Ruby, specifically producing Diamondback Ruby (DRuby), a tool that aims to introduce static typing to Ruby. DRuby is an analysis framework for Ruby that includes most parts of a compiler front end, from a GLR parser up to the semantic passes over the code for typing and other analyses.
Posted: July 8, 2008
Conference Sponsor Engine Yard
RubyNation is pleased to announce EngineYard as our 2008 Conference Sponsor.
Rely on Engine Yard: 70 people, two data centers, and four continents.
Engine Yard came about in early 2006 because we saw a genuine need: customers were developing business-critical Rails apps, but they didn't want to worry about deployment issues, nor did they want to hire IT staff to manage servers. Instead, customers wanted Rails-focused 24/7 operations support, great infrastructure, and a smooth path from one to one million users.
We handle deployment and maintenance, so you can focus on building your application and running your business. Our deep roots in the Ruby and Rails communities, combined with our commitment to driving the next generation of Ruby technologies, offer our customers the peace of mind of knowing their applications are managed by a team of true technical experts.
Engine Yard is invested in the future of Ruby and Rails communities, and is helping foster and lead development by supporting open source projects like Merb and Rubinius.
Posted: June 24, 2008
Speaker Bruce Tate Announced
Note: Unfortunately, Bruce Tate will be unable to speak at this year's RubyNation due to a pressing, work-related issue. We have invited him to speak next year, and are working hard to find a suitable replacement.
RubyNation is happy to announce the addition of Bruce Tate to our lineup. Bruce will present "Testing from the Trenches", where he will explore testing strategies in Ruby on Rails. Bruce will discuss some basic testing techniques that span testing frameworks. This practical talk will look at some techniques his team uses from day to day. He'll look at fixtures and alternatives, a few useful abstractions for testing web services, and techniques for testing XML and view code.
Bruce Tate is a mountain biker, kayaker, and father of two from Austin, Tx. The Chief Technology for WellGood, LLC, Bruce uses Ruby technologies to build web sites that make a difference. ChangingThePresent is a marketplace for donation gifts and ClassWish, to be launched this Fall, is a site that will help teachers raise money for items that they would normally pay for out of their own pocket. Bruce is the author of more than ten books, including Beyond Java, From Java to Ruby, and a co-author of Deploying Rails applications.
Posted: June 14, 2008
Speaker David Keener Announced
RubyNation is proud to announce David Keener as a speaker. David will present "Practical JRuby". This talk provides a number of step-by-step examples that illustrate different ways in which Rails applications can interact effectively with a third-party Java libraries. The presentation will show how developers can leverage JRuby to augment Rails applications with the mature, third-party libraries that are widely available in the Java world.
David Keener is an IT professional, consultant and writer with over 20 years of experience. He is a technical architect for Voxant Inc., an advertising-supported news distribution network. Dave also blogs regularly on technical subjects at www.keenertech.com.
Posted: June 11, 2008
RubyNation Social Networking Application Launched
We're very pleased to announce that RubyNation sponsor BDG has stood up their new white-label social networking product for conference attendees and other members of the local Ruby community. This application made its debut at the BEA Participate conference in early May. It attracted over 800 registrants and generated 75,000 page views during the week of the conference. And of course, it's written entirely in Ruby on Rails.
If you're coming to RubyNation, thinking about coming to RubyNation (or you're a Rubyist who wishes he or she could make it to RubyNation), feel free to sign up for the site. Registration is easy and painless. Once you're in, you can "pimp" your profile with an avatar or photo, links, RSS feeds and products that you know and love. You can view and participate in discussions about each session at RubyNation and you can create and join groups to interact with your peers about a variety of interesting topics about Ruby (or anything under the sun).
So, don't waste any more time reading about this stuff -- come on in and let's get social: NowGetSocial
Posted: June 10, 2008
Keynote Speaker Rich Kilmer Announced
RubyNation is proud to announce Rich Kilmer as our Saturday morning keynote speaker. Rich co-founded InfoEther, a for-profit company focused on applying Ruby in business. He also co-founded Ruby Central, Inc., a non-profit promoting Ruby, where he is an active board member and a leading contributor in the Ruby open-source community. Rich has spoken at numerous software technology conferences, both in the US and abroad.
His background includes peer-to-peer software, wireless web, workflow, and pen computing. His current projects make production use of Ruby on several DARPA research projects. He is an active member of the Ruby development community working on Alph, FreeRIDE, RubyGems, RubyJDWP and hosts RubyForge.org.
Posted: June 7, 2008
Speaker Russ Olsen Announced
RubyNation is pleased to announce the addition of Russ Olsen, the author or "Design Patterns in Ruby", to our outstanding speaker lineup. Russ will present "DSLs and Ruby: Blurring the Lines Between Programs And Data". Domain specific languages have played a key role in Ruby's explosive growth. In fact, much of the vital infrastructure of the Ruby world, software like Rake and RSpec and, of course, Rails, is built around a DSL of one kind or another.
In this talk, Russ will look at when a DSL is appropriate and when you should stick to a more traditional approach. He will also discuss the different kinds of DSLs and will also present a number of practical techniques for making the leap from a well designed API to a real DSL. Along the way he will point out some of the technical holes that you can fall down while building your DSL.
Posted: June 4, 2008
Speaker Yehuda Katz has been Announced
RubyNation is pleased to announce that Yehuda Katz will be presenting "Living on the Edge". While Ruby has a very mature software stack in Rails, Test::Unit, and ActiveRecord, some very interesting developments are happening on the Ruby edge. Merb has grown up as a replacement to Ruby on Rails, DataMapper is becoming a viable, enhanced ActiveRecord, and even the venerable rdoc has competition with YARDoc. Unfortunately, living on the Ruby edge can be fraught with peril, as combining unreleased gems from version control can require a more intimate knowledge of Ruby than we are typically used to. Yehuda will walk you through some of the most exciting advances on the frontiers of Ruby, and provide a tour guide to those who want to walk the dangerous path. By the time the talk is over, you should feel comfortable downloading a bleeding-edge git-repository and installing it.
Yehuda Katz is the author of jQuery in Action, and is a core team member of the jQuery project. He contributes heavily to DataMapper project, is the creator of the DO.rb project, as well as SalesforceMapper, a DataMapper adapter for Salesforce. He is a contributor to Merb, an up-and-coming MVC framework written in Ruby, and is a contributing author for the upcoming Manning Publications book Ruby in Practice. He has been working with Ruby on Rails and jQuery since 2005, and is currently taking the lead on the internal control panel for Engine Yard, while helping maintain Merb.
Posted: May 28, 2008
Registration Now Open
Registration is now open for RubyNation 2008. Sign up before all the passes are gone! Your nation needs you!
RubyNation costs just $175 until July 16th, then $200 thereafter. For this low price, attendees will receive admission for both days, lunches, snacks, drinks and an awesome conference t-shirt.
Attendees will also get a fantastic opportunity to meet and learn from some of the nation's smartest Rubyists in a comfortable and intimate venue.
Posted: May 26, 2008
Speaker Glenn Vanderburg Announced
RubyNation is proud to announce Glenn Vanderburg as a speaker. Glenn will be presenting 'The Culture of Innovation in Ruby'. The Ruby community is a wellspring of innovation at the moment; many people are doing fascinating new things with tools, libraries, and exploring new ways to use the language. This talk will explore some of the reasons for that innovative culture, and discuss ways we can benefit from it and keep it healthy.
Glenn is Chief Scientist at Relevance, Inc. Glenn brings more than 20 years of experience developing software across a wide range of domains, and using a variety of tools and technologies. Glenn is always searching for ways to improve the state of software development, and was an early adopter and proponent of Ruby, Rails, and agile practices.
Posted: May 25, 2008
Speaker Giles Bowkett Announced
We are thrilled to announce that Giles Bowkett will present his now-famous presentation 'Archaeopteryx: A Ruby MIDI Generator', at this year's RubyNation. MIDI is a data protocol for music. Archaeopteryx generates MIDI via Ruby to drive prosumer studio music software. It can generate hyperkinetic DJ mixes, infinite streams of ambient music for meditation, and original drum and bass rhythms.
Archaeopteryx is a new project undergoing development. Archaeopteryx uses procs extensively, and benefits from an approach to Ruby informed by Lisp and higher-order programming. Arkx (the project's nickname) contains a Lispy approach to the classic Gang Of Four Strategy pattern which has to be the simplest, most powerful expression of the Strategy pattern in existence.
Informed by 37 Signals' "Getting Real," the investment strategy of a top venture capital firm, and the careers of prominent Rubyists, Archaeopteryx presents a bold, defiant approach to business models for programming, in the context of very powerful coding idioms.
Since discovering Rails in 2005, Giles has built many Rails apps, including Hulu, which sees more traffic than Twitter. His presentation on Archaeopteryx at GoRuCo in New York this April was the highest-rated presentation there. Jeremy McAnnally described his MountainWest RubyConf presentation as "brain-meltingly awesome." His blog often shows up on Reddit, Digg, and Hacker News. In his past lives he was a Perl guru, a Java hacker, a rave promoter, and an art student.
Posted: May 23, 2008
Speaker David Bock Announced
RubyNation is proud to announce David Bock as a speaker. David is a Principal Consultant at Code Sherpas, a consultancy specializing in Java and Ruby software development. He is also the President of the Northern Virginia Java Users Group, the Editor of O'Reilly's OnJava.com website, and a frequent speaker on technology in venues such as the No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposiums. David donned the Ruby slippers in 2005.
David will present 'Tools for your Ruby Toolbox'. Rails may be the framework that turned many of us on to Ruby, but if you are using it for all of your server-related ruby projects, you probably have a hammer and are seeing every problem as a nail. There are a number of smaller, tighter solutions to problems in this space, including GServer (built into the ruby libraries), StaticMatic (a tool for generating a static site, but with all the templating goodness), and Sinatra, a small server with an awesome DSL for restful web services. We will spend a little bit of time of each of these, seeing how you can use each for a project where you might have previously considered Rails.
Posted: May 21, 2008
Keynote Speaker Neal Ford Announced
RubyNation is proud to announce Neal Ford as our opening keynote speaker. Neil is a Software Architect and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. Neil is an internationally acclaimed speaker, speaking at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. Neil blogs at Meme Agora, where he writes about Ruby and many other topics.
Neal will explain why the debate between static vs. dynamic languages is really a red herring, that the debate should be about Essence vs. Ceremony. Neal's keynote will illustrate the origins of these concepts, what they mean to modern software development, and why everyone is interested in dynamic languages like Ruby all of a sudden.
Posted: May 14, 2008
Call for Presentations to Close on May 20, 2008
Due to overwhelming response from prospective speakers, the Call for Presentations will be closed on May 20, 2008 instead of the originally scheduled date of July 15th. If you'd like to speak at the conference, please get your proposals to us as quickly as possible. In addition to full-length talks, please note that we are also looking for speakers for a number of lightning talks in the range of 15 minutes or less. We are also planning a complementary Ruby/Rails introductory event on July 31st, and are looking for local speakers who are interested in helping out those who are newer to the Ruby community.
Posted: May 12, 2008
Keynote Speaker Stuart Halloway Announced
RubyNation is pleased to announce our closing keynote presentation will be provided by Stuart Halloway. Stuart is a co-founder of Relevance, Inc. Relevance provides consulting, training, and development services for Ruby, Rails, Ajax, and Agile Java. Stuart is the author of several books including Rails for Java Developers, and also founded the Streamlined Framework open source project. Prior to founding Relevance, Stuart was the Chief Architect at Near-Time, and the Chief Technical Officer at DevelopMentor. Stuart regularly speaks with rave reviews at industry events including the No Fluff, Just Stuff Software Symposiums and the Pragmatic Studio.
Posted: May 2, 2008
Call for Presentations!
We intend to have a minimum of five presentations. Each will last approximately one hour, with keynote talks lasting slightly long.
Interested in presenting your ideas to our group? We would love to have you! All Ruby related topics will be considered and speakers will receive free admission to the conference. Submit your proposal and include the following information:
- Your name and phone number
- A brief speaker bio
- Presentation title
- Abstract (<500 words)
The call for participation will end on June 15th after which time we will notify everyone of the results, and publish our speakers list.
Note: Due to overwhelming response, the Call for Presentations will be closed on May 20, 2008 instead of the originally announced date.
Posted: April 21, 2008