March 23-24, 2012
Reston, VA

Closing Keynote: Corey Haines

We're trilled to announce Corey Haines as our closing keynote speaker.

After 12 years of coding for money, Corey Haines said enough and went on a year-long, journeyman pair-programming tour. Traveling the world, pair-programming for room and board, he spent his time teaching, learning and just living as a knowledge-cross-pollinating, little, software craftsmanship bee. For the past three years, Corey has focused his attention on helping developers improve their fundamental software design skills through the use of focused-practice events, such as coderetreat, a series that has recently grown into a world-wide phenomenon as the Global Day of Coderetreat.

Posted by Gray Herter: January 25, 2012

Scott Davis Presents "Sass and Compass Unleash Your Stylesheets"

We're proud to announce that compass core team member and sass contributor Scott Davis will evangelize on their proper use with "Sass and Compass Unleash Your Stylesheets".

Do you not fully understand scss or sass? Do you hate making stylesheets as a developer. Do you not understand sprites? Using compass standalone or with the rails asset pipeline can increase your productivity and make CSS enjoyable! Because spending 30% of your development time on styles should never happen, it is Scott's mission to make that a thing of the past.

Scott is a UX engineer for the Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs the science programs for the Hubble Space Telescope and the upcoming Webb Space Telescope. Most of his work centers on HubbleSite.org, public website for the Hubble Telescope.

Scott has spent the past eight years developing web applications, most recently the HubbleSite's redesign. His focus is the creation of elegant, well-engineered, robust code that is as simple to read as it is to use.

Scott lives on a 200-acre farm in Maryland, where he enjoys excessive amounts of farming and the fact that his nearest neighbor is a cow.

Posted by Gray Herter: January 25, 2012

Steve Klabnik Presents "Designing Hypermedia APIs"

We're is proud to announce that Steve Klabnik will present "Designing Hypermedia APIs", explaining how to design your APIs so that they truly embrace the web and HTTP.

Steve is a Ruby Hero, software craftsman, and an aspiring digital humanities scholar. He spends most of his time contributing to Open Source projects, and maintains both Hackety Hack and Shoes. Steve is also writing a book on REST called Get Some REST. Otherwise, Steve travels the globe speaking at conferences from Los Angeles to Kiev.

Steve writes regularly on his blog, and can be found on twitter.

Posted by Gray Herter: January 24, 2012

Sandi Metz will present "Give Me a Lever: The Story of Inheritance"

Awesome. Reluctant author and obsessive programmer Sandi Metz will speak at RubyNation 2012. Sandi will present "Give Me a Lever: The Story of Inheritance", a presentation freshly pulled from the pages of her upcoming book, "Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby".

Sandi Metz has 30 years of experience working on projects that survived to grow and change. During the daytime she writes software at Duke University, in the evening, builds bicycles, and in the wee dark hours of the early morning is finishes the final chapters of the book.

Sandi rants when she has time on her blog, and can be followed on twitter. She also speaks at conferences when she can, such as at our neighbors to the north, GoRuCo.

Posted by Gray Herter: January 20, 2012

Entrepreneur Mike Subelsky to Present "Coding for Uncertainty"

We are happy to announce that entrepreneur Mike Subelsky will speak at RubyNation 2012. Mike will present "Coding for Uncertainty: How to Design Maintainable, Flexible Code for a Startup Application".

Mike Subelsky is a Baltimore-based entrepreneur, programmer, and devops guy. His tools of choice are Ruby and JavaScript but he considers himself a jack-of-all-trades. In 2007, he co-founded a web startup called OtherInbox.com, which was just acquired by ReturnPath. Currently, he is pursuing new as-yet-unannounced ventures (he promises "something new and very cool").

Mike is a big believer in Baltimore's innovation community of artists, technologists, thinkers, and strivers of all types. That belief has powered his efforts in co-founding the Baltimore Improv Group, Ignite Baltimore, the Baltimore Hackathon, and other activities.

Mike writes regularly on his blog, and can be followed on twitter.

Posted by Gray Herter: January 12, 2012

2012 Early Bird Tickets are for Sale Now.

We have Early Bird tickets up for sale now. To register just visit our registration page. The Early Bird tickets will be available until the end of this month, or until we sell out of them (there are only 50 early tickets).

Last year we sold out completely one month before the conference and we expect this year to be sold out, too. We didn't even run a waiting list last year. So when the tickets are gone, they're gone. We have received a lot of great proposals, so rest assured that RubyNation 2012 will be one you don't want to miss.

Posted by Gray Herter: January 06, 2012

2012 Keynote: Jim Weirich

Since tickets will be on sale within 24 hours, it is past time to announce some speakers! So, let's start at the top, with keynoter Jim Weirich!

Jim is the Chief Scientist for EdgeCase LLC, an excellent Rails consultancy in Columbus, Ohio. You can follow him on twitter @jimweirich or read his blog, "{ |one, step, back| }"

He has spoken at RubyNation before, with two talks in 2010. Jim's SOLID Ruby video almost broke the will of our video production crew that year, with its 110+ slides! We were doing them the hard way back then by making a jpg file out of each slide! How the hell did he get over 110 slides into a 40 minute presentation anyway? But Jim is a master, so the old rules don't apply to his presentations. He made it look easy, it was awesome, and now that is one of our favorite RubyNation videos.

Jim will be in town teaching a Rails course with Dave Thomas conveniently scheduled just before RubyNation! Jim is an excellent teacher, and has loads of Ruby and Rails knowledge (Dave, too. Duh.). So take that course if you want to learn the right way, from the experts.

We'll be releasing speaker information regularly from now until early February. So, check back with us frequently for updates!

Posted by Gray Herter: January 06, 2012

Our 2012 Call for Presentation Proposals is Open!

Want to speak at RubyNation? Then we want to hear from you! Submit a presentation proposal! RubyNation will be held on March 23-24, 2012 in Reston, VA.

Presentations should focus on helping our attendees by teaching from your experiences. The audience is primarily practicing rubyists (of all levels), so talks should lean towards the technical side. All Ruby related topics will be considered (JavaScript, HTML5, Big Data, Agile, Start-Ups, too). Each presentation should be 40 minutes long, including time for questions and discussion.

Keep in mind that our audience will be fully-engaged members of the DC Area Ruby developer’s community. Your presentation should appeal to them. Presentations should be loaded with code and technical content. We are engineers. We want to be entertained, amazed, and have fun. Proposals containing marketing-based content will be sniffed out and booted!

Submit as many proposals as you want. More than one helps you get selected because we sometimes get similar talks from different people. If you only submit one, and it duplicates Jim Weirich’s talk then you will probably get cut. Panels or multi-presenter proposals are fine. Speakers will receive free admission to the conference and the speakers party/dinner the night before RubyNation, and the opportunity to address a large audience of talented and influential rubyists!

We plan to videotape all the presentations, and make the videos available online for free. If that isn’t OK, just let us know in your proposal notes.

Please submit your proposal by 11:59:59 PM ET on Wed, Feb 1st, 2012. We reserve the right to accept and announce a few proposals before that time, but not too many. We’ll decide that as we go along.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at proposals at rubynation.org. Your presentation is important to us, we want to help make it as good as possible.

We look forward to seeing some great proposals!

Posted by Gray Herter: December 15, 2011

Sharpen your MySQL Skilz at Percona Live January 11

The Percona Live MySQL conference is coming up in DC on January 11th. Baron Schwartz, who gave a great talk on MySQL performance for the NovaRUG last year, is one of the presenters, along with many others.

Posted by Gray Herter: December 03, 2011

Jul 21 NovaRUG: CoffeeScript by Scott Leberknight

The next NovaRUG meeting is tomorrow night! Scott Leberknight will take a break from his recent immersions into the depths of Hadoop and Hive long enough to reprise his excellent CoffeeScript presentation, which he presented at NIC-U's Spring technical conference in April. Scott is the Chief Architect at Near Infinity Corporation.

Posted by Gray Herter: July 20, 2011

Added Some Links to Speaker Slides

Just added about eight slide links to the speakers page.

Posted by Gray Herter: April 06, 2011

We Got Our Robonia Domain, Now You Can Get One, Too!

When we first heard that the newly recognized country of Robonia was given permission to offer up domain names with the .rb top-level domain suffix we said "We gotta get me one of those!" How awesome is that for a ruby conference, a domain name that ends in .rb! Well, the months of waiting were over earlier this week as they went live with the new suffix. As soon as they were available we snapped rubynation.rb right up.

And as a special service to the ruby community, RubyNation has purchased the .rb domain name of every ruby brigade, ruby user group, ruby conference, and ruby-related company that we could think of, and even for many individuals. We have matz.rb, chad.rb, why.rb, seattle.rb, davethomas.rb, and many more! Which brings us to an exciting new service we are offering to the Ruby community. For a small fee (and some additional administrative costs), we will be happy to transfer the rights to one of these fine domains to you, for the good of the community!

Click here to view the details of this exciting new offer.

UPDATE: You know this is joke, right? April Fools Day and all that. BTW, here is another one (a JRuby inspired invention called RJava!) from our friend Scott Leberknight, who told me about this yesterday at RubyNation, but I misunderstood what he was talking about until just now (I'm quick, I know).

Posted by Gray Herter: April 01, 2011

Welcome Back Amazon Web Services

RubyNation welcomes back Gold sponsor Amazon Web Services, a great company with some awesome services. Here is what AWS wants you to know:

Since early 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided companies of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS you can requisition compute power, storage, and other services - gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services as your business demands them. You have the flexibility to choose whichever development platform or programming model makes the most sense for the problems you're trying to solve. You pay only for what you use, with no up-front expenses or long-term commitments, making AWS the most cost-effective way to deliver your application to your customers and clients. And, with AWS, you can take advantage of Amazon.com's global computing infrastructure, that is the backbone of Amazon.com's retail business and transactional enterprise whose scalable, reliable, and secure distributed computing infrastructure has been honed for over 13 years.

Posted by Gray Herter: April 01, 2011

Thanks Four-Time Gold Sponsor FGM!

RubyNation is pleased to announce that four-time Gold sponsor FGM is back! FGM is great local company that does a lot of Rails work. Here is a word from FGM:

FGM, Inc., is an information technology company delivering sophisticated, customized solutions that improve business efficiency across the enterprise. As a trusted partner of the Department of Defense, U.S. Government civilian and international agencies, and businesses throughout the world, FGM is an agile provider of technical solutions that enable mission-critical operations and decision-making. FGM's solutions help customers improve their business performance through information technology transformation services focusing on architecture, information management, systems integration, and integrated solutions.

Posted by Gray Herter: March 31, 2011

Thanks Platinum Sponsor IZEA!

New Platinum sponsor IZEA is hiring and they are located in Orlando! Here is what IZEA wants to tell you:

IZEA is a world leader in social media sponsorships. Founded in 2006, we pioneered the cash sponsorship space and continue to deliver innovative platforms and campaigns for our clients. IZEA is a venture-backed company that has raised over $14 million from leading investors. We are headquartered in beautiful downtown Orlando, Florida and serve a diverse base of publishers and advertisers around the globe with our three core platforms.

Posted by Gray Herter: March 31, 2011

Welcome Back Gold Sponsor Intridea

RubyNation welcomes back Gold sponsor intridea. Intridea is DC-based rails consultancy with a national reach. Here is what Intridea wants you to know:

Intridea designs and develops better applications for mobile devices and the web. For clients ranging from startups with just an idea to firmly established Fortune 500 companies, we build high quality software that looks as great as it performs. We know what it takes to make client projects successful in the longer term. We also have our own suite of products developed in-house, including the Present.ly microblogging platform and Scalr, our cloud computing soloution. We specialize in Ruby on Rails, iPhone, and Android development, but we are a firm proponent of choosing the right tool for the job.

Posted by Gray Herter: March 30, 2011

Special Thanks to Long-Time Gold Sponsor CodeSherpas

RubyNation is happy to have CodesSherpas back as a Gold sponsor, for their fourth straight year! RubyNation has had a long and successful relationship with CodeSherpas, who has provided tremendous help in planning and running the conference over the years, in addition to their sponsorship. They even host our web site and code repository! Here is what CodeSherpas wants you to know:

CodeSherpas can develop the software you need for your business. They provide complete application lifecycle development from requirements through development, deployment, and maintenance. Already have a development team? Just need to get more work done? CodeSherpas can join your existing team and help them pull more weight. CodeSherpas also provides training in Java, Ruby/Rails, and agile project management.

Posted by Gray Herter: March 29, 2011

Welcome New Gold Sponsor Blue Box Group

RubyNation is happy to announce a new Gold sponsor, Blue Box Group. Blue Box Group a great rails hosting company. And now a message from Blue Box Group:

Blue Box Group works with the most talented Ruby on Rails developers in the world by building and maintaining powerful, efficient, application-specific infrastructure.

Unique among hosting providers, our experts provide top-tier operations expertise and configuration support during deploys, migrations, and maintenance. This seamless integration allows your development team to focus on writing great code.

Posted by Gray Herter: March 28, 2011

BusyConf Schedule

Check out our schedule on BusyConf. Get the RubyNation schedule cached onto your cell phone's browser.

Ah, the power of HTML5 goodness!

Posted by Gray Herter: March 26, 2011

Welcome New Gold Sponsor Solution Street

RubyNation is proud to announce a new Gold sponsor, Solution Street. Solution Street is a great local consulting company that lots of different types of projects, including lots of ruby and rails. This is what Solution Street wants you to know:

Solution Street, based in Northern Virginia's high-tech corridor, is an information technology consultancy that helps public, private, government, and non-profit organizations achieve their business goals through the design and rapid deployment of web applications. Solution Street employees are experts in building large, highly scalable and well performing web applications using J2EE, .NET, PHP and Ruby on Rails technologies.

Posted by Gray Herter: March 25, 2011

GitHub Party at the Westin Reston Heights Vinifera Bar

Our friends at GitHub have graciously offered to sponsor our main happy hour on Friday night April 1st. After Blake's keynote we will head over to the Vinifera restaurant and bar in the Westin Reston Heights hotel. The Vinifera is across the courtyard, just a short stumbling distance from the Sheraton (very important for the walk back to the Reston Sheraton afterwards).

Posted by Gray Herter: March 17, 2011

RubyNation is Sold Out

We are sold out, a week earlier than last year, too. Unfortunately, the Sheraton can't hold any more people. Thanks to everyone who bought a ticket. See you in April.

Posted by Gray Herter: March 12, 2011

Thanks Living Social, Our Diamond Sponsor

What do RubyNation and the Superbowl have in common? LivingSocial sponsored us both! RubyNation is officially declaring the end of the great recession. This year, we are loaded with sponsors who are hiring, and Diamond sponsor LivingSocial is firmly in that group. Here is what LivingSocial wants to tell you:

LivingSocial adds surprise to every calendar with handpicked daily deals you can share with friends. Members enjoy at least 50% off on the coolest, local experiences. Local business owners get an easy and cost effective marketing tool to attract new, loyal customers. In 2010, one of the fastest growing companies in the space expanded with LivingSocial Escapes offering a "vacation in a box" for easy weekend trips at great value. Based in Washington, DC, the international brand has saved its nearly 20 million subscribers more than $230 million in more than 205 markets worldwide.

Posted by Gray Herter: March 11, 2011

New Platinum Sponsor OMGPOP

RubyNation welcomes new Platinum sponsor, OMGPOP. OMGPOP is growing fast and they are looking for new employees for their social games platform. Sounds like a fun place to work. Here is what OMGPOP wants you to know:

OMGPOP is the leading developer of social games in NYC. We build high quality social games used by millions of users across multiple platforms including Facebook, iPhone, and the web. With both synchronous real-time and asynchronous games, the performance and scale of our Ruby backend is a top priority. Our team of world class engineers use both cutting edge and proven technologies to deliver the best gaming experiences in the world, tackle massive scale and solve hard problems. We're growing, and we're looking for the best - omgpop.com/jobs - check us out.

Posted by Gray Herter: March 10, 2011

Just a Few Seats Left

Posted by Gray Herter: March 10, 2011

RubyNation Welcomes Near Infinity for Their Second Year!

RubyNation is pleased to happy to have Platinum sponsor Near Infinity back for their second straight year. Near Infinity is a software consulting company based out of Reston, Virginia. They do a lot of Ruby work for the U.S. Government, and also commercial projects. They also do other types of consulting, mostly with Java and .NET. In addition, they do work with the IPhone, Android, and IPad platforms. Check them out at nearinfinity.com or follow us on Twitter @nearinfinity. Here is what Near Infinity wants you to know:

Near Infinity is not your average software development company. By focusing on a few simple principles-hiring only the most qualified and passionate technologists, using customer-centric Agile development practices, and persistently exploring and defining the most effective ways to apply new technologies-Near Infinity has developed a reputation for delivering great software, fast.

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Northern Virginia, the company has grown into a multi-million dollar software development firm. Our customers range from Fortune 500 companies to major federal customers in the U.S. Intelligence Community. Whether we're building traditional applications using our proven software best practices or delivering a creative solution to a cutting-edge problem, Near Infinity engineers consistently help our customers use technology to achieve their most critical business goals.

Posted by Gray Herter: February 28, 2011

Rails in Production Class is Coming Up!

One of our sponsors, CodeSherpas, is offering a Rails in Production class on March 11th. Dave Bock, one of our speakers this year, and one of RubyNation's longtime organizers will be teaching this class. Dave knows this subject very well, having worked with Rails in production environments for many years now, since 2006. He is also an excellent speaker. So, if you are interested in this class you should sign up right away.

Posted by Gray Herter: February 28, 2011

30 Tickets from Sold Out

Looks like we are about 30 tickets from being sold out, maybe a few more if some sponsors don't pick up all of the ones they are entitled to (that usually happens for a handful of them). We have more sponsors this year, so there might be a few more of those, too. We expect to be sold out before the regular priced tickets are available in a couple of weeks (March 15 - $299).

Posted by Gray Herter: February 28, 2011

Welcome New Gold Sponsor LMN Solutions

RubyNation is pleased to announce a new Gold sponsor, LMN Solutions. LMN Solutions is a wonderful local ruby consulting company based out of Reston, Virginia that does a lot of work with various government agencies. They are currently in a bidding war with another sponsor, Custom Ink, to see who can send the most people to RubyNation! Here is what LMN Solutions wants to know about who they are:

Do you want to work with smart developers to build spectacular applications? LMN Solutions values design, innovation, and bringing a pragmatic agile approach to mission challenges. We've been delivering results to customers with Ruby and Rails since 2005, and are ready to help you fully realize your ability and drive to achieve maximum productivity.

Members of the LMN team get to work on client and R&D projects, take top notch training, and serve as mentors to others as we strive for excellence and growth. We'll get you ready to take on new challenges in cybersecurity, geospatial, and scalable processing of large data sets. Check us out at LMNsolutions.com or follow us on Twitter @lmnsolutions.

Posted by Gray Herter: February 25, 2011

About 40 Tickets Left

Looks like we have about 40 tickets left, plus maybe a few sponsor tickets that might eventually go unclaimed. So, if you haven't gotten one, please register now.

Posted by Gray Herter: February 25, 2011

We've Got Stickers, From Sticker Mule!

RubyNation is pleased to announce a new Silver sponsor, Sticker Mule. They promised to supply us with stickers! We love stickers. The Sticker Mule would like to say the following few words:

We print stuff that sticks. Custom stickers, die cut stickers and laptop skins. Starting at $59 for 100. Free shipping.

Posted by Gray Herter: February 22, 2011

New Gold Sponsor Rails Dog!

RubyNation is pleased to announce a new Gold sponsor, Rails Dog. Rails Dog is not only a great, local ruby company (they are hiring, folks!), but they have the coolest logo around. And now a word from Rails Dog:

Rails Dog is a technology consulting firm specializing in web applications and e-commerce development. We are the creators of the Spree e-commerce platform and have contributed to dozens of other open source projects. We are always looking for talented Rails developers as well as new customers who want to hire a development shop with deep Rails experience.

Posted by Gray Herter: February 20, 2011

Speakers List is Up!

Check out the speakers list speakers list. Most of them are posted, with just a few exceptions (get us those photos!).

We've got tons of great presentations this year, from some great rubyists! The topics cover everything from Ruby and Rails to cloud computing to javascript and beyond. You name it, if it concerns ruby development, we have a talk about it this year.

Posted by Gray Herter: February 20, 2011

CFP Extended Until Monday

We decided to extend our Call for Presentations until Monday Jan 31st at 6 PM. We will meet Monday night to start combing through them. We have received lots of great proposals, but if you have been sitting on an awesome presentation, now is your chance to get serious and get it to us.

We'll still let everyone know the outcome by Feb 4th.

Posted by Gray Herter: January 27, 2011

Tickets for Sale!

We have early tickets up for sale now. Just go to our registration page and take a look. The Super Early Bird tickets will be available until the end of this month. We also have discount codes available for students and non-profits. So, check it out and register soon.

Posted by Gray Herter: January 06, 2011

Our Call for Presentations is Open! Speak to the Nation!

Want to speak at RubyNation? Then we want to hear from you! Submit a presentation proposal!

Presentations should focus on helping attendees by teaching from your experiences. The audience is primarily practicing Rubyists of all levels, so talks should lean towards the technical side. All Ruby related topics will be considered. Each presentation should be 40 minutes long. Submit your proposal to 'proposals at rubynation.org' with the following information:

• Your name, phone number and email address
• A brief speaker bio
• Presentation title
• Short Description (one or two paragraphs)
• Target audience (beginner, intermediate, advanced)

Speakers will receive free admission to the conference, and the opportunity to address a large audience of talented and influential rubyists!

We need your proposal by Jan 28th. We will let you know on or before Feb 4th if your proposal has been accepted.

We look forward to seeing some great proposals!

Posted by Gray Herter: January 03, 2011

No Fooling! RubyNation 2011 Set for April 1 and 2.

RubyNation 2011 is set for April 1 and 2, 2011 at the Sheraton in Reston, Virginia. This is the same great venue we had last year. This year's edition promises to be even better than last year. Stay tuned for a call for presentations and how to purchase early bird tickets. See you April 1st! No Fooling.

Posted by Gray Herter: December 17, 2010

Joe O'Brien, Jim Weirich and the "Ruby Insurgency"

The video of the Joe O'Brien and Jim Weirich talk, "Tales of the Resistance: A Dialog on the Ruby Insurgency," is now available online. It features imaginative skits to show Rubyists the mindset of customers. And, of course, our own Dave Bock makes a special guest appearance in the video. Check it out!

Posted by David Keener: November 20, 2010

Scott Chacon's Advanced Git Class Coming Dec 4

Scott Chacon, chief Git evangelist at GitHub, creator of GitCasts, and author of Pro Git, is coming to Reston on Dec 4th to teach another of his popular Advanced Git classes.

The Git source control system is quickly taking over the development world, replacing SVN and CVS. It's strengths lie in fast, distributed control of source code for teams from one to thousands. The real power of Git comes when you move beyond simply "doing what you used to do in SVN, just with Git." In this advanced session you'll explore topics like:

• Managing and merging multiple branches
• Workflow best practices (rebasing, merging, etc)
• Finding issues with bisect and blame
• Hooks
• Submodules
• Customizing

This class is presented by Jumpstart Lab, a DC-based training company with a long history of bringing interesting technology courses to our area.

Posted by Gray Herter: November 18, 2010

Jeff Casimir's Talk is Now Available

Jeff Casimir's top-rated talk, "How to Teach Anything to Anybody, Even Your Dev Team" is now available online at rubynation.blip.tv. According to SpeakerRate, this was the highest rated talk from the conference. Check it out now.

Posted by David Keener: October 31, 2010

Congratulation to Ryan McGeary for his Winning Lightning Talk!

The votes are in (and counted). Ryan McGeary won the lightning talk competition held at the October NovaRUG meeting. Ryan's talk on CoffeeScript got the most votes, so Ryan wins the big prize. And so do we, since the prize is a speaking slot at next year's RubyNation. All the speakers get a free pass to RubyNation, so that is included, too, of course.

We are not sure if Ryan will reprise his excellent CoffeeScript talk with an expanded version, or whether he will come up with something new. But either way, We're sure it will be a great addition to RubyNation.

And thanks to everyone who presented, all nine of the talks were very good, and provided a great evening of Ruby goodness.

Posted by Gray Herter: October 29, 2010

Nathaniel Talbott's Video Is Available

Nathaniel Talbott's entrepreneurial talk on "Developing Customers" is now available online at rubynation.blip.tv. Check it out now.

Posted by David Keener: October 26, 2010

Nov 5: Cassandra class, and NovaJUG meeting Nov 4

Want to learn about using the Apache Cassandra database to create highly scalable applications? Riptano is offering a class on it Nov 5th. Cassandra is a NoSQL solution that was featured in some of the talks at the last RailsConf. Riptano is also providing a NovaJUG meeting on Apache Cassandra the night before.

Posted by Gray Herter: October 25, 2010

Oct 21 NovaRUG: Sean Schofield on Rails Engines plus Lightning Talks

The next NovaRUG meeting is tomorrow night! To celebrate the NovaRUG's 50th meeting (yup, 50!), we will open the floor to lightning talks on whatever subject you want to talk about. As an added incentive, we will vote, and the winner will get a speaking slot at RubyNation 2011 including a free pass to the conference (but not me!). RubyNation will be held April 1st and 2nd next year.

• The Awesome Power of Rails Engines by Sean Schofield (20 minutes)
• The admin_data Gem by Neeraj Singh (10 minutes)
• Dave Keener (5 minutes)
• git-based Capistrano deployments by Anthony Burns (5 minutes)
• Rack by Scott Leberknight (5 minutes)
• Ruby Refactoring by Camille Bell (10-15 minutes)
• FasterCSV gem by Charles Calvert
• CoffeeScript by Ryan McGeary (5-10 minutes)
• Linux administration with Ruby! by Keith Bennett

Some talks will be more lightning than others, so you can speak longer than 5 minutes if you want. If I know how much time the speaker wants I will make a note of it. Email me at gray dot herter @ gmail.com and I will put your information up here, or just show up and speak.

Posted by Gray Herter: October 20, 2010

Sept 15 NovaRUG: Rails and FaceBook Applications plus RVM and Gemsets

The Sept 15th meeting of the Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group will feature Dave Keener and Dave Bock, two of the original RubyNation organizers. Dave Keener will present a talk on Leveraging Rails to Build Facebook applications. Dave K is giving this talk in a few weeks at SunnyConf. Also, Dave Bock will demonstrate how to use RVM and gemsets effectively to manage your projects. This meeting will be sponsored by Near Infinity, and will be held in their offices.

See the NovaRUG blog for details and to sign up.

Posted by Gray Herter: September 13, 2010