RubyNation Keynote Speakers
Neal Ford, Opening Keynote: Ceremony vs. Essence
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 suddenly interested in dynamic languages like Ruby.
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.
Giles Bowkett, Afternoon Keynote: Archaeopteryx: A Ruby MIDI Generator
Giles 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.
Rich Kilmer, Morning Keynote
Rich Kilmer is the co-founded of 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.
Stuart Halloway, Closing Keynote: Bad Ruby
Ruby's dynamic features make it easy to write low-ceremony code. Unlike many languages today, Ruby allows you to override calls to new, generate new classes and methods at runtime, evaluate code on-the-fly, dynamically respond to methods with method_missing, create headerless source code files, etc.
But you should not be satisfied with these. Ruby's abstractions are neither as rich, nor as composable, as they could be. In this talk, we will look at what's wrong with Ruby. Issues include unnecessary language features such as class variables, syntax variations that require you to overspecify (e.g. instance variables), limitations of Ruby reflection, second-class citizens, such as blocks. And, of course, we will show specific, real-world examples where these limitations lead to unmaintainable, legacy code.
Avoid these pitfalls, and your Ruby code will be more maintainable. And you will develop a keen sense of what to look for in Ruby's successor.
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.
RubyNation Speakers
David Bock
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 problem 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.
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.
Yehuda Katz
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 for 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.
David Keener
David Keener 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.
Russ Olsen
Russ Olsen will be presenting "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.
Russ Olsen is a software engineer, trainer and public speaker with a background in Java, Ruby and Rails. He is the author of "Design Patterns in Ruby."
Glenn Vanderburg
Glenn Vanderburg will present '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.
Bruce Tate
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.