Get to the Scottish Ruby Conference – 26-27 March, 2010 »

Created at: 26.01.2010 01:31, source: Ruby Inside, tagged: events

If you fancy a trip to the land of fried confectionary and heart disease, the Scottish Ruby Conference (previously Scotland on Rails) is selling tickets for its third event: Scottish Ruby Conference 2010. It takes place on 26-27 March, 2010 and the early bird tickets sold out in a mere 2 hours.. but there are full price tickets still available at £195 each (still a good deal really).

I've edged away from event specific mentions on Ruby Inside due to lack of interest, but the previous Scotland on Rails events attracted many suspiciously high caliber speakers (many not even from Europe) and lots of kudos from the community. A selection of 2009's speakers, for example: Jim Weirich, Yehuda Katz, Pat Maddox, Aaron Quint, Scott Raymond, Steven Bristol, Dave Thomas... !!

For 2010, the schedule has still not been announced, but the call for proposals has been closed and 83 proposals are currently being force-fed haggis until just 20 strong stomached individuals remain. Jim Weirich and Tim Bray have already passed the test with flying colors and are guaranteed to be keynoting. A full program is due for early February.

As an aside, kudos to the Scottish Ruby Conference organizers for ditching the Scotland on Rails brand for something better. No longer will Scotland's premier Ruby event be sullied by the inclusion of a defended trademark!

Weekend Free? Join The Rails 3 BugMash And Make A Difference »

Created at: 16.01.2010 01:14, source: Rails Inside, tagged: events

Rizwan Reza got in touch to let everyone know that a special Rails BugMash takes place this weekend (January 16-17, 2010).. it's a Rails 3 focused BugMash! Fix a known issue with Rails 3.0, report a bug, test some gems or plugins, write some documentation.. there's a lot you can do to help with the next major release of Rails.

If you're new to the "BugMash" concept, this PDF guide gives you a run down of the concept and how to take part. This BugMash is a little different to usual, however, as you can choose to work on documentation or testing rather than only fixing code.. so if you think of yourself as more of a blogger than a coder, there's a lot you can do.

What do you get out of it other than the satisfaction that you helped work on Rails 3.0..? Well, you'll be entered into a raffle for one of sixteen different prizes including $300 of 37signals credit, a GitHub paid plan, Peepcode credits, a $50 Amazon giftcard, and more.

The Rails BugMash events are becoming a regular thing now and previous ones have been quite successful. The first saw 100 people working on 130 Rails trouble tickets with 35 participants seeing their patches accepted into Rails. The second event saw 55 people working on 83 tickets. If you want to get a feel for what a weekend spent "bug mashing" is like, here's a field report!

Have fun! Get started at http://bugmash.com/

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JRuby BugMash and Events! »

Created at: 05.01.2010 20:00, source: Engine Yard Blog, tagged: events BugMash jruby

The holidays are behind us now, and it’s time to jump back into things! The JRuby team is easing into the new year with several upcoming gigs, and we’d love for you to get involved!

JRuby BugMash

The JRuby project has been growing impressively quickly, with frequent releases and a constantly expanding community. There’s a hefty list of impressive users and companies, and the team has been touring the world, trying their best to make it out to everyone who wants to hear and learn about the project.

As with any growing code base though, there’s a need to keep things tidy; frequent releases and speedy development also mean bugs, and things that need fixing—and that’s where we turn to you!

The first ever official JRuby BugMash will take place this Saturday, January 9th through Tuesday, January 12th. The core team will spend the days prior to the BugMash highlighting the specific bugs that are most important—you’ll want to keep an eye out for the JRuby Intro section, which will be the focus of the BugMash. Then, Saturday morning, it’s off to the races! As a small token of our appreciation, in addition to the wonderful satisfaction of having made a difference to the project, we’ll be sending each of the first 100 participants a limited edition JRubyConf Poster.

The JRuby Core Team will be around on IRC channel #jruby throughout the BugMash to help folks get started and to answer questions. Be sure to stop in and say hello!

January Events

In addition to the BugMash, the team will be heading out twice this month to talk to new folks about making JRuby a part of their development process. If you’re anywhere in the neighborhood, be sure to stop in, or reach out via email! We’d love to meet you.

CodeMash

January 13 – 15 | Sandusky, OH

CodeMash is a multi-language and platform event, with tracks and talks on everything from Java and .net to Python and Ruby; some 900 developers will be in attendance, and the event is already completely sold out. Nick Sieger will be on hand, talking about how to cure the Java Blues with JRuby.

JFokus

January 26 – 27 | Stockholm, Sweden

JFokus is Sweden’s largest annual Java show, and in this it’s fourth year, hopes to attract even more attendees than last year (650!). Charles Nutter will be giving an introductory talk on JRuby, helping folks get up and running with JRuby.

There will of course be even more JRuby talks and events coming up; keep an eye on the Engine Yard Blog and JRuby Facebook page for updates!

December Events »

Created at: 03.12.2009 23:45, source: Engine Yard Blog, tagged: events

December is a short holiday month, and things tend to quiet down a bit. Still, we’ve got three upcoming events to let you know about, to be sure you can get your periodic dose of Ruby and Rails love between parties and vacations.

SD Ruby

December 3 | San Diego, CA

Yehuda Katz will be in San Diego talking about Rails 3; he’s been all over the map this year, so if you haven’t had a chance to catch a Rails 3 talk yet and are in the San Diego area, be sure to stop in!

Silicon Valley Ruby User Group

December 7 | Moffett Field, CA

In addition to being our resident expert on Agile methodologies, Dave Astels is Cucumber contributor, and co-author of The RSpec Book. Dave will be talking about how Cucumber can make your testing life better, complete with the full scoop on recent developments. There are only a few spots open, so grab yours quickly if you can make it.

Velocity Online Conference

December 8 | Virtual Conference

There have been lots of experiments with online conferences as of late, and the feedback has been great; with belts tightening everywhere this season, it’s a great and affordable way to get access to top-notch content. Yehuda Katz will be speaking about how Rails 3 is even faster by default; tickets are on sale now!

That’s it for December—hope to see some of you, and to all the rest, have a great holiday season!

Rails Roadshow Coming Home! »

Created at: 17.11.2009 02:13, source: Engine Yard Blog, tagged: events Rails Performance

Earlier this month, the Engine Yard crew took a quick trip around the states, stopping in five different cities to talk about Rails Performance in the Cloud. We visited Boston, Chicago, Austin, Los Angeles and Seattle, and met with a great crowd of technologists in each. We were joined by some of our favorite technology partners, who talked about cloud computing and their different performance-related products.

The Roadshow was a fantastic success; attendee feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and on our end, it was great to get out and meet folks in their home cities. Our partners enjoyed meeting existing customers, and for those who weren’t customers, we were able to present a uniquely well-rounded view of the ecosystem.

On to the point: the Roadshow was so fantastic, that we decided we ought do it one more time—this time, here at home, in San Francisco. I’m happy to announce the sixth iteration of the Rails Performance in the Cloud Roadshow, set for Wednesday, December 2nd, bright and early in the day.

We’ll be hosting right here at Engine Yard Headquarters in the SOMA part of San Francisco, and will be joined by our partners at New Relic, Pivotal Labs, Soasta and CVSDude. We’ll go from 8:15 in the morning until noon, and of course, breakfast will be served.

Space is limited, so reserve your seat today!