CVREG - Home

June and July Meetings

2010-05-12T15:17:00Z

Hey Folks, so far we’ve had a great line-up of speakers and topics. I appreciate everyone coming out and showing their support to the Group. I made a couple announcements at May’s meeting: There are no speakers scheduled for June or July.

RailsConf

This year’s RailsConf is scheduled 7-10 June. Our normally scheduled meeting is 8 June. If you’re going to RailsConf and would be interested in sharing your impressions then we might schedule a social sometime in June for RailsConf retrospective.

July

I’ll be having fun on family vacation on 13 July, our normally scheduled meeting date. Some ideas for the July meeting: 1) social, 2) lightning talks, 3) ruby hack night, 4) couple members present. Express your interest on the mailing list. My vote is for lightning talks, structured as 5 minute lightning talks.

August and the rest of the year

I’m busy trying to schedule interesting folks and looking for co-meeting opportunities. I’ll keep you guys posted.

Cheers, Mel

May Meeting: Eric Pugh and Hightech Cville

2010-05-09T20:20:00Z

Meeting Details

Date: Tuesday, 11 May
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Place: Dominion

Meeting Note:

The location is where the RJUG usually meets. Plus, on the mailing list there is a thread started that should be used to submit your name, company, and email address to meet Dominion’s security requirements. I apologize for the inconvenience but Thank you very much for your patience and understanding.

Abstract:

HighTechCville is what happens when you have a month of paternity leave and are up at 3 AM, you’ve never seen a plugin or gem you couldn’t embed, and you want to learn more about crawling and indexing data, and that whole Semantic Web thing. We’ll go through some of the lessons I learned in the mean streets of scraping the Inter-tubes, from the pain of API throttles, the disappointment that Scrubyt was, to the ecstasy of HTTParty and OpenCalais.

Bio:

Fascinated by the “craft” of software development, Eric Pugh has been heavily involved in the open source world as a developer, committer, and user for the past 5 years. He is an emeritus member of the Apache Software Foundation and lately has been mulling over how we move from the read/write web to the read/write/share web.

In biotech, financial services and defense IT, he has helped European and American companies develop coherent strategies for embracing open source software, with a focus on Solr. As a speaker he has advocated the advantages of Agile practices in software development.

Announcements:

June

RailsConf is from 7 June to 10 June. Therefore there will be no regularly scheduled meeting, at least there’s no speaker scheduled for June. How many are attending RailsConf? Would there be interest in a social to discuss the conference?

July

There is no speaker scheduled for July. I will be scheduling a social; stay tuned for details.

April Meeting: Mark Imbriaco of 37 Signals

2010-03-24T16:22:00Z

Meeting Details

Date: Monday, 19 April
Time: 6:30 – 8:00 PM
Place: Tuckahoe Public Library

[Please let us know here or on the Google Group if you are planning on attending ASAP so we can find an appropriate space. Thanks! -matt]

Rails Can’t Scale!

Abstract:

Learn about what it takes to make popular applications like Basecamp, Campfire, Highrise, and Backpack run. If you’ve ever been curious about whether Rails can really scale or not, this is your chance to find out!

We’ll take a trip down memory lane with a discussion about what the current infrastructure for 37signals applications looks like today versus three years ago. We’ll go into detail about some of the decisions that were made along the way, both good and bad, and talk about what the future holds.

We’ll finish up with a whirlwind tour of some of Mark’s favorite tools and technologies. Things like HAproxy, Chef, MySQL, Erlang, and friends.

Hopefully we’ll leave plenty of time at thend for Q&A, since that’s the best part anyway.

Bio:

Mark is a System Administrator at 37signals where he works very hard to make it so that he gets woken up by broken things as seldom as possible.

March Meeting: Nathaniel Talbott & (Ab)Using ActiveMerchant for Fun and Profit

2010-03-08T13:00:00Z

Meeting Details

Date: Tuesday, 9 March
Time: 6:30 – 8:00 PM
Place: Tuckahoe Public Library

Meeting Abstract

If you’ve ever wanted to collect money using Ruby, then you’ve probably run across ActiveMerchant. This fantastic piece of utility code from the Shopify team not only allows you to talk to a payment processor, it allows you to talk to a whole host of them using a single interface. I’ve gained a lot of experience with ActiveMerchant while working on Spreedly, and I’ll be imparting both how to most effectively use AM as well as how to extend it.

But of course, code is only a small piece of the whole “getting paid” picture. I’ll also talk about the difference between merchant accounts and payment gateways, why you might or might not want to use PayPal, and what you need to know about PCI in order to not have to know about PCI.

See you there!

Presenter Bio

Nathaniel runs Spreedly, Terralien, and the Raleigh Ruby Brigade. He also created test/unit a million years ago and occasionally sleeps polyphasically.

Sponsor

David Hamm of Signature Consultants will be providing the food for this month’s meeting.

Announcements

RubyNation 2010 http://rubynation.org/ There are now less than 40 tickets left. I encourage everyone to attend this regional conference.

RailsConf 2010 http://en.oreilly.com/rails2010 7-10 June; Registration is open; This year the conference will be in Baltimore, MD.

February Meeting Postponed

2010-02-05T14:49:00Z

We’re going to reschedule next weeks meeting, we’ll update you all soon.

From Mel:

In light of our recent bouts of actual, real winter weather and the fact that our speaker will be coming from NC, I felt it best to postpone his presentation until further notice. I’m working with Clinton to see when he’s next available and will post details when I have them. Thanks for your understanding. Be safe, stay warm.

January Meeting: Jim Van Fleet and NoSQL Technologies

2010-01-09T03:33:00Z

Time Change

Sorry for the late notice. However, the meeting is now from 6:30 until 8:30.

Meeting Details

Date: Tuesday, 12 January
Time: 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Place: Tuckahoe Public Library

Meeting Abstract

Jim Van Fleet plans on comparing and contrasting three different groups, and talking about what kind of problems match the different kinds of technologies. Unlike MySQL and Postgres, for example, which although they have different feature sets, basically do the same thing at the end of the day, the technologies that are being lumped together under the NoSQL flag in many cases have nothing to do with each other:

Document databases

These include Mongo and Couch. Ilya Grigorik includes Tokyo Cabinet in this category, and I’ll mention why I don’t (with an aside about Tokyo’s other benefits).

Hash tables

There are like a zillion of these. Redis is quite popular, memcached was the first. Talking about benefits and genesis is pretty straightforward, but I’ll mention the points of contrast in the ones that I know about.

The Modern Wonders of the World

Amazon’s Dynamo and Google’s BigTable are an inspiration to many implementers of NoSQL technologies. Even those implementers that aren’t directly working on related technologies know about them.

Dynamo is a lot like a distributed hash table with very particular rules and some backend wizardry.

BigTable is an entirely new way of modeling data and “doing an application”.

Cassandra, in particular, is a technology that uses elements of both, and is a major frontier. I can talk a little bit about what the benefits and costs are for investigating Cassandra today.

Presenter Bio

After catching the Ruby religion from Dave Thomas at a No Fluff Just Stuff in Reston in 2004, Jim Van Fleet has been working with Rails ever since. During his time as a Community Developer at TradeKing, he’s been involved in the dirty business of maintaining a quickly growing web application in Ruby that received a Webby nomination in 2008. He received his Doctorate of Sideburns from Hard Knocks University in 1994.

Announcements

CVREG Book Club will be kicking off this month. Pragmatic Programmer’s Security on Rails will be our first book.

Clinton Nixon of Viget Labs will be presenting next month: “The Joy of Ruby” His presentation does an excellent job of answering the question: Why use Ruby?

Sign up now available for the CVReg Book Club

2009-12-28T15:28:00Z

The Holidays are almost over and the CVReg book club is getting ready to kick off!

Leave a comment here, or contact @omnifroodle if you are planning on joining. Space will be limited for this first book.

CVReg Book Club - Security on Rails from Prag Prog

2009-12-09T20:05:00Z

The CVReg book club kicks off in January with Security on Rails by by Ben Poweski and David Raphael.

We will be meeting weekly somewhere in Richmond (suggestions?), and cover 1-2 chapters per meeting.

Make sure to comment here or send a tweet to #cvbeg or @omnifroodle to let us know you’ll be there.

Keeping up with news...

2009-12-09T14:55:00Z

So you’ve heard about the group (or told someone) but you miss the announcements or you want to know where to go for more information, especially when you’re having trouble with some Ruby code. Hopefully we have enough different channels from which to select. Each channel is different and offers its own pros & cons.

Website

Of course there is the website. It generally gets updated to announce upcoming meetings. It’s also used to announce regional events and to post our schedule. Basically it’s where to go to find information about our meetings.

In the future (we’ll all have jetpacks) we will start including news/announcements related to our Sponsors.

The site does have an Atom Feed for you News Reader Junkies. Here’s the link: http://cvreg.org/feed/atom.xml

Google Group/Mailing List

CVREG uses a Google Group to manage it’s mailing list. The link to the group is in the right-nav, but here it is too: http://groups.google.com/group/cvruby

I try to mirror the content from the website since, I imagine, not everyone follows the site’s Atom Feed. Occasionally we’ll see other posts.

I definitely encourage everyone to post questions (or solutions) to the mailing list. It doesn’t even have to be about Ruby (should have mentioned that earlier).

IRC Channel

We share a channel on freenode.net: #rubycodejam. Now you may wonder at its name. And stop me if you’ve heard this before: Our sister-group in Charlottesville is called the Ruby Code Jam and one of its members created the IRC Channel. I contacted him for details and he felt it best that we share the channel.

Most days it’s low activity but there are some really smart people in the channel every day. I’ve been pimping it out and hoping to grow it (like CVREG) into a more regional mostly Ruby-centric IRC channel.

I most definitely encourage you to join the channel and just hang-out with us. And be sure to tell everyone you know about it.

@cvreg

We have a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/cvreg It’s a cyborg. The bot portion is configured to repost the website’s Atom Feed. The bot portion is also configured to follow my (as in Mel Riffe’s) MeetUp feed (I’m following a few of the Regional Ruby Users Groups). I also occasionally tweet on that account.

Facebook Group

Yes, we have a Facebook Group too: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=7031350324“

It’s currently not used in any capacity. Suggestions welcomed.

Summary

There you have it, the channels CVREG uses to communicate to its members and the public at large. Are there any other channels we should consider?

However, if there is one take away I’d like you to consider, it’s this: Find a way to keep up with the announcements because we have some pretty cool stuff planned for next year.

Ciao, Mel

December Meeting: Matt Overstreet & URIs

2009-12-07T00:35:00Z

As 2009 comes to a close, we have one of our own stepping up the plate to talk to us about URI’s and their lifecycle.

Abstract

“Rack::Route301, A rack module to manage old routes”

Moving an existing site from the old and busted to the new hotness involves a million little details. Removing that old table layout, scrubbing the data, selling or sneaking in a new feature or two, etc., etc., all the way down to the zoot. But when all is said and done, where did mysupersite.net/lolfrogz?color=blu&cuteness=-4 go?

URI lifetime matters.

We’ll talk about a few solutions, from .htaccess, to application controllers in RoR, to Rack. And finish with Rack::Route301, an very young Rack based solution that Matt will be releasing as an open source project.

Location

Tuckahoe Public Library, 1901 Starling Drive in Richmond.

Look here for directions: http://www.henricolibrary.org/Libs/tu.html

November Meeting: Joe Meade & Scrum for Kids

2009-11-03T17:33:00Z

Too Much Going On In Your Family?

We all know that Agile helps projects and companies plan and execute work better. And, as Agilists, we have seen how this results in happier relationships at work.

So, why not at home too?

In partnership with the Central Virginia Ruby Enthusiasts Group (CVREG) (www.cvreg.org) Agile Richmond is happy to present a session with Joe and Peace Meade on “Scrum for Kids”. Come find out how you can successfully apply the principals of scrum with your family to get more done, more reliably, and with happier results.

Tuesday, November 10th at 6pm

Location: Tuckahoe Public Library, 1901 Starling Drive in Richmond. Look here for directions: http://www.henricolibrary.org/Libs/tu.html

Joint Meeting with RJUG on 21 October

2009-09-30T19:34:00Z

Be sure to spread the word and invite all you know. This meeting is not to be missed.

In conjunction with the RJUG, Andy Hunt [1], of Pragmatic Programmer fame, will be in Richmond to talk about: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor your Wetware [2].

This session is not exclusively about programming but about how we learn and how best to learn. Therefore, I would encourage you to invite everyone you know.

Please register at the link below so we can have an accurate head count for food and seating.

http://www.richmondjug.com/event/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning-andy-hunt-pragmatic-programmer

If you’re able to I would encourage you to volunteer your time for this event; RJUG is looking for some help with the logistics of this meeting.

Links

[1] Website

[2] Book

[3] The Pragmatic Bookshelf

[4] Andy Hunt on Twitter

[5] RJUG

[6] CVREG on Twitter

September Meeting: Youssef Chaker, Michael Herndon & Midori PHP Framework

2009-09-04T21:48:00Z

Meeting Details

Date: Tuesday, 8 September
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Place: INM United

Location Change

This meeting is being held in a new location. Parking is a little awkward so visit this image to find out where to park. You’ll want to park behind the INM building in order to get free validation. INM will provide it.

Parking Location

Meeting Abstract

The “midori” generative framework, php flavor. The framework goals are a clean api, generate redundant code, and focus on data centric problems (validation, abstraction, business objects, etc), some form of an application plugin/module system, and of course the hardest part, good documentation. The php flavor includes Boxing Types for values in php so that you can easily chain methods and maintain formatting of dates, etc.

http://github.com/michaelherndon/midori-php/tree/master

Presenter Bio

Youssef Chaker is a software developer at OpenSource Connections, where he’s been helping the OSC team take over the world one web app at a time. Youssef graduated from UVa with a Bachelors in Science in Computer Engineering in 2008 and had his first but brief introduction to Ruby writing an interpreter for a language called COOL (classroom object oriented language, developed in Berkeley). He’s also been using Ruby on Rails since joining OSC and has fallen back in love with programming since. He is also the author of the ZeepIt plugin, an easy way to integrate the Zeep Mobile API into a Rails application.

Michael Herndon is a senior developer at OpenSource Connections, specializing in bleeding edge technology, standards, development tools and software on both the web and desktop platforms. Not much else is known about him, the rest of his bio is evidently sealed in a vault, protected by killer Buddhist monks. If you don’t wish to go up against killer Buddhist monks, you could try his website: www.amptools.net

Special CVREG Meetup with Sinatra creator and Heroku developer

2009-08-12T20:24:00Z

Sinatra (http://sinatrarb.com) creator, Blake Mizerany (@bmizerany), will be joining us for a special CVREG event on Tuesday August 18th, 2009.

Blake currently works on/for Heroku (http://heroku.com). Heroku is nothing less than a bad ass deployment architecture allowing you to deploy fast and scale fast. Blake is currently doing a tour around the country meeting with local groups to talk about Heroku and show off the awesome stuff it can do.

Join us and make him welcome. If you have any questions about Heroku or Sinatra come out and ask him. He loves nothing more than to talk about both of them.

Please pass this along to any other meetup lists that you follow to get the word out.

Details

Date: 6:00 pm Tuesday August 18th, 2009

INM United Office 101 S. 15th Street St., Suite 102 Richmond, Va 23219

Map – http://bit.ly/8z345

Parking is a little awkward so visit this image to find out where to park. You’ll want to park behind the INM building in order to get free validation. INM will provide it.

http://img.skitch.com/20090812-qdcaatyu6s7q25sndgpb8qq2pd.jpg

Thanks and see you there!

-jon

2009 Schedule, the 2d half

2009-06-04T03:26:00Z

It’s June Already?

I can’t believe this year is already half over. We’ve been fortunate enough to have speakers since last October; the rest of the year is pretty exciting too. And so without further ado, here’s the current line-up from July to December 2009:

Schedule

Date	Topic	Speaker
14 Jul	Creating Mashups w/Ruby	Jess Martin
11 Aug	QA Testing w/Cucumber	Patrick Reagan
8 Sep	Midori, Rails-inspired PHP framework	Youssef Chaker
October	TBA	Andy Hunt
10 Nov	JRuby and Clojure	Keith Bennett
8 Dec	Rack	Matt Overstreet

Notes

If any of the meetings/speakers change I will send out a notice. Plus, the October meeting will be a joint meeting with the RJUG. As the dates get closer I’ll send out additional details on each speaker and their topic.

See you at the Meetings! Remember, spread the word and bring a friend!