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

Summary

Lasting only 30 minutes I believe it was the shortest meeting ever. Next year I promise to schedule either a speaker or panel of speakers to recap RailsConf.

Attendance

I happy to say we had three new members for May’s meeting. I’m not happy to say it was 60% of the total attendance. :-D

Additional Information

• RailsConf 2009
• More RailsConf on Twitter

Next Meeting

HotCocoa and MacRuby!!! Tell everybody! I’m totally psyched that we have Rich Kilmer, from InfoEther, coming into town to school us on some HotCocoa. This is also going to be a joint meeting with Richmond’s CocoaHeads Group. I’m expecting a packed house for the June meeting.

Announcements

JetBrains Winners

• Michael Berdichevsky : RubyMine License
• Will O’Donovan : RubyMine License

Area Conferences

• Developer Day in DC on 30 May
• Ruby Nation 2009 on 12 and 13 June

Meeting Details

Date: Tuesday, 12 May
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Place: Strategy Cafe
Details: Upcoming Event

We would greatly appreciate it if you could go to the Upcoming Event and indicate your intention to attend this meeting.

Meeting Abstract

The annual RailsConf ReCap wherein we learn about the latest and greatest.

Social in the Making

There is a strong chance this meeting will turn into a Social. I take full responsibility for not properly planning this meeting. I did not schedule a speaker, opting instead, to rely on members attending the conference to come and present their findings. So if you know someone attending RailsConf encourage them to join us and to give us their impressions of the conference.

However, it just might be time for a social anyways. Thankfully we’ve had 7 consecutive months of speakers. And the rest of the year is shaping up nicely too; I’ll be posting the schedule in the next few days.

Presenter Bio

<Your Name Here> or Your friend’s name ;-)

I’m happy to announce, starting with our May meeting, the CVREG will be giving away 2 licenses to some JetBrains products.

Each month, our speaker and one member can choose their prize:

• RubyMine Personal License,
• ReSharper Personal License,
• dotTrace Personal License,
• IntelliJ IDEA Personal License,
• TeamCity Build Agent (for our Continuous Integration and Build Server)

Overall, JetBrains is working with more than 350 groups globally, and have already given away more than 2000 licenses of ReSharper and IntelliJ IDEA!

I’ll be getting the ‘fine print’ (i.e. how soon a person will receive their license? is there a limit as to how many licenses a person can win? stuff like that…)

So at the start of each meeting if you want to be considered for a license give me your name, email address and desired license. At the end of the meeting I will announce the winner.

Remember, Spread the word and bring a Friend!

P.S. Notice the new logo in the Sponsor’s section? :-D

Summary

I believe this meeting will go down as one of the strangest meetings in CVREG history. Ben arrived early and as people started coming in it was noted the projector was missing. Oh No! While the projector was getting retrieved I did my best to entertain, but I failed miserably. Thankfully Ben and a few of the Viget Labs crew was on hand to talk about Developer Day and RubyNation.

I must say someone did ask what happened to my hair (my ponytail, actually) and if I was going to grow it out again. Ummm…no comment and maybe ;-)

But the real excitement was Ben’s presentation. Ben devised a way to drastically reduce time to display using a combination of page caching, AJAX and Rails Metal. I believe someone Ben trademark it. :-)

If you were in attendance please consider rating Ben’s presentation on SpeakerRate. I’ve included the link in the Additional Information section.

Attendance

We had 15 people at this month’s meeting. The third double-digit attendance. You guys Rock! We even had three brand new faces in attendance. Very encouraging. Please, keep spreading the word.

I would also encourage you to make suggestions on how we can serve your Ruby needs. Remember we have the mailing list and the IRC channel in which to post your questions and suggestions.

Additional Information

• SpeakerRate

Next Meeting

Stay Tuned for details on May’s Meeting. I don’t have a speaker booked for May because of RailsConf. So, if you or someone you know is attending RailsConf stop by and give us your impressions. If nothing else we can all go to the pub for a pint or two. ;-)

Announcements

beCamp 2009 is happening again. If you’re not familiar if a BarCamp-style two-day conference held in Charlottesville, VA. This year is being held on 8 and 9 May. It looked like several people from the group will be attending. I encourage you to carpool. There will be a one-night hotel stay.

Developer Day is a one-day, developer-centric conference in DC. And did I mention it’s only Fifty Bucks (USD$50) [there is an additional $1.25 Fee when registering]? It’s being held on 30 May, that’s a Saturday if you don’t have a calendar handy. The website has additional information, like speakers, agenda, and a map!

Also, RubyNation 2009 is once again being held in Washington DC on 12-13 June. Registration is still open and be sure to use the discount code NovaRUGFan to get $20.00 off.

Last but definitely not least I want to say something about tonight’s sponsor: Viget Labs. They were kind enough to pay for this month’s dinner.

Meeting Details

Date: Tuesday, 14 April
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Place: Strategy Cafe
Details: Upcoming Event

We would greatly appreciate it if you could go to the Upcoming Event and indicate your intention to attend this meeting.

Meeting Abstract

Over the past year, Rails has gradually (and sometimes quietly) introduced some dramatic new changes. The most obvious of these is the Merb merger, but one of the most important steps on the path to Rails 3.0 was the introduction of Rack support. The effects of that change are wide-ranging, and are often surprising — and include the possibility for new architectures that were impractical or impossible before. Specifically, it is now feasible to build a complex Rails application that can still respond extremely quickly and directly to a specific set of requests, such as those an AJAX service might experience.

Page Caching for your Rails App

In this session, we’ll explore in depth how this strategy reinvigorates a useful, but formerly limited, capability of Rails: page caching. Of the three caching methods built into Rails, page caching is by far the most efficient, but it is also the least flexible. By making use of the Rack support in Rails (with tools like Rails Metal and simple Rack applications), page caching will come into its own as a viable strategy.

Presenter Bio

Ben Scofield is a development director at Viget Labs, where he builds Rails applications for Web 2.0 startups. He’s been using Ruby and Rails for over four years, and is the author of Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects, from Apress. He’s spoken at Railsconf, Rubyconf, Railsconf Europe, and more over the past few years. When he’s not hacking, he spends time with his wife and daughter, reads voraciously, and tries to make the world a better place for web developers everywhere.

Summary

This month’s meeting was a first: two speakers!

Syed Rayhan, of Code71, started off the evening with an architectural overview of his company’s product: ScrumPad. Utilizing Amazon Web Services, ScrumPad is implemented “in the cloud.” He also covered scaling and performance enhancements.

We finished off the night with Kevin Smith, of EngineYard, giving us a brief but engaging look into Erlang. He covered the basics of the bizarre syntax, reliance on pattern matching, and the reuse of concepts within the language.

It was great having both speakers. However, they both had material that would have covered an entire meeting on their own. At this point I don’t think I’ll be scheduling more then one speaker per meeting.

Attendance

We had 13 people at this month’s meeting. The second double-digit attendance. You guys Rock! We even had three brand new faces in attendance. Very encouraging. Please, keep spreading the word.

I would also encourage you to make suggestions on how we can serve your Ruby needs. Remember we have the mailing list and the IRC channel in which to post your questions and suggestions.

Additional Information

• ScrumPad
• Amazon Web Services Blog
• Amazon Web Services

• Erlang.org
• Google Search for Erlang
• Erlang Community

Next Meeting

Be sure to come out next month (14 Apr) when Ben Scofield, of Viget Labs, will be talking about Page Caching in Rails.

Announcements

Developer Day is a one-day, developer-centric conference in Durham, NC. And did I mention it’s only Fifty Bucks (USD$50) to register? It’s being held on 21 March, that’s a Saturday if you don’t have a calendar handy.

Also, the Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference is once again being held in Philadelphia, PA on 26-27 March. I’ll be posting more information on this conference on the mailing list.

Last but definitely not least I want to say something about tonight’s sponsor: Engine Yard. They were kind enough to pay for this month’s dinner and provide t-shirts for give away.

Meeting Details

Date: Tuesday, 10 March
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Place: Strategy Cafe
Details: Upcoming Event

We would greatly appreciate it if you could go to the Upcoming Event and indicate your intention to attend this meeting.

Meeting Abstract

We’re pleased to have two speakers for this Month’s meeting. Syed Rayhan, of Code71, will be talking about ScrumPad, a web-based Agile/Scrum project management tool. Plus, Kevin Smith will be up from Raleigh to give us a look at Erlang.

ScrumPad

ScrumPad (http://www.scrumpad.com) is Web-based Agile/Scrum project management and collaboration tool. It was developed on Ruby on Rails as Software as a Service (SaaS). Recently, he migrated ScrumPad from Rails 1.2.x to Rails 2.x. It is deployed in the Amazon cloud (Amazon Web Services, a.k.a. AWS). AWS offers a set of IT infrastructure like compute power, storage, and other as a services. As a result, the cost of infrastructure truly becomes a variable cost. The business applications running on AWS can be dialed up and down to match its fluctuating load in real-time. ScrumPad is using Amzon’s EC2, S3, EBS, and SQS. He will share his experience using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Rails migration.

Erlang

The multicore future has arrived and now the only question is: how do we deal with it? Spend an hour learning about Erlang—the functional programming language designed for highly concurrent environments. You’ll get an introduction to Erlang’s major concepts, it’s syntax, and learn which companies are using Erlang today and what kinds of problems they’re solving.

Presenter Bios

Syed Rayhan

After twelve years of designing multi-faceted IT solutions for financial services companies, Syed H. Rayhan, co-founder of Code71, is putting his skills to the test by leading the company to provide a comprehensive suite of development, maintenance, and support services to a growing list of clients.

Syed holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business School, as well as, an MS in Computer Engineering from the University of Central Florida and an undergraduate degree from BUET (Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology) in Electrical & Electronic Engineering. Syed is a member of the Scrum Alliance and is co-author of Enterprise Java with UML (pub. Wiley & Sons). His current interests is building in Agile fashion Enterprise 2.0 solutions running in the Cloud.

Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith has, at various times, been a network administrator, DBA, developer, team lead and trainer over his 14 year career. He first learned about Erlang in 2006 via Joe Armstrong’s excellent “Programming Erlang” and has never looked back. Kevin is the author of the popular “Erlang In Practice” screencast series and producer of the popular “Hands On Erlang” training class. In his spare time, he is a developer at Engine Yard where he uses Erlang powers only for good.