Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, April 10, 2012
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: 804 Richmond, 1657 West Broad Street, 23220 (Google Maps link)
• Additional Information: 804 RVA Meetup

Abstract

Secrets Of The Asset Pipeline

From Ken’s Meetup Meeting description: Following up from my recent deep code dive into the less-rails and less-rails-bootstrap gems come some of the best hidden features of the rails asset pipeline. My talk will include a behind the scenes look of what makes the asset pipeline possible, best practices, advanced usage followed by a review of some of the top level CSS frameworks being used.

Bio

Ken Collins (@metaskills, among his many titles (Ruby Developer, JavaScript Developer, Objective-C Advocate. Maintainer of the Rails SQL Server stack), is also one of the organizers for Hampton Roads Ruby Users Group (757.rb). While expanding his knowledge of CSS by learning Sass and LESS, Ken took a deep dive into the Asset Pipeline.

Links

http://metaskills.net/2011/07/29/use-compass-sass-framework-files-with-the-rails-3.1.0.rc5-asset-pipeline

http://metaskills.net/2011/09/26/less-is-more-using-twitter-bootstrap-in-the-rails-3-1-asset-pipeline/

http://metaskills.net/2012/02/27/too-less-should-you-be-using-sass/

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2012
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: 804 Richmond, 1657 West Broad Street, 23220 (Google Maps link)
• Additional Information: 804 RVA Meetup

Abstract

Train to Test

Many pundits would have you believe that the switch from a developer to a developer tester is just a bit that you can flip in your head. I claim that this is false.

While testing is something we all know that we should be doing more of, many of us are struggling to figure out how. Chances are you’re somewhere in between a developer that never tests and one that tests every time s/he should. And I bet that you’re unhappy with where you are at, and you’d like to figure out how to get closer to where you want to be.

Using the metaphor of going to the gym, I’ll go over some exercises that you can perform. Some of these exercises you’ll be able to perform on your current projects, while others you may want to try out on a toy or side project first. These should help you feel better about how often you test, and it might be easier than losing a few pounds.

Bio

M. Scott Ford (@mscottford), a Senior Developer at Rails Dog, LLC is passionate about software. It’s what he was born to do and he feels privileged to live his dream every day. Writing in Ruby is so much fun, it’s been his favorite language for the past five years. He likes its flexible type system, how it facilitates meta-programming, and how focused the tools are on best practices. He’s worked on Ruby projects using Spree, Locomotive, Mongoid, Devise, Radiant, Nokogiri, and obviously Rails, Sinatra, cucumber and rspec. He was a testing fanatic before Ruby, so the testing tools are what brought him here. He’s loving every minute being a Ruby developer and is looking forward to more work in this space.

We Are Titans announces Start Norfolk 2.0, a weekend long event bringing together individuals of different mind and skill sets— entrepreneurs, engineers, developers, designers, and business professionals —with the goal of building a viable startup.

Start Norfolk 2.0 will be held at the Ted Constant Convocation Center located on the campus of Old Dominion University on Friday, April 27th through Sunday, April 29th.

On top of the startup competition, there will be 12 speakers including: Aneesh Chopra, the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer, Dan Martell, founder of FlowTown, Anis Uzzaman, CEO and General Partner of Fenox Venture Capital, Jeff Casimir of Jumpstart Labs and Joe Hill, founder of Aeir Talk, an iPad education application.

The first Start Norfolk was held in November, 2011 at Innovation Research Park on the ODU campus. The weekend long event kicked off with 37 business ideas pitched to the team of judges, eight of the 37 ideas were selected for further development. Teams were selected and work began on building the original concept into an viable business. TutoriALL, a tutorial creating app for mobile phones, was selected as the first Start Norfolk winner. TutoriALL received assistance with accounting and legal services, office space and capital to help launch their business.

Over 175 people attended the first Start Norfolk and were highly enthusiastic about the outcome of the event, saying: “I felt like I was the the Woodstock of Technology, it was legendary,” “Titanic event, #2 is a must!” and “I don’t want to go back home to Atlanta.”

Over three hundred people are expected to attend Start Norfolk 2.0, giving attendees a chance to showcase their ideas, network and get feedback on the development of their ideas. President Obama recently recognized “that most new jobs are created in start-ups.” Start Norfolk is helping to build stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem in Norfolk, VA.

Want to learn more and register to participate? Visit: www.startnorfolk.com.

For early bird rates, register by Thursday, March 15th.

For more information, please contact Zack Miller: zack.miller@wearetitans.net or @zackmiller84.

I'm in, who else is interested?

Dear Rubists,

Coming this March 23-25th, Charlottesville's will hold its inaugural Startup Weekend event. Startup Weekend is a 54-hour event where developers, designers, marketers, product managers, and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups. Check out more at: www.startupweekend.org/about.

The Startup Weekend event is backed by the Kauffman Foundation, the world's largest entrepreneurship-focused foundation. Last year there were 260 Startup Weekend events in 202 cities all over the world. The startups formed during during these events have raised over $30 million over the course of the year! Some of businesses you've probably even heard of: LaunchRock, Cloudbot, Zaarly, Foodspotting, Scanadu, Keepstream, Volly... (source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/06/startup-weekends-eventful-year-260-events-in-202-cities-startups-raised-30m/).

Though this event may seem to be in the distant future, we have limited available tickets and we anticipate that the event will fill up fast - don’t wait to register: www.charlottesville.startupweekend.org. The registration fee includes 7 meals and plenty of snacks over the course of the weekend.

If you have an idea for a new business, then come and pitch it. It's amazing how far you can get in a weekend's time! If you'd rather just listen to other's pitches and join one of their teams, then that's great too. Help someone else build their dream!

Contact us through the website if you have any questions.We look forward to seeing you there!

John Berryman

(Startup Weekend is on Twitter!)

VENUE CHANGE

Due to a scheduling snafu we’ve moved the meeting to Weinstein Properties.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: Weinstein Properties, 3961 Stillman Parkway, Suite D, 23060 (Google Maps link)

Abstract

Uncle Bob says to make the web itself an implementation detail. DHH says to stay on the rails and keep your hands and arms in the car at all times. Presenting content and concepts from his upcoming book, “Objects on Rails”, Avdi will try to find a middle way between opinionated frameworks and Object-Oriented orthodoxy.

As a bonus meeting attendees will receive the deluxe edition (early access + PDF/Epub/Mobi) of “Objects on Rails” for free.

Bio

Avdi Grimm has been hacking Ruby code for over 10 years, and is still loving it. He is chief aeronaut at ShipRise, a consultancy specializing in sustainable software development and in helping geographically dispersed teams work more effectively. He lives in Southern Pennsylvania with his wife and four children, and in his copious spare time blogs and podcasts at Virtuous Code and Wide Teams.

Photo Credit: Robert Potter

Please note that this is a non-standard meeting location.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2011
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: Dominion Digital, 4101 Cox Rd, Glen Allen (Google Maps link)

Abstract

Erik Hatcher will discuss and demonstrate the state of the art with using Solr from Ruby. He’ll cover RSolr (and the forthcoming deprecation and removal of solr-ruby, RIP: solr-ruby), Sunspot, Blacklight, and other Solr+Ruby best practices. Solr itself will be introduced fully for those unfamiliar with it.

Bio

Erik Hatcher is co-founder, technologist, and open source evangelist at Lucid Imagination, a service, training, and platform provider for Lucene and Solr. Erik co-authored “Lucene in Action” and has spoken at numerous events around the world on a variety of topics. His technology stack of choice includes, of course, Solr and Ruby.

Please note that this is a non-standard meeting location.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, November 8, 2011
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: Dominion Digital, 4101 Cox Rd, Glen Allen (Google Maps link)

Abstract

Despite our use of frameworks like Ruby on Rails being famous for conventional code, we still find ourselves with complicated and difficult to understand applications. Worse yet, our automated tests often end up just as complicated and slow. We have helpful design patterns to follow, so why does our code become more difficult to understand as our application grows? The cure for our pain is following DCI conventions to separate what our program *is* from what it does and to let our user’s mental model of our programs shine through.

Bio

Jim Gay is the Lead Developer for RadiantCMS and is a prolific contributor to it and many open-source projects. At Saturn Flyer LLC he’s built numerous Radiant sites, custom applications, and award winning graphic design. Jim has been a co-host of the Ruby 5 podcast, speaker at RubyNation, Rocky Mountain Ruby, and ArrrrCamp, is the founder of Arlington Ruby, and has been professionally building Ruby and Rails applications since 2006.

You can find Jim on twitter: @saturnflyer

Please note that this is a non-standard meeting location.

Meeting Details

• Date: Tuesday, October 11, 2011
• Time: 6:00 PM
• Location: Dominion Digital, 4101 Cox Rd, Glen Allen (Google Maps link)

Abstract

The Ruby community is obsessed with testing, supposedly. In my experience about four out of five applications have either zero or completely ineffective test coverage.

Have the courage to change it. Whether your own projects or recovering someone else’s mess, let’s talk strategy:

• Starting with metrics
• Refactoring for understanding
• Comment-driven development
• The unit testing foundation
• Bug reports are your best integration tests
• Focusing on value
• Rescue projects are popping up everywhere, and a strategic testing approach can save the day.

Bio

Jeff started Jumpstart Lab in 2009. He travels the world preaching the good word of Ruby. Lately he’s been pushing an agenda of professional design practices with emphasis on object oriented architectures backed by solid testing. Plus he tell jokes.

You can find Jeff on twitter: @j3 or @jumpstartlab