Mar 20th, 2012 meetup
All our meetups follow a common format. They're based around 10 minute lightning talks. This may seem short, but we offer time after each talk for questions. We also encourage you to approach the speakers and other members at drinks after the talks are done if you've got more questions you'd like answered.
Based on feedback from our members, we've revived the tradition of short introductions at the start of each meetup. Everyone has 30-seconds to share their name and to answer a short question about themselves. It doesn't take more than 10 minutes to get through everybody, and is a great way to break the ice.
- Rails 3.2.2 - bug fixes and two important security fixes.
- Bundler 1.1 - Faster, smarter, more maintainable. Finding outdated gems is a breeze.
- MethodProfiler - Another interesting tool for profiling and understanding your code.
- Faye 0.8 - this great Pub/Sub library has had a major refactoring to enable different messaging channels in the future.
- Forking and joining problems in jRuby - an interesting way to scale your Ruby workload in jRuby.
If you want to get regular news between meetups you should follow @yegrb on Twitter, and check our list of Ruby resources.
- Mar 21 - DemocampEdmonton 16 - Lots of fun demos tomorrow night, including some from the Ruby community.
- Mar 21 - Apr 21 - Analytics Hackathon - Hack on some unique datasets from The Oilers, The City of Edmonton, and others for fame, fortune and other awesome prizes!
- Apr 4 - TDD/BDD with RSpec and Cucumber @ AgileYEG - The Agile Edmonton meetup is still going strong, and their next lunchtime speaker is a Rubyist.
- Apr 14-15 - Logicon 2012 - Bringing science and criticial thinking to the general public. Also a lot of fun!
- Apr 23-25 - RubyConf 2012 - Speakers have been announced. Still time to get tickets.
- Apr 23-25 - Analytics, Big Data, and the Cloud Conference - Presented by Athabasca, The UofA School of Business, and Albert Council of Technologies.
- Jun 27–29 - Google I/O - The big Google conference. Registration starts (and ends) Mar 27th as 7am PDT.
StartupEdmonton is still taking applications for their new space to open this spring. Get your application in ASAP if you're interested.
YEGrb is organizing Edmonton's first HackReduce event this June. The main objective of the event is to develop and communicate a practical understanding of MapReduce algorithms and problem solving strategies. To achieve this objective participants will work in pairs to solve a intiging problem using MapReduce algorithms on an EC2 Hadoop cluster preconfigured for the event. Each pair will work on this problem for 40 minutes before taking 10 minutes to recap, then a ten minute break to refresh. Then participants swap partners and start again on the problem from scratch.
We're taking suggestions for the problem and dataset to use, so reply @yegrb on Twitter if you've got any suggestions.
The HackReduce is tentatively planned for Saturday June 2nd. Follow @yegrb on Twitter and signup for our mailing list to receive the latest updates.
The event is intended to bring out a mix of new and experienced MapReduce and Hadoop developers, however we're encouraging any interested participants to take the time to learn a bit about Hadoop and install it on your machine before the event starts. We'll release specific resources and requirements closer to the event. Some books we're reading to prepare include:
Any other good resources for getting started with Hadoop?
We're extending the t-shirt contest for another month. An email with the new logo and offical YEGrb colours and fonts will go out after this meetup.
Programming Ruby is great, getting paid to program in Ruby is even better!
- Jobber is building out a dynamic crew and looking for an accomplished leader for their new development team.
- Clio - is hiring designers and programmers see their site for details.
We'd also like to thank the crew at Jobber for sponsoring pizza and drinks at tonight's meetup.
@christiannaths is kicking our designs butts with his talk on the, "Fundamental Design Principles – For People Who Can't Design Good."
Here's how he describes it:
Non-designers (or "people who can't design good") often view design as a mystery; some right-brained out-of-body experience that they will never know. I will be discussing 4 basic principles of design that everyone, from programmer to artist, can use to help an audience understand the message being delivered. These design principles, when applied as rules, can help provide a linear pathway to good design.
- @RyanOnRails is talking about RubyMine and why it's new release has convinced him it's the Ruby IDE for him
This is the first of a new permanent feature at the YEGrb meetups. Each month we'll share a part of the exciting JavaScript world with our members.
Take it away Sean! :)
Each meetup wraps up with a five minute planning session during which we plan the talks for the next month. We encourage members to propose talk topics for other members, but don't be surprised if you end up giving a talk or two yourself.
Any suggestions for upcoming talks?
The best part of the night for many of our members is after the talks are done, when we head to Original Joe's Varsity for food and drinks. We're usually there be 8:30PM and anyone is welcome to join us there once the talks are done.
This is your chance to catch up with other members, ask the questions you couldn't during the talks, or maybe just relax after a tough demo.
If you'd like to know more about upcoming meetups you can see a list of them on our homepage. Hope to see you at YEGrb soon!