February 2010 Meeting

The February meeting will be on Wednesday the 10th of February, from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. Our hosts Skills Matter will be providing the space, at their new offices on Goswell Road; The Skills Matter eXchange. It's a great new space and we there won't be the problems we've had in the past with fitting people in, but you should still register early to let Skills Matter know you are coming.

Agenda

Lightning talks!

This month we're having our annual lightning talk evening. If you've not been to one of these before it's quite simple; we have lots of short talks all on one night. We use the 20x20 format for our talks which means that each speaker gets 20 slides that auto-transition after 20 seconds, this gives them 6 minutes 40 seconds to get their point across. It's a really fun way to run a lightning talk event, and the rigid time constraints mean that the talks tend to be really entertaining (jettisoning for brevity things like explanations or support for the speakers opinions).

The current line-up of 20x20-ers is as follows:

Rails & iPhone integration

Paul Ardeleanu:

Paul will talk to us about Rails & iPhone integration.

  1. Skills Matter : Skills Cast : Rails & iPhone Integration

Using Websockets with EventMachine

Ismael Celis:

Using Websockets with EventMachine.

  1. Skills Matter : Skills Cast : Using Websockets with EventMachine

Show Off!

Joel Chippindale:

Joel will talk about Show Off; ruby-based HTML presentation software (this talk might get a bit meta).

  1. Skills Matter : Skills Cast : Show Off, a Ruby-Based HTML Presentation Software

Evolution of data models in rails

Lars Jorgensen

Evolution of data models in Rails. Lessons learned.

  1. Skills Matter : Skills Cast : Evolution of Data Models in Rails - Lessons Learned

Bowline - a ruby GUI framework

Alex MacCaw:

Bowline - Alex has been building a ruby GUI framework and wants to show it off.

  1. Skills Matter : Skills Cast : Bowline: A Ruby GUI Framework

An intro to birdpie.com

Anup Narkhede

birdpie.com - Anup will introduce the site and the architecture behind it; Rails 3.0, Redis, and Resque.

  1. Skills Matter : Skills Cast : Architecture of Birdpie, a Twitter Application

Rack::Cache

Thomas Pomfret:

All about Rack::Cache and associated things.

  1. Skills Matter : Skills Cast : Rack::Cache and associated things

Decorating the domain

Brent Snook:

Decorating the domain - Wrapping polymorphic presentation logic around the model.

  1. Skills Matter : Skills Cast : Decorating the Domain - Wrapping Polymorphic Presentation Logic Around the Model

Some rough fibrous material

Murray Steele

The mailing list suggested that Murray talk about Fibers in Ruby 1.9.

  1. Talks ∋ Some rough fibrous material
  2. Skills Matter : Skills Cast : Fibers in Ruby 1.9

"Analogue Blog"

Depending on how many lighning talks there are, we may have time at the start of the meeting for 10-15 minutes of free time for anyone to speak. You don't need to ask for permission or let us know in advance that you have something to say here, just turn up, stand up and say it! It's a forum for announcements, or pleas for help, or a soapbox for starting discussions. Just remember not to run on for too long as there's probably other people that want to say something too (it would also be embarrassing if you ran on for longer than our scheduled lightning talks!).

Pub

The meeting will finish around 8pm and we'll be in a local pub shortly thereafter. The pub we tried after the last meeting was The Slaughtered Lamb which is about 5 minutes walk from Skills Matter's new office. If you can't make it for the main meeting consider, coming along as an advance guard to the pub and securing us some tables.

Registration

Registration isn't mandatory as Skills Matter's new office has plenty of space. That said, you really should register as it lets Skills Matter arrange the room properly and means you'll get a name badge so people know who you are. If there aren't enough seats, people without name badges will have to sit on the floor. Please do register.

There's also an upcoming event for those of us that love online calendaring, but this is not a place to indicate attendance in a meaningful way for Skills Matter.

Posted by Murray Steele on Jan 21, 2010