help build local Ruby Brigades

I was just at RubyConf*MI, and got to talk to the folks from the SB.rb, columbus.rb, and the nacent toledo.rb. It was awfully cool to finally meet them. Maybe I’ll get out to one of their meetings sometime.

Seattle.rb has a meeting every week. Once a month they have presentations and the other weeks are dedicated to hacking nights. I have envied this for quite a while and I finally decided to do something about it.

Tuesday, April 4 was the first ever StL.rb hacking night. After announcing it a couple weeks in advance, I spent 3 hours at Borders and 2 other members of StL.rb made it. Borders wasn’t the best place to hold the meetings so next week we are going to try St. Louis Bread Company. Most of you might know it as Panera Bread Company. They didn’t change the name in St. Louis. I guess people might have gotten upset.

I’ve made myself available for hacking any night people want but the weekly hacking nights are going to be on the same weeknight as our regular meeting. Since that is Tuesday, I will be too busy to be jealous of Seattle.rb’s meetings on the same night.

I just saw an announcement about the Montreal Ruby Users Group, which started me thinking …

There are 5-8 ruby brigades up in the North East. Wouldn’t it be great if they could work together to pull of a regional RubyConf? Or to share speakers? Or just to coordinate meetings?

Since several other places are in a similar position, I thought I’d better do something about it—I decided to start a google group:
http://groups.google.com/group/Ruby-Brigades

sign up, get involved, help Ruby Brigades grow!

Great Utah Ruby Users Group meeting last night!

Jamis Buck talked about switchtower, I talked a little bit about r43 and the Ruby Programming Shop, and the dozen or so people there all seemed to have a good time hanging out and being geeky about ruby.

I have contributed to the local ruby brigade and I will be doing more. This task is ongoing and will go on my list of things I have done but want to do again. I primarily need to do this so I can free up space for something else on my list.

I presented r43 and theRPS last night at the local ruby meeting. I seem to have generated interest in theRPS and 43 things as a result. Also, I seem to have spawned a conversation about changing the St. Louis Ruby Users Group to the St. Louis Ruby Brigade (stl.rb) but people seem to think we need to code at our meetings to do it. Since I would like to code at meetings, I am all for that.

but local ruby brigades really are the best way to learn about Ruby. Take the recent columbus.rb meeting for example.

They were able to talk Jim Weirich (a long time Ruby master) into driving a couple of hours to make a presentation at their meeting. He ended up previewing both of his OsCon presentations for them. Here’s what Robert Stevenson from the columbus.rb had to say about it:

Jim is a great, engaging speaker and everyone in the room seemed to really enjoy his presentation. DI is brain-bulging for a good number of people, but Jim did a great job showing the differences between Java DI and Ruby DI that allowed you to understand just what Ruby gives you for free when it comes to DI.

. . .

After a quick 10 minute break, Jim started his Ruby for Java
Programmers which was very well received from all of the Java
programmers in the room. Hearing/watching this presentation as a Java programmer and a new Ruby programmer really clicks the benefits that Ruby has as a dynamic language over Java (and others). Jim really seemed to be passionate during this talk since he admitted to the group later that he programs in Java for most of the day in his daily job and usually has to wait till he gets home at night to get his “hands clean” with Ruby code. It is also interesting to note that only one non-CRB member left during the break, so Jim was still speaking to a full house.

It doesn’t get much better than that. (For Robert’s full message, please see Google Groups.

Tim Germer just made a post on his blog about the June pdx.rb meeting. From his tone, it sounds like it was his first meeting, but I think he’s hooked:

It was great to be surrounded by such smart people – there was easily over a dozen people in attendance. The experience was like grabbing a really challenging book off the library shelf and diving in; ambitious to learn new words, etc.

When’s your next Ruby Brigade meeting? I’ll be going to one in Utah next week.

It looks like there are two more Ruby Brigades meeting soon. Columbus.rb and the Phoeniz.rb (though this one seems to have been around for a while). It’s good to see the growing number of Ruby Brigades.

I’m hoping the next step is to have more regional cooperation—like the Seattle.rb, pdx.rb, and Vancouver group’s upcoming code fest.

In the last week, I’ve seen a new group pop up in Omaha, NE and Tulsa, OK. The Omaha.rb will be meeting on Monday, May 2nd from 7-9PM (directions on their web page). I don’t know when the Tulsa.rb will meet, but hopefully it’ll be soon.

By the way, the Utah Ruby Users Group is set to start meeting on the third Wednesday of the month (May 25th). The Seattle.rb is meeting tonight. Wow! That’s a lot of Rubyists.