Calendar

Talk: Programming Erlang

A follow-up to last month's "Intro to Erlang", this talk will dive into the core components of the Erlang programming language, including processes, pattern matching, and message passing. Unlike the previous
talk, it will be light on hype and loaded with code samples.

If you missed the previous talk, you might want to run through the slides quickly at http://www.slideshare.net/kenpratt/intro-to-erlang before coming to get a brief overview Erlang.

Speaker Bio:
Ken Pratt has been developing software for the web for over 10 years. He fell in love with Ruby four years ago, but is still passionate about learning other languages and platforms. He has developed scalable web services for Electronic Arts, built Rails-based web applications since pre-1.0, and been featured in interactive art
installations.

We are incredibly lucky to have an amazing talk this month!

Talk: The Lean Startup: a Disciplined Approach to Imagining, Designing, and Building New Products

Speaker: Eric Ries

Talk Description:
Eric Ries is in town for Agile Vancouver, and he has agreed to do a "slightly-more-technical version of the lean startup talk, with plenty of time for Q&A and discussion." The talk he's referring to is his Lean Startup talk from the recent Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco. For a full description of that talk, see the page at O'Reilly's site.

Speaker Bio:
Eric Ries is the author of the blog Lessons Learned. He was the co-founder and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU, his third startup. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups including pbWiki, Smule, 750i and KaChing.

Talk Time: 7:00

Thanks very much to Owen Rogers from Agile Vancouver for setting this up!

Note: The "5 minutes & 5 slides" opening talk about Rubish has been postponed to next month so we don't waste time fiddling with projectors, etc.

For the February meetup, we're going to combine with Mobile Monday -- by which I mean that, once again, it's their event, they do all the work and we get to go and watch some good talks and discussions. There's even pizza and beer!

The site with the schedule is at:
http://www.momovan.com/events/2009/020209/020909.html

Their RSVP list is full. However, as far as I know, we did not need to RSVP (since it is free for us). (I could be totally wrong here though!) So, if you have not RSVP'd and you're a member of this meetup, you may be fine if you just show up at 6 PM. (None of us RSVP'd the last time we combined with their event...)

Sorry for the confusion; next time we do this I will get these details sorted out...

The meetup is now at WorkSpace (Suite 400, 21 Water Street).

After the meetup, some of us may head over to Irish Heather or Chill Winston for beer afterward.

Tonight's talk will be by Scott Patten. Here's his summary:

So Peter twisted my arm and I agreed to give a talk tonight. I've recently wrote a cool little DSL for generating Rails and Ruboss scaffolds, and I wanted to show it off.

I thought it would be fun if I re-enacted the creation of the DSL using Test Driven Development (TDD) so that people could get a feel for what TDD looks and feels like. I'll be doing live coding and you'll all get to yell at me when I write ugly code or make typos and it'll be kind of fun and interactive. The guys from seattle.rb call this 'gang bang coding'. Let's see how it goes.

We'll end up with the ability to use scaffolder files like this to create a starting point for a rails app:

# flexomatic_scaffolder.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'ruboss4ruby/ruboss_scaffolder'

ruboss_scaffold('user') do |s|
s.string :login
s.string :name
s.string :email
s.string :crypted_password
end

ruboss_scaffold('dataset') do |s|
s.belongs_to :user
s.has_many :graphs, :datacolumns
s.string :name
end

ruboss_scaffold('graph') do |s|
s.belongs_to :dataset
s.string :name, :title
s.integer :position, :height, :width, :xpos, :ypos
s.has_many :axes
s.has_many :graphlines
s.has_one :legend
end

ruboss_scaffold('legend') do |s|
s.belongs_to :graph
s.integer :xpos, :ypos
s.boolean :visible
end

....

The Vancouver Ruby/Rails/Merb Decem…

The meetup is now at WorkSpace (Suite 400, 21 Water Street).

Note: This is a joint event with MoMoVan (Mobile Monday Vancouver). By "joint" I mean it is their event, they do all the work and we get to go for free! They wanted to use WorkSpace for this night, and the topic seemed very interesting since many of us in the Vancouver Ruby and Rails community are doing startups.

However, because it's a joint event, I need to cap the attendance at 30 people...

TOPIC: Art of the Pitch, Mobile Voting, Entrepreneurship + MORE

Their description:

"We've got a new and fascinating meeting place this time – WorkSpace. It's a new concept in open office environments, offering a café-like setting and a variety of business services.

Social networks have existed since mankind's early tribal days. But with the growing world use of mobile devices, the nature of those networks is shifting, perhaps even ore than they did with other technological developments – such as print, radio, TV, telephony and the Internet.

PROGRAM

6:30 PM – 7:00 PM - Registration, networking, pizza, pop, beer
7:00 PM – 7:20 PM - Four smart, fast pitches
7:20 PM – 7:30PM - The Art of the Pitch
7:30 PM – 7:50 PM - Panel on Entrepreneurship, Wireless Startups and New Media
7:50 PM – 8:00 PM - Networking break (plus voting on pitches)
8:00 PM – 8:20 PM - Panel on Mobile Voting
8:20 PM – 8:30 PM - Final opportunity for networking

As usual, free food and first beer free! Program subject to change without notice."

After their meetup, some of us may head over to Irish Heather or Chill Winston for beer afterward.