More Speakers
The speakers for RubyNation 2010 have not yet all been selected. We will publish the full list around the end of January after the call for presentations has ended.
But in the meanwhile, we will announce a few of our featured speakers starting now. You didn't really want to wait until January to hear how good RubyNation 2010 will be, did you?
Keynote Presentation: Dave Thomas
Dave Thomas is an internationally recognized expert Rubyist. He is a cornerstone of the Ruby community, and is personally responsible for many of its innovative directions and initiatives. Dave is a co-founder of the Pragmatic Programmers and the Pragmatic Bookshelf. He helped write the now-famous Agile Manifesto. . He is the author of many books, including the best sellers The Pragmatic Programmer, Agile Web Development with Rails and Programming Ruby. Dave's blog can be found at PragDave.
For the past two years, Dave has been a featured speaker at our kick off events held in conjunction with the Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group, but he has never actually spoken at our conference! We are really looking forward to correcting that.
Jim Weirich presents "SOLID Ruby"
The 5 SOLID design principles (the Single Responsibility Principle, the Open/Closed Principle, the Liskov Substitution Principle, the Interface Segregation Principle and the Dependency Inversion Principle) form a great foundation for understanding good Object Oriented design. But the SOLID principles were originally conceived with statically typed OO languages, such as C++ and Java, in mind. How well do these principles hold up when the implementation language is Ruby? Are the principles just as pertinent as they were in Java, or does the dynamic nature of Ruby change what we mean by good design? In this presentation we will examine the SOLID principles to understand their core purpose, and then run them through the "Ruby Filter" to see if any of these core principles survive. By understanding these principles, we become better Ruby programmers.
About the Speaker: Jim Weirich is the Chief Scientist for EdgeCase LLC, a Rails development firm located in Columbus Ohio. Jim has over twenty-five years of experience in software development. He has worked with real-time data systems for testing jet engines, networking software for information systems, and image processing software for the financial industry. Jim is active in the Ruby community and has contributed to several Ruby projects, including the Rake build system and the RubyGems package software.
Gregg Pollack presents "Deciphering Yehuda"
Yehuda Katz has done some great Ruby refactoring for Rails 3 over the past year, but do you really understand what he's done? In this talk, Gregg Pollack will attempt to examine Yehuda's work, identify and deconstruct each programming technique that he's applied, and then teach them in a way that everyone can understand.
Some of the techniques to be discussed will include: Method Compilation vs Method Missing, Decoupling Components, Embracing Rack, alias_method_chain vs super, Abstract Classes, and Componentization.
Attendees should walk away with a greater understanding of some advanced Ruby design patterns and a better insight into the internals of Rails 3.
About the Speaker: Gregg Pollack is a well-known leader in the Ruby and Rails communities. Gregg works at Envy Labs, where he produces a podcast, creates educational screencasts, and develops websites with Rails. He is a founder and current member of the Rails Activists, a set of committed volunteers devoted to increasing the adoption of Rails. Gregg also organizes the Orlando Ruby Users Group, and is also sometimes known as the Ruby on Rails guy in the "Rails vs" commercials or the "C" in MVC.
Nick Sieger presents "Rails: The Killer Java Web Stack"
Most people know that Rails is the original productive web application framework that all the others copied, and most know that it has been runnable on the Java Virtual Machine for years via JRuby. What a lot of people don't know is how to properly integrate Rails and Java; that is, how to incrementally introduce Rails into your legacy Java environment and leverage its strengths without ditching your Java infrastructure.
Finally, all the pieces are in place to make Rails development and deployment in a polyglot Java environment possible. Rails 3 brings all the goodness of Rails in bite-size, composable chunks. Ant and Maven are becoming more Ruby- and Rake-savvy, so you don't have to give up your build infrastructure. Multiple database possibilities await, so you don't necessarily have to switch to ActiveRecord. Use Ruby and Rails where it hurts the most to give your project more flexibility!
In this session Nick will make recommendations on some of the best ways to making Rails and Java play nicely together using JRuby, and run through some demos of the more practical ways to get things done. Most exciting, you'll get a preview of the quickly-evolving JRuby on Rails stack.
About the Speaker: Nick Sieger is an engineer at Engine Yard, working on JRuby and leading the effort to make the Java Virtual Machine a robust yet easy-to-use deployment platform for Rails and Ruby web applications. He created and co-maintains the JDBC adapter for ActiveRecord that JRuby on Rails uses for database connectivity, as well as the Warbler tool and JRuby-Rack library for dealing with Java application server deployment.
Kyle Banker presents "MongoDB: The Way and its Power"
MongoDB seems like a great idea. But when it comes to building an application, we may start to miss all those patterns familiar to us from relational databases. Where are my joins? How do I handle polymorphic associations? Here, we'll examine a dozen ideas for working the MongoDB way, including plenty of code examples. These techniques will highlight the unique features of the database, among them atomic updates, map/reduce, and the notion of embedded documents. We'll also consider the hard questions, including how to achieve durability, plan for scale, and reassure our relational-database-oriented brethren of the viability of a document database like MongoDB. You'll come away with a good sense for the surprises and joys of building apps in MongoDB.
About the Speaker: Kyle Banker works at 10gen, where he maintains the MongoDB Ruby Driver and supports the Ruby developer community. Previously, Kyle built e-commerce and social networking applications, and he once thrived as teacher of languages and literature.
Paul Berry presents "Block, Procs and Lambdas, Oh My! Functional Programming in Ruby"
Despite being an object-oriented language, Ruby contains functional programming features as well. This talk will cover what those features are, provide an in-depth look into how they work, and present examples of how to use them. Paul will also compare Ruby to other functional programming languages such as Clojure, Haskell, Erlang, Smalltalk, JavaScript and Scala to show you how you can incorporate techniques commonly used in those languages to improve your Ruby code.
About the Speaker: Paul Barry is a Software Developer from Baltimore, MD. Paul has over 10 years experience developing web applications in a variety of languages and frameworks, including Java, Perl, PHP and of course, Ruby on Rails. Paul has been a speaker at ActsAsConf and RubyNation and is a regular attendee and speaker at DC and Baltimore programming user groups. He blogs about Ruby, Programming and a variety of other topics at http://paulbarry.com/.
Could Be You!
The RubyNation wants to hear your lightning talk! Whatever you want to talk, rave, or rant about, this is your chance. We don't care what it is, just as long as it is of interest to the Ruby community and relatively short (like 10 minutes max). Your lightning talk can be fun, like "X is awesome! It changed me as a person!", a call to arms, like "Help us build Y. The world needs it!", a plea, like "Let's put an end to the scourge of Z.". You've heard of opinionated software, well this is opinionated talking. So, let's hear yours. Oh, and please keep it no worse than PG-13 rated.
Ruby Marketplace if employment.nil?
Need a Ruby or Rails job? Need Ruby or Rails developers? Stop by the Ruby Marketplace and tell us all about it. Maybe you can find your dream job, or find that one awesome rubyist who can make your project soar. During this special session we will open the microphone to employers and potential employees.
Last year the Ruby Marketplace at RubyNation was responsible for several people getting Ruby work. That is something of which we are immensely proud, and we want to build on that this year. So, help us give the economy a Ruby Stimulus! Tell your HR department to get cracking on a short announcement! If you got a job to tell, we wannna hear about it!