ADS specializes in using Ruby on Rails to build advanced, scalable, database-backed web sites for organizations of all sizes. Find out more at our website.

Ezra and Evan have sent the acts_as_conference team the details of what they are going to speak about at the charity session:

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Coding at the next level: Patterns, Idioms, and Style

Evan and Ezra will talk about tips and techniques to make you a better ruby programmer. They’ll cover how to approach problems and break them up into well designed pieces. Rather than simply showing what a pattern is, they’ll present them via common problems people need to solve.

Over the course of the session, with the aid of the audience, they’ll build an application using Merb and Rubinius.
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Don’t forget that one lucky charity session attendee will win a free 3-slice configuration for one year from Engine Yard. For a $50 tax deductible donation you can’t lose by attending. Sign up today!

Rails For All is happy to announce that Morph Labs has joined the list of sponsors for acts_as_conference, the two-day Ruby on Rails conference being held here in Orlando, Florida. Visit the acts_as_conference site for all of the conference details. There is a HOT lineup of speakers that you don’t want to miss and a great charity session featuring Ezra Zygmuntowicz (Merb) and Evan Phoenix (Rubinius).

About Morph Labs

Morph Labs Inc. is developing the next generation Ruby on Rails deployment, management & hosting system that reduces the developers burden and increases the professionalism of the application. This elastic managed environment leverages GRID computing resources and scales seamlessly to support Web 2.0 requirements.

Platinum Sponsors of acts_as_conference

• Sun Microsystems
• Engine Yard

We (Rails For All) is looking for platinum sponsors for our Ruby on Rails conference, acts_as_conference (actsasconference.com) and would like to talk with the right person at Apple about the benefits of sponsoring this event. With the integration of Ruby and Rails in Leopard, released today, and the large use of Apple computers by Rails developers, Apple could foster even better relations by sponsoring acts_as_conference. If you know anyone at Apple that we can speak to please send an email to rdempsey at railsforall dot org. Thank you.

Rails For All has announced the keynoters for acts_as_conference, the two day Rails conference being held in Orlando, Florida February 8th and 9th. The keynoters will be Dan Benjamin and Obie Fernandez. Visit the acts_as_conference site for all the details on these two great speakers.

ADS is a proud sponsor of acts_as_conference, a two day Ruby on Rails conference being held in Orlando, Florida February 8th and 9th. Get all the details on the acts_as_conference web site. The call for proposals was just announced, and sponsors are being sought.

Planning for acts_as_conference is moving ahead at a rapid pace. We have contacted a number of great venues and hope to have one selected by the middle of next week. In addition, the domain name has been purchased, the web site is under construction, the sponsorship packages have been formed, and a scaffold schedule has been mapped out. Once we have the venue we will be launching the site and doing a request for papers. Did I mention that we are shooting for February? February in Orlando is fantastic, and for those of you family folks, Orlando has a lot to offer the little, or not so little ones.

We need your input
acts_as_conference will be a Rails centric conference, and to help us determine what topics we should have covered we have created a discussion on the Rails For All Discussion Board. Let us know what you want to hear about!

Robert Dempsey, Project Director of ADS and Founder of Rails For All, will be speaking at the Sarasota Java Users Group meeting on November 15th. The talk with be a front to back overview of Ruby on Rails. Here’s what you get:

Ruby

• Overview
• Ruby’s growth
• Objects everywhere
• Ruby is flexible

Ruby on Rails

• Overview
• Why Ruby on Rails
• Uses of Ruby on Rails

How to create a basic Rails application

• Create a Rails application
• What is MVC
• The structure of a Rails application (where everything is)
• Connect to a database
• Create scaffold
• Fire it up and see what we have

Testing the Rails (if there is time)

• BDD (our preferred approach)
• RSpec

Come and enjoy! We will see you there.

Today is the last day of work before I (Robert Dempsey) meet Anthony Eden at the airport and we head to RailsConf Europe. Anthony is known to carry a camera with him every where he goes so I am sure he will be uploading snaps of everything. I will supplement these efforts and post to my Flickr channel as well (http://flickr.com/photos/robertonrails/). Stay tuned for RCE goodness next week. If you are going, hit me up. I will be in a Rails For All t-shirt (big globe logo on the front) pulling my Mac around.

By the way, I have six Pownce invites if anyone is interested. I’ll hook up the first six people that want em.

Rails For All announced this evening that they plan to hold a two day, one track Rails conference in Orlando, Florida in February of 2008. You can read the official announcement on the Rails For All Announcement List. To engage the local and non-local Rails communities, they are asking for session ideas on the Rails For All Discussion Board. Check it out and provide your ideas on what you would like to hear at the conference.

Let us know:

The second half of day two at the Hoedown brought BOF’s (birds of a feather) during lunch time. I was in on a great BOF on getting the Ruby community to help out the community in general. The result - Ruby for Change. The purpose of Ruby for Change is to organize the Ruby/Rails-community to create driven projects to benefit real people. This is very cool and something that Rails For All is definitely going to be helping with. The BOF sessions were followed by a talk by Ken Auer titled “Does Ruby Have a Chasm to Cross?” This was a very interesting talk about the death of Smalltalk, and how Ruby can avoid the same mistakes. Long story short, the long tail that Ruby currently inhabits is not enough to sustain it long term and cross the chasm from early adopters to the early majority (the “chasm”). This was an interesting talk and one which we will discuss here in posts to come. The final session was “Using C to Tune Your Ruby (or Rails) Application” by Jared Richardson. Another great talk which showed how easy it is to speed up Ruby and Rails apps by integrating C into your application.

The final keynote was a discussion on beauty by Marcel Molina. To summarize, there are three principles of beauty - proportion, integrity, and clarity. This was a thought provoking talk which is best left to you all to see.

One thing of beauty is that the speakers and the presentations were recorded and are being released under a creative commons license, and will be available here soon.

The entire conference was fantastic and well put together. Major props go out to Nathaniel Talbot and Jeremy McAnally for bringing everything together. We were definitely inspired.

Look for a Rails-centric conference to be announced within a month or two for the Orlando area, brought to you by Rails For All.