• Read more about LA Ruby Conference 2009 Recap

Pradeep Elankumaran and I just came back from the very first LA Ruby Conference (Twitter), which was held in Tustin, CA. We didn’t know what Tustin had to offer or what to expect, since it was the first time either of us has visited Tustin. When we arrived at the venue, we were in awe of the few million dollars worth of automobiles surrounding the stage. The conference was held in the Marconi Automotive Museum, which is filled with Ferrari’s, Lamborghini’s, F1 cars — you name it. The event ended up being a huge success due to the great venue and the amazing set of talks, with a final count of 115 attendees.

There were many great talks that ended up covering a wide variety of topics. One very unique talk was by Ron & Damen Evans with their unveiling of Flying Robot, a platform for Ruby Arduino Development. The Ruby powered blimp, flew around the museum, while being controlled by a Wii-mote.

Pradeep gave his talk on Fast and Scalable Front/Back-end Services using Ruby, Rails and XMPP and I gave my talk on Mobilizing Your Rails Application. The kind fellas from Confreaks were there recording each talk as well, so be sure to look out for those when they become available.

From flying robots to creating cross-platform native mobile applications, it’s quite clear that there are some very exciting things going on in the world of Ruby development. Our thanks and congratulations goes out to Coby Renquist, JR Fent, all of the great speakers and everybody else who helped to put on such a great conference. We are both looking forward to going back to Tustin in 2010.

• Read more about BlogWell: How Big Companies Use Social Media

• Read more about Intridea in the Community

Intridea believes in supporting the local tech community and will be sponsoring and participating in several upcoming conferences, events, and competitions in October and November.

Ruby DCamp

Intridea is proud to be a platinum sponsor of the first RubyDCamp , an OpenSpace Ruby Conference to be held October 11-12 just outside of Washington DC in Arlington, VA. Ruby DCamp will be a weekend full of Ruby learning, teaching, and hacking and should be a great event for Rubyists of all abilities.

Ignite Baltimore

On October 16th, Intridea will be sponsoring Ignite Baltimore, a high-energy event where 16 of the area’s most interesting people give short 5-minute talks. With topics varying from technology to culture to business to philosophy, it’ll definitely be a night to remember!

BarCamp DC2

BarCamp DC2 is another OpenSpace event Intridea is happy to be sponsoring. At a BarCamp, attendees self-organize to determine the topics they are interested in hearing. Everyone is required to help lead a session or participate in a panel. BarCamp DC2 will be held on October 18th.

South Carolina Ruby Conference

Also on October 18th, Chris and Adam will be speaking in Columbia, SC about becoming a more blissful developer at the South Carolina Ruby Conference . The talk is titled “Remove the Suck – On How to Become a Blissful Developer.”

Rails Rumble

To make the October 18-19 weekend even busier, Intridea will be sponsoring the 2008 Rails Rumble, as well as entering three teams. The Rails Rumble is a weekend event where teams of up to 4 people design, develop, and deploy a working Rails app within 48 hours.

Social Dev Camp East

SocialDevCampEast is a place for east coast developers and technology business leaders to come together for a thoughtful discussion of the ideas and technologies that will drive the future of the social web. Intridea is looking forward to sponsoring and being part of the discussion. SocialDevCampEast will be held on November 1st.

Update: Michael Bleigh will be giving the talk “Hacking the Mid-End: Advanced Rails UI Techniques” at the Great Lakes Ruby Bash on October 11, 2008. If you didn’t get a chance to make it all the way to Berlin for RailsConf Europe, catch the talk again in a longer format!

• Read more about Intridea World Tour: Berlin, Texas, and DC

It's been a busy week at Intridea. Michael, Pradeep, and Chris presented a couple of talks in Berlin. Then, Chris and Pradeep met up with Adam in Austin, Texas for a full-day training session. Back in our DC headquarters, I was one of the panelists for the Future of Software event organized by Potomac Tech Wire. Japan and China next year? We are definitely getting our name around.

The Future of Software event was attended by over 200 tech executives in the area. The discussion revolved around technology trends, business model implications, and funding software companies. There was a lot of discussion on open-source and software as service (SaaS) models destroying the lucrative, traditional perpetual license models. I was really surprised by how much discussion we had on Ruby On Rails (and I didn't even have to start it!), both among the panelists and the audience. It's nice to know that ROR is hot in this area flooded with defense contractors.

Here are some of my thoughts I prepared for the meeting:

Three Software Trends

Cheap, easy-to-use consumer software will continue to make in-roads into the business world. Google Apps in the enterprise will fundamentally change the way we collaborate inside the companies as well as personal life (e.g. Gmail, Calendar, GChat, Apps, Sites, etc)

Building applications on top of open platforms with existing user bases will continue (e.g. iPhone Apps, OpenSocial, Facebook apps, Linkedin). Innovation and the killer apps come from the development community rather than the platform companies. It's still hard to make money on these platforms.

Software as Service is finally taking off (Salesforce, Google Apps, Basecamp, ...). Even small companies can buy enterprise software.

Commoditization & Business Models

Commoditization is inevitable. Companies will need to aggressively focus on customer value and innovate more rapidly.

Software as Service is finally taking off (Salesforce, Google Apps, Basecamp, ...). Even small companies like us can buy enterprise software like SalesForce.

The freemium model is also popular on the web. You attract the users with the free version and then upsell them through value-added features.

Servicing open-source apps is great way for new companies to compete with the large companies. Even using this approach you need lot of energy to promote the technology, build a multi-vendor eco-system, and convert the leads into sales.

Fate of big software companies (Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, etc) in 10 years:

Ten years is a long time in software business. Probably a couple of players will be still very strong. Probably 25% will fail. The remaining players will not be so dominant. They will continue to survive through acquisition of innovative companies. New leaders will emerge. Second comings like Apple are going to be rare.

Advice to new startups:

Don't under-estimate the need for marketing and sales. After your initial beta launch, the interest will wane. You have to promote the product pretty heavily to get the traction you wanted. It will take time to succeed. Ideas are cheap and execution is hard.

Find a business partner. Start-ups can be a roller coaster ride, it helps to have someone to brainstorm ideas and to share the ups and downs.

I think entrepreneurship is the best way to compete in the global marketplace.

• Read more about Updates from Lone Star RubyConf 2008

Greetings from blazing hot Austin, TX where Chris, Adam & I are attending Lone Star RubyConf 2008. We gave the Rails Refactoring — Triage, Prevention & Performance tutorial yesterday to about 25 attendees of the conference, which was quite exciting and enjoyable.

Personally, I really like the small regional-conference feel of Lone Star RubyConf. The ambiance is much more laid-back than the two Railsconfs and networking is effortless. It doesn’t hurt that the conference is located in Austin, which is a real foodie heaven (especially barbeque), with a very cool and friendly Ruby/Rails community.

This year, the conference seems to have attracted a good set of speakers — I saw many prominent Rubyists walking the halls, and talking to many of the speakers was quite informative. Matz is here, and we’ve taken to thanking him for Ruby every time we’ve run into him in the hallway, which is honestly the least we could do without feeling like stalkers.

Highly recommended if you’re thinking of attending next year.