• Read more about RubyNation, Take 3!

After kicking off the month of March in Austin at SXSW with Patti and Bobby and then at MountainWest RubyConf with Ted for some UXDD goodness, we're heading to, well... our backyard.

That's right, we're supporting RubyNation for the third year in a row, and this time Pete Jackson will be presenting "Geospace your Rails Apps" to a sold out crowd of more than 250 Ruby enthusiasts.

The 2 track/2 day conference kicks off this Friday at the Sheraton in Reston, Virginia. Pete takes the stage at 3:40 pm on Friday afternoon:

Intridea co-founder Dave Naffis will be there too, talking shop with folks and taking in the sights.

Five years running, RubyNation brings Ruby luminaries to the DC community, energizing the local Ruby scene with poignant speakers, networking opportunities, and thoughtful, intellectual debate. We're thrilled to support this event and the greater DC/MD/VA Ruby community.

If you want to track down Dave or Pete at the conference this week be sure to ping them on Twitter or harass them in the hallways between tracks!

• Read more about Goin' West - Ted O'Meara at MWRC

Ted O'Meara departs today for Salt Lake City, Utah where he'll spend the next few days immersed in the ever-evolving community of Ruby and Ruby on Rails developers. He's headed for destination: MountainWest RubyConf.

Ted came to Intridea two years ago as a designer and in just a short time he's proven to be a dextrous and pioneering leader. Not only has he become an accomplished project manager, he also plunged into the development world in an effort to become a more knowledgable and powerful designer. He did it. He crossed the streams.

While total protonic reversal was not a direct consequence of Ted's actions, he did actually learn a thing or two about the gaps between developers and designers and how small divergences in processes between the two groups effects the products they build. He'll be sharing his insights and solutions at MWRC this Friday.

In his talk, "UXDD (User Experience Driven Development): Build for your users, not your tests", Ted will propose practical and technological solutions to ways developers can increase the overall quality of their applications by aligning and testing their work against the user interface and flow.

In a candid example of why this is important, Ted posits the following user story:

And then adds "...but he might have gained 50lbs."

Throughout a project's lifecycle there may be several additions or changes to the overall user flow and back-end architecture. Following the principles of test-driven and behavior-driven development head-down might cause you to miss glaring errors in functionality for the user. So go see Ted's presentation this Friday at 4:30 pm for a Complete and Perfect Solution™ - he'll fix all your problems, ever. Just don't tell him I said so.

• Read more about Michael Bleigh on Rails 3 at Ruby Midwest

Intridea Partner and open source crusader, Michael Bleigh, will be back in his hometown of Kansas City this week, presenting "Rails is the new Rails" at Ruby Midwest.

The sweeping changes brought on by Rails 3 and 3.1 haven’t just made our existing development patterns easier, they have opened up the ability for us to build new patterns that accomplish more in a more beautiful and efficient way. In this session you will see how thinking about new features in a different light can lead to real innovation for your development practices. Examples include baking routing constraints into your models, application composition with Rack, truly modular design with the asset pipeline, and more.

Coming off a huge month of open source development on OmniAuth (version 1.0.0 was just released this morning), and working onsite for a huge client in NYC on a cutting-edge Rails app, Michael is excited to share his recent insights on Rails 3. Be sure to catch his presentation on Friday, November 4th at 10:30 am, just after the morning break. Follow Michael on Twitter for updates from this (and upcoming) conferences!

• Read more about .NET Meets Geospatial Rails at MADExpo

Last week, I packed my bags and headed for Norfolk, VA to speak at the Mid-Atlantic Developers Expo. I've spent the better part of the past year traveling the country, speaking about Geospatial Programming using Ruby and Rails. As a long-time lover of maps, the topic has been a joy to introduce to the community of Ruby developers, at both small regional conferences like MagicRuby or MountainRuby, and at major national conferences like RubyConf 2010 and RailsConf 2011.

MADExpo, however, was a different kind of conference. MADExpo is primarily a conference attended by Microsoft .NET developers. I was nervous about how my talk, primarily aimed at Rails developers, would be received by "the other side." What could I possibly tell a bunch of .NET guys about doing Geospatial apps if my expertise is Rails?

As it turns out, quite a bit. I was genuinely surprised by the interest, attention, and questions I received during and after my session. Most folks were genuinely interested to learn how Rails developers are doing GIS apps, and had insights to offer about how certain problems are solved using .NET.

One of the main points of my speeches on Geospatial Rails is that "we should draw inspiration from outside our bubble of knowledge." Old-school desktop GIS has a lot to teach web developers about what is possible, what is useful, and what is realistic. MADExpo made me realize that there's another piece of this argument that I had been missing. Not only should we be looking at what desktop GIS can teach us: we should be looking at what users of other web stacks can teach us as well.

The slides from my presentation are available on Scribd. I welcome feedback and ongoing conversation about the future of Geospatial programming, and I'm looking forward to bringing a modified version of this presentation to the fifth annual Lonestar Ruby Conference in August this year! Hope to see many of you there. In the meantime, feel free to leave your comments below or ping me with questions on Twitter!

• Read more about Intridea at MADExpo

Today and tomorrow, Intridea will have a presence at MADExpo (Mid Atlantic Developer Expo). Not only are we sponsoring the event but Pete Jackson, our Managing Director, will be giving a presentation on the geospatial web, entitled "Location Matters. The world of Geospatial web and mobile applications."

Description:

Location-based applications are everywhere, yet most modern web developers haven't ventured far beyond superimposing a few locations on a Google Map. In this talk, developers will learn about the many spatial programming possibilities within the web and mobile development landscape, including non-location-based applications, geographic applications using custom imagery, answering difficult questions using spatial queries, Moving Beyond the Dot-On-The-Map, and how to get started with Geospatial Programming today.

You can catch Pete's presentation in Room 106 on Friday at 1:30pm. And if you're there, Intridea Senior Partner Chris Selmer and VP of Client Services, Marc Garrett are at the event today and tomorrow so be sure to track them down and say hello. Intrideans enjoy opportunities to talk about anything tech related, so don't hesitate to hit us up for conversation.

If you aren't at MADExpo this year keep an eye on our blog next week for Pete's debriefing of the event and slides from his presentation!

• Read more about Windy City Rails 2010

It’s absolutely fantastic when a conference has Wi-Fi, power, and tables, and WindyCityRails had all three! Generously hosted by ChicagoRuby at the Westin, right on the Chicago River, WindyCityRails was a one-day conference that was packed full of awesome.

Unfortunately, I was only able to make it for the morning sessions, but Jake Scruggs (@jakescruggs) started us off with a bang, walking us through all the different aspects of metric_fu. Jake did a great job of explaining how to use metrics as a tool for where to focus your efforts in refactoring code, but explained that it’s not designed to be put in the hands of management – and probably not something you want to break the build-chain for.

John McCaffrey (@j_mccaffrey) kept the momentum going with some great tips for improving Rails performance. Some of the biggest tips: use indexes in your database, cache things when it’s practical, use sprites, and most importantly gzip your resources!

Finally, I gave my talk – first illustrating how easy it is to create your own Gems and release them to the public, and then talking about how dangerous it is that we can release those Gems so quickly. The slides can be found below:

I had to race back to Eau Claire after that, but it was an impressive conference. In addition to the standard talks, there was also a tutorial track, featuring Jeff Cohen and Noel Rappin discussing how to get started with Rails, and how to test a legacy environment, respectively.

Finally, there was a coding dojo hosted by the guys over at Obtiva (@ObtivaCorp) where attendees could drop in and practice pair programming, TDD, and learn about cool tech like Redis!

A big thanks to the ChicagoRuby group for hosting such a spectacular conference!

• Read more about Hacking the Mid-End (Great Lakes Ruby Bash Edition)

I just finished giving my “Hacking the Mid-End” talk at the Great Lakes Ruby Bash. It was a bit longer format, so I updated the slides a bit and added a third example to the code. The slides are embedded below and the new code is available in the GitHub Repository.

I’m still at the conference, but I wanted to post up the slides and code immediately! Enjoy.