• 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 City Programmer, Country Programmer - Building Rural User Groups

Metro areas generally have really active user groups where Rails_Awesome_Lord presents regularly, famous hackers drop in to give presentations, and the Rails Elite throw smashing parties and drinkups after each meeting. But not all developers live in (or near) metro areas and can partake in such festivities. If you're among the rural band of outlaw programmers, this post is for you.

Portland, Maine isn't a tech hotbed by any means and when Adam Bair and I took over our small Ruby User Group after the last coordinator moved to NYC we were pretty sure that garnering attendance and participation would prove difficult in our area. However, to our surprise it wasn't hard at all. In fact, we found that Maine had a scattered yet hardcore group of programmers, each looking to find other programmers. We meet monthly and the size of our group fluctuates from 6-15 people depending on the month. We do very little outreach aside from Twitter announcements and messages to the Google Group. So what's the secret? How do you call the mavericks out of their programming caves and get them to join you?

Here are some tips for getting your own user group started, even if your village is but wee and agrarian:

1. Location - We host the user group right at our house. Since we already have all the necessary hardware (laptops, HDMI cables for hooking laptops up to the TV, seating, etc) it's convenient to just host everyone at our place once a month. It's much easier than lugging a bunch of equipment around, negotiating with companies to use their space, setting up equipment and so forth). Additionally, people tend to feel more relaxed in a house-setting which leads to more in-depth conversations, knowledge-sharing and time spent together.
2. Money - If you're hosting the user group in your own space (or in another free/low-cost charge space) you won't need a lot of financial support. It's worth asking your own employer if they would be willing to sponsor the event with pizza and drinks in return for handing out a few stickers and mentioning their support. Intridea sponsors our small group each month (along with several others) with pizza and drinks! If your employer can't help you out chances are that another member's employer might be willing to help you in exchange for some promotion.
3. Content - Herein lies the challenge that most user group coordinators are faced with! It can be cumbersome to come up with good presentations every month. Here are a few ideas:

• Presentations are not necessary for a rural user group. In fact, many of your members might dread public speaking and would probably appreciate a more casual format to the meetings until you all get to know each other better. Instead of official presentations, consider volunteering to show off some code you've been working on to the group. Afterward, it's likely that someone else will feel inclined to show some code as well. If the members can trust each other to be low-key (who wants to feel like they're going to work at the office when they go to a user group?) then everyone will end up sharing more information in the long run.
• If you do offer a presentation, keep in mind that it doesn't need to last 60 minutes, nor does it need to be delivered to the group as though you were presenting at RailsConf (unless of course, you are presenting at RailsConf and need somewhere to practice!). If you just want to run through some new code you've been working on and that takes 20 minutes, that's ok. If you want to put together a presentation on CoffeeScript, keep it light and engaging. Programmers just enjoy getting together to talk shop with each other. If we don't have anything officially prepared for the group then we'll open up the floor to people that want to show off some code.
• Ask other members to give presentations - if you hear that one of your members has been learning Backbone.js for a new project at work then ask him to present at the next meeting.
• It's beneficial to maintain a good relationship with other local/nearby user groups. Often our Portland members will caravan down to the New Hampshire and Boston Ruby User Groups if we don't have any concrete plans for our own group that month. This way, our members are still getting together and talking about programming.
• Twitter is your friend - Make sure you follow local (and local-ish) devs. If you catch wind that one of them is coming close to your town exercise those social skills and reach out to them - invite them to speak at your user group while they're in town! We've been fortunate to have generous programmers from the New Hampshire and Boston area who have travelled to give presentations to our group in Portland.
• Burn Out - If you start to feel burnt out, rather than let the user group die off, reach out to another regular member and ask for some help. There's no shame in taking a sabbatical!

With all of those tips in mind, there's also one more important thing to remember: a user group is a community. It takes a little bit of time and effort to build it, but once you've done that work it comes with all the benefits of any other close-knit community. If the community is cared for then it can become a tremendous resource to all of its members for anything from code advice, job hunting and mentoring to board game partners and craft beer enthusiasts.

If your area is lacking a user group, step up and host one; people will be thankful that you did! A house, a laptop, and a few conversations on Twitter is all you really need to get started. And maybe a year from now you'll be able to look around you and see a strong community of programmers gathered together, sharing stories, strategies, and experiences.

• Read more about Fledgling Ruby Developer Discovers Community Among Mountain Rubyists

Photo courtesy Evan Phoenix

What better place to mine for skills in Ruby development than at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains? I couldn't think of any better place to experience my first Ruby conference than at Mountain.rb. I went to Boulder, Colorado where I was greeted by towering mountains and listened to genius people advocating the language that I have been honeymooning with.

Now, please note, I am very new to the community. I have only been working in Ruby for the past 5 months, and I come from a design and front-end background. Most of my programming and development skills have been self-taught, so I'm a newborn amongst mature Rubyists. I think veteran developers might have had different experiences from the conference itself, but I've been inspired to share my beginner's viewpoint.

Photo courtesy Peggy Dyer

The conference started for me on Wednesday, October 6 with a QuickStart workshop on Ruby and Rails. The community house where the workshop was held sat at the very foot of the Flatirons. It was a beautiful view and the venue was the perfect meeting place. Rich, dark woods surrounded me and made me very comfortable, as I was about to get a steady, but strong stream of Rails knowledge sent my way. Sarah Allen (Blazing Cloud) and Sarah Mei (Pivotal Labs) led the QuickStart, and even though I am familiar with Ruby and Rails I was intrigued as they touched on the inner workings of Rails components.

Photo courtesy Peggy Dyer

Thursday started off the technical sessions, of which I was uncertain of how much I would be able to keep up with. Most of the talks tended to be higher-level, touching on aspects of software development that anyone whom delves in code would be able to utilize. (I will admit that I did get lost when messaging between threaded processes were discussed). Evan Phoenix and Joe O'Brien inspired goodwill with their encouraging talks on treating people right within OSS programming and software sales.

Pete Jackson, our very own Director of Client Services, gave a blockbuster talk on Geospatial Programming (if you missed it, you can still catch him again at RubyConf in New Orleans). His talk touched on a lot of tools that many developers have not yet worked with extensively, and it was very well received.

Photo courtesy Peggy Dyer

The Friday morning sessions were more suited to my skillset. Highlights for me included CJ Kilbom's talk on front-end testing with Cucumber, Jasmine and Evergreen. He covered how to go further with your front-end tests, so that you can include JavaScript testing as well. Paul Sadauskas gave a talk about why dynamic forms should not be so complicated, which led to a lively discussion on possible solutions.

The biggest thing that I took away from my first Ruby conference is that this community is one that I want to grow in. Amongst the good-natured developers, crazy animal noises from the crowd, and fervor for the Ruby language and methodologies I feel like this is fertile soil for me to cultivate. I'm so glad that I have been uprooted from PHP while I'm still green!

• 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!