Meeting some Melbourne rubyists

[Owen B. Mehegan]

Hi guys, I thought I had posted to introduce myself at some point in
the past, but searching seems to indicate that I didn't! I guess I've
been lurking for a couple of months then.

I'm an American rubyist, based in San Francisco currently, and married
to a lovely Melbournian woman. We're working on a plan to relocate
permanently to Melbourne within the next 2 years. For her, as an
accountant (pretty worldwide skill set) who worked for a Big 3 firm in
Australia and then the US for a number of years, she has the contacts,
experience and knowledge of her industry to be able to job hunt
effectively when we go back. Me? Not so much. We'll be in Melbourne
for a wedding from May 4 - 16 (exclusive of the 11-14 weekend), and I
was hoping to get a chance to meet some folks from the ruby community
there over drinks. I told my wife I wanted to "chat up" some people
and she told me that's grounds for divorce, so I guess that's not the
term I want - hah!

It appears that I'm going to miss the official April meetup by a few
days, but if anyone would be up for a couple of beers, maybe after
work one night, I'm happy to meet wherever might be convenient around
the city. The wife's family is in Keilor East and we'll be staying
there but will have a car. I'm just interested in getting a feel for
what the tech industry is like in Melbourne, where I might be able to
put my skills to use, and what I can do to make myself more marketable
before I get there.

A bit more about me: 31 years old, lived in San Francisco for the last
six and a half, originally from Boston before that. My career arc has
gone from IT guy to Linux sysadmin to QA guy to, for the last few
years, QA automation/frameworks/deployment/infrastructure/internal
tools/kitchen sink guy. People sometimes say that Perl is a glue
language; I've come to think of myself as a glue engineer. I usually
get hired to do one main thing, and then I start picking up other
little jobs, improving or replacing pieces of infrastructure and
whipping up time-saving tools. I'm usually a team of one, and I always
look for jobs where I can learn from a group of talented engineers
with skills on a level above mine. It's been a fun ride over the last
few years here in the Mecca of technology, I'll be sad to leave, but
Melbourne is a hell of a city judging from my four visits so far. I'm
looking forward to it.

So if anyone's interested in getting together, by all means let me
know. And hey, if you've been thinking about checking out the scene in
San Francisco, I'd be happy to trade my knowledge for yours : )
Thanks in advance...

--
ow...@nerdnetworks.org (Owen B. Mehegan)
'I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just
squandered.'
--George Best

[Pat Allan]

Hi Owen

There's a few of us rubyists who hang out at Inspire9 - you're welcome to drop by generally if you need a desk, but also I'm happy to have a chat over a beverage of some description at some point while you're in town as well. Feel free to get in touch off-list to line something up when you've got some idea of what day/time would suit.

Cheers

--
Pat
e: p...@freelancing-gods.com || m: +614 1327 3337
w: http://freelancing-gods.com || t: twitter.com/pat
bounce: http://trampolineday.com || skype: patallan

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[Nigel Sheridan-Smith]

Hi Owen,

There are quite a few Melbourne meet up groups on meetup.com besides the RoRo monthly group, so its worth picking a few while you are here to make some contacts.

Being relatively new to Melbourne myself, I can't really recommend a great place to hang out but if you (or somebody else) proposes one during the time you are here then a few of us might be able to come by and have a chat and a beer.

Cheers,

Nigel

-- 

http://www.whossingle.net - check out who's available, engaged or taken amongst

your friends and their friends

Dr Nigel Sheridan-Smith PhD BE

Mob: +61 403 930 963

Email: nigel --AT-- partneredup.com

LI: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nsheridansmith

[Owen B. Mehegan]

Hey guys, thanks for the interest! My apologies for not getting back to this sooner, when we visit Melbourne the wife is in charge of the schedule : )  Had to get clearance from her about which days I'm free. It looks like the evenings of the 8th-10th (Tuesday-Thursday) are clear. If there are >1 interested persons coming from Inspire9, maybe meeting somewhere over there would be simplest. If you guys can suggest a day/time/location I can be there - seems like that makes the most sense since you're more likely to know what bars are good! I may be able to stick around for food if people are into that idea as well. Let me know if this sounds good : )