[Melbourne] roro-melbourne website?

[Korny Sietsma]

Hi folks - I was trying to suggest roro-melbourne to a friend, and can find very little online at all.  Is there a page/site I'm missing?

http://www.rubyonrails.com.au/ has lots of Sydney updates, but the last Melbourne update was December 2010 ...

Is the analog blog, at least, updated somewhere? There were blogs posted to this list until June, but nothing since...

- Korny

--
Kornelis Sietsma  korny at my surname dot com http://korny.info
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part
that wonders what the part that isn't thinking
isn't thinking of"

[Pat Allan]

I'm pretty sure there's not really anything else, sadly. It's certainly something we need to work on. Perhaps something to discuss at Rails Camp?

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Pat

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[Ben Schwarz]

Pat hit it on the head, there is nothing else—I used to try to keep it pretty updated (when I was organising the meetups), but it was always just another thing to do… 

Its probably a case of:

1) Attempting to update rubyonrails.com.au with upcoming meetup details

2) Attempting to put the analogue blog on rubyonrails.com.au (kinda optional, I've never looked back at it personally)

3) Discussing whether we can update rubyonrails.com.au to make it work better for organisers around the country

I'm with Pat, those who feel compelled to create change should put their heads together at Railscamp. I'm sure that he or I can facilitate / book a session. 

[Mike Bailey]

A simple web page for the Melbourne ruby community would build up a lot of google link juice. It could be under the ruby.org.au domain or not.

Analogue blog and meeting announcements would certainly let the casual web surfer know that there's an active ruby community in Melbourne. I think it's valuable content that should be somewhere. 

By linking to interesting new things the sure would help direct more attention their way.

It really is a matter of whether someone  wants to do it.

- Mike

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[Ivan Vanderbyl]

I'd be up for kicking something off at RailsCamp and contributing to building a site which can be used for each ruby community around the country. 

Anyone else keen to partake? 

Regards,

Ivan Vanderbyl

Sent from my iPhone

[Chris Berkhout]

I agree.

Last year in Beijing I was keen to keep in touch with Melbourne ruby
news and the analogue blog list posts were helpful, but not always
there.

The Melbourne ruby meetups are exceptionally vibrant, so I'm sure that
that can be relatively easily reflected on the web.

As well as putting up a new page, we should make sure that we take
down all other pages that appear to represent the Melbourne ruby
community and ensure that references are updated to the new
destination and not accompanied by info that is or will quickly go out
of date.

I'll be at RailsCamp to discuss and happy to contribute to making it happen.

Cheers,
Chris

[Steven Ringo]

Hey Guys,

I have been using the rubyonrails.com.au domain to put some basic info about upcoming meetings for rorosyd meetups. However this is no longer tenable and would love to get something going that we can use for all of us.

A quick history on how we got here:

• The site was hosted with Segment (Jermey Bogan) on an old Mephisto (I think) install. It was borked and inaccessible.
• I took a snapshot and stuck the html in git to have a record of it, and I have been editing that in git.
• We are using github pages to host the static HTML.
  
• We had a lot of issues with getting Jeremy to point the DNS to the right place. To get him to action anything is virtually impossible.
• Recently the rubyonrails.com.au domain expired. I tried to see if we could get him to relinquish control but he won't.
  

When the idea of Ruby Australia came up, and because this is more than just a Sydney thing, was going to bring it up around about now, but you guys have already done that!

I would have come to Railscamp, but my wife is only a few weeks away from the birth of our first child :-)

I guess we would need to decide if this is a national thing or a local thing, and also what domain to put it under. I also don't think we should use rubyonrails.com.au anymore. We're not just about Rails, and the owner of the domain has us over a barrel and is very inflexible about it.  Something under the banner/domain of Ruby Australia could be an option or, we create a new domain name just for the user groups. We can then 301 all requests to rubyonrails.com.au to the new domain.

I think a git/markdown Jekyll-ish or similar static site that can be updated using git would be ideal. I started creating a Jekyll-based (Octopress actually) site for Rorosyd, but haven't taken it much further.

Love to hear your thoughts, and wish I could be at Railscamp. However be happy to contribute remotely.

Thanks,

Steve

[Rob Zolkos]

This is a very good idea.

I'll be at Railscamp too and happy to help out.

--

thanks,
Rob

[Ivan Vanderbyl]

That choice of tech is similar to what I had in mind, and making it easy to maintain is crucial. Using markdown for content would make publishing the analog blog pretty straight forward. 

As for the domain, I agree that we should move away from rubyonrails.com.au to something like sydney.ruby.org.au or melbourne.ruby.org.au with a similar site structure and link backs to keep the content, calendar and events localized. 

Either way I think it's about time something was done about it and I'm volunteering my time and I'd love to hear what the rest of the community thinks. 

Regards,

Ivan Vanderbyl

Sent from my iPhone

--

[Mike Bailey]

From time to time a new person takes on running a Melbourne Ruby meetup.

I think the following are necessary if it's going to be used:

• super simple process for granting them access to update web page
• it should take less than 5 min for them to work out how to add to analogue blog (pref < 1 min)

Perhaps a blog on wordpress.com might be the simplest option?

- Mike

--

- Mike

e. mi...@bailey.net.au

w. mike.bailey.net.au

[James Healy]

On 7 January 2012 23:55, Mike Bailey <mi...@bailey.net.au> wrote:
> Perhaps a blog on wordpress.com might be the simplest option?

For the love of god, please don't inflict that on anyone.

Updating a jekyll site hosted on github is as simple as committing a
new file and pushing it to the github repo. Can't get much simpler
than that.

Giving access to new organisers of the Melbourne meeting would be as
easy adding a collaborator to the github repo. On that note, maybe one
of the interim Ruby Australia office bearers could register a new
organisation on github?

James

[Mike Bailey]

On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 12:04 AM, James Healy <ja...@yob.id.au> wrote:

On 7 January 2012 23:55, Mike Bailey <mi...@bailey.net.au> wrote:
> Perhaps a blog on wordpress.com might be the simplest option?

For the love of god, please don't inflict that on anyone.

How come? I'm a big fan of using web apps for content management (I left mutt for gmail years ago).

 

Updating a jekyll site hosted on github is as simple as committing a
new file and pushing it to the github repo. Can't get much simpler
than that.

That solution does have appeal. Does it work from mobile devices (like an iPad)?

There are some alright looking sites using jekyll now. http://carlosedp.com/

 

Giving access to new organisers of the Melbourne meeting would be as
easy adding a collaborator to the github repo. On that note, maybe one
of the interim Ruby Australia office bearers could register a new
organisation on github?

That sounds like a great idea!

- Mike

 

[Ivan Vanderbyl]

We're engineers, we can roll our own solution that fits the needs of what we want to put on the site. I'm a massive advocate for git and markdown, perhaps with all ruby Australia members having push access to the main repo. 

Wordpress would be an insult to who we are and what we do. 

Regards,

Ivan Vanderbyl

Sent from my iPhone

--

[Nicholas Faiz]

+1

[Steven Ringo]

I think the word them cool kids use is "dogfooding".

There was more than just a little irony in the fact that the old wiki
was a wikimedia install (php).

The git account permissions thing is set up and would be pretty easy to
add new members as needed.

I would start small and build on it. Simple jekyll-based, a few "blog"
posts to represent a meeting and some static info pages. I doubt we'll
need anything more.

The effort will likely be more on the front-end. And would also be a
great showcase for someone to show off their ruby/html/css-fu.

Steve

[Chris]

I'm a fan of the roll-our-own approach -- there's more than enough bright sparks in this community that I would be shocked should something usable and useful not come out of Railscamp.

Anyway, if you wanted a zero barrier to entry, I'd be advocating posterous over Wordpress any day.

Sent from my iPhone

[Ben Schwarz]

Perhaps as a reference point, years ago Tim Lucas wrote something to power his blog from Markdown files (interestingly, this was before jekyll and other people doing such a thing - in a modern sense). 

The source is here: https://github.com/toolmantim/toolmantim/blob/master/lib/article.rb

I've been using a variant of this to power my site for a few years now. 

… Perhaps that could be used as a starting point and adapted as hungry developers see fit. Either way it'd be nice to have something straight away that 'worked' and could be iterated on by those who cared. Otherwise, jekyll is good. 

Github as a CMS.

-- 

on the domain issue: why don't we write to jeremy from segpub asking him to reconsider his stance. otherwise — new domain. 301 the old site to the new domain. 

[Pat Allan]

I registered ruby.org.au last night, and we've also got rubyaustralia.org, so we have a few options.

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Pat

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[Paul Annesley]

ruby.org.au makes most sense to me.

+1 for a git-based solution along the lines of jekyll.
In the unlikely event of a front-end talent shortage, Octopress provides a lot out of the box: http://octopress.org/

I've just ported my personal site to Octopress, so my entire hosting infrastructure is now an S3 bucket and a CNAME.
See: http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2011/08/Jekyll-amazon-s3.html

-- Paul

[Keith Pitty]

Sounds like we have plenty of folks interested in contributing to sorting this out at Rails Camp.  Looking forward to being part of it!

Bearded Keith

On 06/01/2012, at 1:56 PM, Korny Sietsma wrote:

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[K.M.]

how about 'onrails.org.au' as a base domain?
For specific states, we can have:
-melbourne.onrails.org.au
-sydney.onrails.org.au
-perth.onrails.org.au

My 2cents...


Gordon Yeong :)

[Pat Allan]

Two concerns I have with this - we're a Ruby community, not just a Rails community (yes, this group's email address is misnamed - past names were more Rails-focused than Ruby-focused).

Also, the association name is Ruby Australia - so not sure if we could even claim onrails.org.au (granted, registrars probably don't check these things that closely, but I'm not sure).

That said, you're right that it does have a nice pattern to it with the subdomains :)

--
Pat

[Clifford Heath]

In earlier discussion we agreed that RORO, which initially had been coined as
an acronym for Ruby On Rails Oceania, should henceforth be interpreted as
Ruby Or Rails Oceania.

Further, Oceania was chosen because New Zealand wanted to be included. Not
griping about the name of Ruby Australia, but there was previously a desire to be
more inclusive.

For Ruby Australia, I think <city>.ruby.org.au is the most intuitive naming strategy.

Clifford Heath.

[Pat Allan]

Cliff sums up the history nicely.

It would have been great to have one organisation for Oceania, but legally that's far too large a headache to be worthwhile, I'm afraid. It's tricky enough having an association that's able to run events all over Australia instead of just in the state it was registered. Hence Ruby Australia instead of Ruby Oceania.

--
Pat

[Josh Price]

> For Ruby Australia, I think <city>.ruby.org.au is the most intuitive naming strategy.

I agree. This definitely feels like the most concise and meaningful url scheme.

Josh

[Mike Bailey]

melbourne.onrails has a nice ring to it but I think melbourne.ruby.org.au would be more fitting for the Melbourne Ruby Users Group. Even back in 2006 people were thinking beyond Rails even though Rails was without doubt the thing that brought this community together.

On a side note, I'd love to see RailsCamp keep it's name long into the future - even if Rails was deprecated. There's nothing in the world quite like a RailsCamp. I'm sorry I can't be in Adelaide this weekend!

- Mike

[Paul Annesley]

On 09/01/2012, at 5:08 PM, Pat Allan wrote:

> It would have been great to have one organisation for Oceania, but legally that's far too large a headache to be worthwhile

Also most people don't know what the hell Oceania means, nor how to spell it.
Or is that just me?

+1 for Ruby, not Rails.
+1 for Australia, not Oceaneanic.

NZ is welcome to make official their de facto status as an Australian state ;)

[Keith Pitt]

I hate Oceaneanic, we're Australian!

Magic Keith

-- 
Keith Pitt

[Glenn Davy]

If we're voting, then… 

+1 for Ruby 

+1 for Oceania

-- 
Glenn Davy
Sent with Sparrow

[Pat Allan]

Ergh, don't really want this to become a voting thing.

I'd argue there's value in this list being an oceania/regional focus - more knowledge shared between a large enough group, without it being too large/noisy. It's good to know about events on the other side of the Tasman too.

Websites and associations, however, fit better on a country basis.

--
Pat

[Jonathan Clarke]

Is this not the exact type of topic that should be chaired at the
organisations first AGM this month?

[glenn gillen]

On Jan 5, 7:29 pm, "Pat Allan" <p...@freelancing-gods.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure there's not really anything else, sadly. It's certainly something we need to work on. Perhaps something to discuss at Rails Camp?

To throw an additional option out there, the London group (LRUG) has
been using Lanyrd in addition to the official LRUG site:

http://lanyrd.com/series/lrug/

Made it much easier to have it automatically sync with my calendar,
plus the email reminders when someone I follow on twitter inevitably
listed themselves as a speaker or attendee.

Hope it helps. Y'all enjoy RailsCamp,

Glenn

[Lachie]

RORO <=> RARA !

:lachie

[Gordon Yeong]

As a thought, perhaps we could consider using Google apps for whatever domain we decide on.

1. google calendar - can be used to manage our meetings and of course, members who subscribe to the group's calendar will automatically see when and where the meetings are (especially if it's 5pm and you're rushing out of work to attend one of the meetings, the details are on the phone's calendar entry). This could be very handy.
2. google sites - well, if we are going to just publish meeting minutes/notes and perhaps job opportunities, perhaps google sites would be useful for the moment. Not a very strong thought here but just mentioning it.

note: google groups - well, we already have the Ruby or Rails oceania google group and it's showing benefits for discussions and opportunies for newcomers people to learn :)

 

Cheers,

Gordon  :)

[Nigel Rausch]

Most software/tech groups in Brisbane use meetup.com. This is why you only see the original announcement on the Rails Oceania group and then the rest of the reminders are only to our local region..

Yes, its a paid service ($140/year) although you can run three meetups from one subscription, in my case Ruby, JS and Jelly and I just cover the cost personally (although people bought me beers at our christmas drinks… thanks)

Example of our next Ruby meetup: http://www.meetup.com/brisbane-ruby-rails/events/46911752/ 

or a previous meeting with photos and ratings http://www.meetup.com/brisbane-ruby-rails/events/37343312/ - you see every meetup (71 for Brisbane)

or JS meetup with custom domain is http://BrisJS.com

You can have multiple levels of hosts or I can assign hosting duties to a person and they then have full access for that month only. It also does all the reminders directly, reducing noise to the regional area of the meeting.

Here are some Pros (there are some cons below)

- handles RSVP's (yes/no)

- supports recurring and auto reminders

- calendar feed (ical, etc)

- preset venues

- google analytics

- history of meetings and who attended

- after meeting ratings and comments

- photos and face tagging

- supports RSVP limits and auto waiting list

- support for custom domain

- allows for adding hosts per month and allow them to edit/manage details

- support for sponsorship on page

- support for fee based events (inbuilt merchant)

- upcoming meeting comments

- support for optional RSVP questions

- file/presentation management

- group list moderation feature

- easy to find for new members

- email blasts based on criteria (date joined etc)

- iPhone and android apps 

- 3 meetups on one account (also run Jelly off it)

- No one has to write software

 

Negatives 

- $140 per month

- cannot export DB of users and emails

- No one has to write software

There are also free alternatives

http://www.bigtent.com/

http://groupspaces.com/c/welcome

Im all for building cool stuff, although if there is a viable solution already built, I'll use it.

Cheers,

Nigel
 

[Gordon Yeong]

about the meetup proposal, it's got a lot of functionalities at a cost but if we want a solution for calendaring (whereby our smart phones can just subscribe to meetings), I think that google calendar would be sufficient.

The moderators/organisers could look at the list of who's rsvp-ed at a point in time and work out venue requirements.

[Dmytrii Nagirniak]

Guys,

Just my 2 cents on it.

I think Ruby Australia can be a bitt different from others (in a better way).

Not sure if that's possible, but we need something new.

Most of the discussions are around "what to use" to basically run a CMS-kind-of site.

Shouldn't the question be "how do we engage community" or similar?

Maybe we could ask what can we do differently and better?

Just throwing out some wild thoughts (maybe stupid, but well...) from top of my head.

Maybe we could provide live online coding sessions during talks? Live conferencing by default?

Challenging each other during talks defeating the point?

CMS - NO - just write a blog post that is ONLY poor code?

Add your wildest things here and I'm sure couple great ideas will pop up.

The site probably should be just a tool to engage community. Making it FUN (that's what Ruby is all about, right).

Maybe it's worth to step back and look from the sky high onto this?

It involves a lot of effort and I'm not sure if it's doable. Neither I have any experience in that area.

But I'm just sayin' :)

Cheers,

Dmytrii

On 10/01/2012, at 12:40 PM, Gordon Yeong wrote:

about the meetup proposal, it's got a lot of functionalities at a cost but if we want a solution for calendaring (whereby our smart phones can just subscribe to meetings), I think that google calendar would be sufficient.

The moderators/organisers could look at the list of who's rsvp-ed at a point in time and work out venue requirements.