No More Adelaide.rb (Unless we find a host)

[Michael Noack]

Hi Adelaide.rb followers,
Tonight was my last Adelaide.rb as host, so as of now there are no more
planned Adelaide.rb events this year.

I know Daniel is often very busy so we really need someone (or two) to
step up and host events, find sponsors for food/drinks (or work out an
alternative to this, e.g. go to pub after/during talks), organise talks,
communicate, etc.

I know Adam Davies may be able to host some events so we'll await his
response.

Maybe it's time for the other bigger adelaide ruby employers (Katalyst,
echannel, FreeRangeFuture, Adelaide Uni and I'm sure more) to
host/sponsor the events as SeaLink/CodeFire have supported/ran this
group since 2008.

If you want to host contact Daniel and he'll add you to Adelaide.rb
meetup organisers (or maybe Chris/I have access) or just suggest your
event in the meantime on meetup.com.

[Dan Draper]

Hey all,

Firstly, Michael I want to thank you for you efforts. It has been really appreciated.

I will step back up to the plate - I apologise to the group for not being as involved over the last few months. I'm talking with the Majoran Distillery about hosting the events there moving forward and will keep you all posted. That said, I'm very much open to any receiving any offers of support to assist with future meet ups! Let me know if you are available to help.

Also, I think now is the time to reflect on what Adelaide.rb is all about. Historically it has been a get together for experienced developers to share tips, tricks, gems and other good stuff however I think we have had the problem of seeming inaccessible for newbies or people jumping ship from Java/PHP etc.

The world needs more coders. The world also needs more young people and women showing interest in code. See http://code.org and http://railsgirls.com. IMHO Ruby is an excellent first language for people getting into code. In the words of Matz - "Ruby makes coders happy". Why would we want to scare off newbies with memory management, strict types or pointers!?

So, my proposal:

Lets refocus the vision of Adelaide.rb: To make code more accessible to average people and to help more people learn and embrace Ruby.

To do this I think we should do the following:

- Monthly meetups focussed on more newbie content (basics of objects, basics of Ruby, comparison of popular languages, HTML/CSS etc)

- Quarterly meet ups for more serious folks (more inline with what we have been doing) but these could be almost mini-confs with say 3-4 talks

- Invite speakers from interstate

- Run a Railsgirls event

- Speak at schools about code and Ruby

- Regular Saturday Sessions

- Seek out new sponsors

Of course I can't do all this on my own so who's with me? We may even want to consider setting up a small committee to mange all of this.

 

Thoughts?

Dan

-- 

Dan Draper

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[Nick Hayden]

Sounds good, something I'd like to see a bit more of personally is discussion around things, whether their for new people or not that depends on the topic but I feel a lot of the time the best information comes from the post talk discussions rather than the talks themselves.

Nick

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Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2013 10:40:23 +1030
From: dan...@codefire.com.au
To: adela...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Meetings will continue [Re: No More Adelaide.rb (Unless we find a host)]

[Chris Teague]

Seconding the thanks to Michael, great effort in keeping Adelaide.rb alive, it's really appreciated!

The proposal sounds great Dan. Big vision. Keen to help however I can.

Cheers,
Chris

[adz]

I like the plan. Keep the hack sessions going to also facilitate the communication and informal chat.

Only issue might be lack of organisational interest to get the monthly newby stuff off the ground. Slower schedule for everything else seems better.

I'm all for helping out myself but not for at least a few months time.