Hal Fulton (as you probably know) is well known author of The Ruby Way and a good friend of mine. Elixir is a functional language built on the Erlang VM. Learning a functional language is a good way to stretch your brain and think differently (watch Dave Thomas video http://confreaks.tv/videos/elixirconf2014-opening-keynote-think-different).
And if you are a ruby programmer, this will be a great stepping stone toward that. I've been learning clojure the past year and a half and it has been frustrating at time and mind opening.
It would be awesome if you could contribute even a little :) Author's don't get rich, they do it for the love of writing and sharing :)