Proposed Ruby on Rails for Business seminar
Max Muermann
at yesterday's user group meeting in Sydney, we talked about an event
that I have been thinking about for some time: some sort of free
seminar talking about how Rails is a valid option for businesses
today.
In recent times, I have come across perceptions that Rails
- is not suitable for business use ("we don't do *scripting* languages
around here")
- is a framework that cannot deal with "enterprise" problems and is
only suitable for small shopping websites (essentially an extension of
PHP...)
- does not scale
- is simply a CRUD-application generator
Most importantly, people out there have no idea how well Rails is put
together and how deep it goes as a framework. People will then dismiss
Rails out of hand because of ignorance. As a result, we are not
getting the amount of work and are not charging the prices that we
should.
I want to propose a community-sponsored and community-run event that
introduces people to the idea that Rails *is* something they should be
looking at for their business applications.
The idea for the event so far goes something like this:
1. one hour or so of a presentation explaining what Rails is, what the
benefits are for an organisation adopting it, and talking about the
most common fears and misconceptions that people have about Rails
(including talking about the support Ruby is getting from Sun and MS).
2. free beer and mingling with people from the Rails community -
preferrably people with relevant experience in developing business
apps or solving common business problems (scalability,
LDAP-authentication, message queueing, etc.).
3. no sales pitches.
We will need to book a venue somewhere, organise beer and run
marketing, so there needs to be some sort of funding. I suggest
everybody who can to simply pitch in however much they feel is
adequate. Don't pull your wallets out just yet - we'll try and chase
down a venue first so we get an idea of the costs involved.
Anybody who has some thoughts or ideas or wants to help with
presenting, mingling, setting up, designing marketing material,
running a marketing campaign or anything else that comes to mind,
please make yourselves known.
Oh - and we'll need a catchy name for the whole thing...
--max
Dave Bolton
I couldn't make it to the meeting this month (in Melbourne for the
week), but I'd love to be involved. I have a lot of experience in
corporate consulting, so I think I've got some good ideas about how to
attack the problem, along with a reasonable list of contacts to get
along to the event.
Let me know how I can help.
Cheers,
Dave
Carl Woodward
Sounds good. I'd be down to do help.
Cheers,
Carl.
--
Carl Woodward
0412218979
cjwoo...@gmail.com
Lachlan Hardy
I want to propose a community-sponsored and community-run event that
introduces people to the idea that Rails *is* something they should be
looking at for their business applications.
Totally awesome idea!
We will need to book a venue somewhere, organise beer and run
marketing, so there needs to be some sort of funding. I suggest
everybody who can to simply pitch in however much they feel is
adequate. Don't pull your wallets out just yet - we'll try and chase
down a venue first so we get an idea of the costs involved.
If you're interested in using the Jam Bar at CBD Hotel, I already have all the details. I'm not sure what price range you think is reasonable, but it's an awesome venue
Anybody who has some thoughts or ideas or wants to help with
presenting, mingling, setting up, designing marketing material,
running a marketing campaign or anything else that comes to mind,
please make yourselves known.
I'm in ;) Just tell me what you need
Oh - and we'll need a catchy name for the whole thing...
"Run your Business on Rails"
Hmmm... I'm re-reading and think I need coffee. Whatever. Let's get this thing cracking!
Lachlan Hardy
Ben Hogan
I'm happy to help out - sign me up.
Ben
On 6/28/07, Max Muermann <m...@muermann.org> wrote:
>
Lachie
I'll get my thinking cap on for names etc
Lachie
On 6/28/07, Max Muermann <m...@muermann.org> wrote:
>
--
Lachie
http://lachie.info/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lachie/
Max Muermann
Ben Askins
present the project I'm currently working on as a case study for Rails
in the "enterprise" and would also be happy to provide some financial
support to make it all happen.
cheers,
Ben
Cameron Barrie
Cam
Keith Pitty
Julio Cesar Ody
wonders of Rails. Even in adverse conditions, such as in an
environment surrounded by Java programmers just waiting for the first
crash to go nuts screaming
"scalability-security-performance-humor-my-mood-wise this framework is
crap!".
--
Julio C. Ody
http://crazyhollywood.org
Nigel Thorne
supports agile and agile improves predictability, reduces risk, and
gets you to market before your competitors.
--
Cogent Consulting
http://www.cogentconsulting.com.au/
http://www.nigelthorne.com/blog/
Mobile: 0412 279 575
Matt Allen
Happy to supply kowledge and $$ if need be.
Matta
On 6/28/07, Max Muermann <m...@muermann.org> wrote:
>
Dom
Dom here, been lurking a while.
Jason and I could maybe give a talk about many years implementing SAP
at big companies, compared to a few months (after hours) building
Sidebuddy.com. In a non-threatening way - there's room for both types
of app.
It'd be fun.
Cheers
Dom
David Lee
presently broke, but definitely interested, especially in ideas
tangentially related.
names eh? err ...
"Judge Ruby" ?
*ducks*
Max Muermann
sorry for going dark for a while - I've been sick as a dog for the
last few days and unable to lift a laptop.
It seems like we have more than enough material for a couple of events
here, which is great. There are more business-focused Rails apps out
there than I imagined - and that's something we need to promote.
I'd like to run the first BoR event at the end of August. BarCamp is
in early August, and that might be a good opportunity to give the BoR
stuff the last marketing push.
In terms of format I'm thinking something like this:
20 minutes intro presentation to Rails (high-level, non-technical)
20 minutes on business benefits of Rails
2 x 10 minutes case studies
That makes it about 1 hour of presentations, and after that beer and mingling.
Anybody have any ideas for venues, please let me know.
I'd also like some thoughts on start times - do we start early and
lose people because they've got pressing work to do, or do we start
later and lose people because they want to go home?
I'll go back through this thread over the next few days and summarise
all the ideas that people have come forward with in terms of
presentations and case studies and send that to the group and we can
have a discussion about what we think may be most beneficial for a
first event.
Cheers,
--max
Steve Gilles
Steve
> On 7/3/07, David Lee <deathtoallfanat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > +1 interested.
>
> > presently broke, but definitely interested, especially in ideas
> > tangentially related.
>
> > names eh? err ...
>
> > "Judge Ruby" ?
>
> > *ducks*- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Patrick Crowley
-- Patrick
Max Muermann
We're currently waiting to get some dates confirmed from our preferred
venue. So far we're targeting one of: 17/18/24/25 of October.
--
max
http://synaphy.com/blog
http://whatsnextapp.com
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