Meeting topics for Dec 10th stlruby meeting, Uno's, steering meeting before?

[Jeff Barczewski]

Guys,

Here's my current thinking for the December meeting, I can do a talk on designers and developers working together on Rails. I'd show several ways to accomplish this, one using standard Rails and then another technique using MasterView.

Following that I would like to suggest some ideas about how we can possibly make things even better. I'll introduce some ideas fresh off the drawing board for improving spec'ing and testing of views. We can brainstorm on the possibilities and the results might end up as something being built into MasterView and/or an extension to rspec. I have some thoughts I'd like to flesh out with the group to see if they think they are of value before I continue working on them and approach others.

Does anyone else have a Ruby or Rails topic they would like to present?

I have also emailed Patrick Elder as well to see if there was something he would want to present. Patrick was planning on starting a STL Rails meetup since he was unaware of our existing group. After my initial contact with him, he agreed that we should continue as one group (at least for now). I was contacting him to see if he had anything he was wanting to present at the next meeting but have not heard back yet. I think he may be still working in TN so not sure of his travel schedule.

Last month, I think Uno's worked out well for our after meeting socializing, so I am going to recommend that we try it for a while rather than Harpos.

PS. Also let me know if we want to meet before hand for a steering meeting so I can have the room open.

Thanks,

Jeff

[Craig Buchek]

I think the "Working with Designers" would work well as a full group
discussion, much like we ended up doing most of last month. There are
several ways to go about it, and I'm sure most of us will have some
feedback. This could take up most, if not all, of the meeting time.

We'd talked about covering the RoleRequirement plugin at this meeting
or soon there-after.

I'd like to present in a month or 2 on some of the RSpec custom
matchers I've written. But I can't do it this month, as I'm preparing
for a presentation at the December 20th STLLUG. (That presentation
will be on PHP Best Practices, including many things I've learned from
Rails that I apply in PHP.)

There are a few other topics I could present on, several months down
the line:
- Mass assignment of associated data. (Eg. Book has_many Authors, and
book/edit allows editing all the authors' info)
- Using jQuery with Rails for unobtrusive JavaScript
- validation_reflection plugin
- Meta-programming (open classes, class_eval, module_eval,
define_method, etc.)
- Maintaining a base/sample Rails app
- Building in view -> controller -> model order, instead of the
reverse

Other topics that I'd like to see covered:
- New features in Rails 2.0 (overview and/or in-depth)
- auto_migrations plugin
- Alternative ORMS (DataMapper, Og, Sequel, etc.)
- Alternatives to Rails (Camping, ERB, etc.)
- rcov
- fuzzing
- will_paginate plugin
- DrySQL and/or Magic Models generator
- Using FormBuilders in Rails
- Deploying Rails apps

Craig

[Mike Sullivan]

Craig,
  Hope you didn't mind me posting your meeting topic suggestions to the general group message board.  I re-organized them into plugins, libraries, and techniques.  I liked the ideas, and hopefully they will spark some conversation & interest from the rest of the members.

  Let me know what you think.

  Thanks,
     Mike