Speakers

[andypike]

Hi all,

The hard thing about any user group is getting some speakers to
present. So are you willing to put your name forward as a speaker? Do
you know someone that is relatively local that might speak that I can
approach? If you do please let me know.

I've created a User Voice account here: http://surreyrubyists.uservoice.com
if you would like to suggest a topic that you would like to hear
about. This gives potential speakers a guide to the topics that would
be useful.

Let me know what you think.

:o)

[andypike]

Just a quick update here. I *might* have our first speaker sorted
(depending on dates). As the testing topic in our user voice forum has
got the most votes, that's the one he will tackle :o)

Anyone else fancy talking in the other slot (1 hour)?

[Jon Wood]

It's not something I've done before, so I (and you) may regret it, but I wouldn't mind doing a talk. I may have to work to make it a 1 hour talk, but I could do something about the structured wiki I'm building for my wife's phd research, Vowessly (http://github.com/jellybob/vowessly).

It's designed to be used for collecting data on medieval vowesses, but the way it's structured means it would probably be just as relevant for most kinds of historical research, and with a bit of work other things as well.

On the technical side, it would cover:

* MongoDB

* Solr (and Sunspot)

* Using decent_exposure to simplify controllers

* Deployment with Heroku

* And possibly a bit of testing if the other talk isn't on that subject

-- 

Jon Wood
Blank Pad Development

[Mark Embling]

As a fellow MongoDB-ist, I'd be quite interested to see how you are using it. :)

[John Beynon]

sticking with MongoDB - I'd love to hear someone talking about why they chose MongoDB - the problems it solves over traditional DBs, problems they've encountered, driver inconstancies etc

I just don't 'get' the need for Mongo and would love to be re-educated about it's brilliance as it seems it is what all the cool kids are using these days :)

in short: make me see the mongo light!

john.

--
----
John
http://about.me/johnbeynon/bio

[Mark Embling]

I might be able to do that at some point. It'd have to be a couple of months down the line though, as I have others coming up in the short term.

Also, I'd end up coming at it from a relatively non-ruby angle. I've used it in a couple of Rails projects, but also from C#, so would be able to offer views on both of those drivers. If anyone else would like to step in and do this instead though, feel free as I'm not exactly much good at these... ;)

[Jon Wood]

I could cover it from the point of view of why I chose it for this project, but it's the first time I've used it in anger (and even then I'm using an ORM over it), so I'd be interested to hear about other use cases as well.

I understand that it's support for geographical data is extremely good for example, with one of the built in features being the ability to query for documents within a radius of a specific location.

-- 
Jon Wood
Blank Pad Development

[markembling]

If there was anyone who could cover it from that point of view, it would be great. My only uses of MongoDB (so far) are for smaller personal projects, and I've not touched the geospacial stuff at all yet.

Out of interest Jon, which ORM (ODM?) are you using?

[Jon Wood]

At the moment I'm using Mongoid, although I'm considering migrating to to MongoMapper since it's matured quite a bit recently, and seems to have better support when using other gems in conjunction with it.

-- 
Jon Wood
Blank Pad Development

[markembling]

Ah, that's exactly the same position I'm in. I'm basically waiting for a new MM gem to come out, and hopefully some documentation. I know from the MM mailing list that they are working on it, but not yet ready to make it public. I think once those two things have happened, it will have gotten to the point where it's mature enough to go ahead with using.

[Andy Pike]

Hi Jon,

That sounds really interesting! I've added it to UserVoice as a topic just so it's captured as a possible. I'm all for bringing in speakers from the community, it doesn't matter if you are an experienced presenter or not. We want to hear what other developers are doing.

So can I pencil you in? Date and venue tbc, but will let you know soon. Trying to go for the end of March depending.

Andy

Sent from my iPad

[Jon Wood]

Sure, put me down. I think I'm around at the end of March.

[andypike]

Hi Jon,

I've booked the venue for Tuesday 29th March in Woking can you confirm
that you are happy to present on MongoDB? You'll have an hour slot but
I'd leave 10 minutes or so for questions. There is a screen and
projector which is great. If you need any help or advice when
presenting just let me know,

Andy

On Feb 9, 8:13 pm, Jon Wood <j...@blankpad.net> wrote:
> Sure, put me down. I think I'm around at the end of March.

> On 9 Feb 2011 19:50, "Andy Pike" <andy.pike.m...@gmail.com> wrote:> Hi Jon,

>
> > That sounds really interesting! I've added it to UserVoice as a topic just
>
> so it's captured as a possible. I'm all for bringing in speakers from the
> community, it doesn't matter if you are an experienced presenter or not. We
> want to hear what other developers are doing.
>
> > So can I pencil you in? Date and venue tbc, but will let you know soon.
>
> Trying to go for the end of March depending.
>
> > Andy
>
> > Sent from my iPad
>

[Jon Wood]

Sure, the 29th March looks good to me.

I guess I'd better think about what I'm going to say!

[Andy Pike]

Nice one!

Sent from my iPad

[andypike]

Hi all,

I need one more speaker for March 29th (1 hour slot). Any one fancy
stepping up? Check http://surreyrubyists.uservoice.com for suggested
topics or pick one of your own. Can be on anything Ruby related.

Cheers

Andy

On Feb 12, 6:12 pm, Andy Pike <andy.pike.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Nice one!
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 12 Feb 2011, at 17:57, Jon Wood <j...@blankpad.net> wrote:
>
> > Sure, the 29th March looks good to me.
>
> > I guess I'd better think about what I'm going to say!
>