The First Rails Studio

It was an intense three days, but it's over! We just finished the very first Rails Studio in sunny (if chilly) Reston, VA. The site couldn't have been better. FGM, Inc hosted us, and they did us proud. The meeting room was great (it even had windows :), and they laid on a network and plenty of power (we were initially surprised at how many folks came with laptops, but FGM came to the rescue with additional power strips and we just squeaked by).

The course itself seemed to go really well. We learned a lot along the way (Dave now knows not to start a new topic and delay lunch). We also adapted the presentation style as we proceeded based on the prior day's feedback. This lead to probably the biggest overall lesson learned. We originally had people coding along with us as we developed our Rails application, but at some point or other just about everyone went down a rabbit hole and had a hard time catching back up. Next time we'll have checkpoint versions of the application available so everyone can sync back up before we move on to the next topic.

I think everyone came away having picked up a lot about Rails coding (not to mention the “I'd Rather Be on Rails” bumper sticker and the exclusive Golden Spike T-Shirt). On the final day, everyone coded their own Rails application—some of these had components and Ajax support!

We'll be announcing the next studio shortly: we're probably looking at the west coast next, with a possible return to the east coast shortly thereafter. In the meantime, there's a bunch of pictures up on flickr which give a pretty good idea of the fun atmosphere.

Thank you, golden spike members, for coming along and making this a success...