PragDave

Advanced Ruby and the Rails Edge

I just got back from Reston, VA, where Chad Fowler and I gave the very first Advanced Ruby Studio. It was a blast. Both Chad and I came away exhausted; we went through a lot of material (from low-level interpreter data structures, through the true meaning of self, to design principles in dynamic languages). This first Studio sold out, but I believe there are still a few seats open for the one in Denver in November.

Between now and then, I'm really looking forward to meeting up with old friends (and making some new ones) at the next Rails Edge. I really liked RailsConf in Portland, but it was clearly a big conference. The Edge has a very different feel: it's far more intimate, so attendees and speakers all get to know each other through the three days. And, as a speaker, I find that invaluable, because that's where I learn what's really going on. If you haven't been to an Edge before, and you'd like to learn the latest in Rails from the world's experts (and me), I'd recommend checking it out.

(Oh, and if you are going, be sure to sign up for Jen's half-day Web Design for Rails Developers. Despite the fact that I'm a lost cause when it comes to design, I'll be there.)

Programming Erlang is Shipping

The Erlang book is shipping. On Friday, the truck arrived and we hefted the cases in (mmmm... new book smell), and over the weekend we worked out the logistics. Then today we shipped all the preorders for Joe Armstrong's new Programming Erlang.

I'm really excited about this book, both because I think Erlang's style of message-passing concurrency is just what we need as we enter the multi-core world, and also because I think its functional roots are an interesting way of thinking about programming. I'm blown away by the interest we've seen in this book from Ruby, Java, and C# programmers. I think there's a definite sea change in progress.

The Joy of Titling

One of the joys of being a publisher is seeing books develop over time.

One of the trials of being a publisher is helping to pick book titles.

Sometimes it is fairly easy. Agile Web Development with Rails pretty much summed up the book's content.

At other times, though, it's remarkably difficult. A back title can seriously harm a book. For example, Chad Fowler's first book with us is really, really good: a guide to managing and developing your career as a programmer. It was a joy to edit, and everyone who's read it loves it. But when it came time to give it a title, we were stumped. In the end, we decided to go for something a little jokey with some shock value, and My Job Went to India was born.

Big mistake.

The title didn't work. We sold a decent number of copies (just under 10,000), but we *should* have sold 3, 4, or 5 times that. It's a very, very good book. But I blew it for Chad by going with the wrong title. (It says a lot for Chad that he went ahead and wrote Rails Recipes with us after that.)

And now I feel like it might be about to happen again. Jeremy Sydik is finishing off a wonderful book. IT's all about how to create web sites that can be used by people with disabilities: the blind and color blind, those with motor problems, and so on. We clearly have a responsibility to create accessible sites but, as this book points out, we can also benefit greatly in terms of traffic if our sites can be used by the whole online population.

So then we come back to the thorny title problem. Right now, we're selling the beta with the name The Accessible Web—Creating Content for Everyone. But that doesn't seem to be working; folks I've talked to aren't clear what the book is about.

We're thinking about retitling the book. The current front-runner is Designing Web Content for Users with Disabilities—36 Keys for Unlocking the Accessible Web.

So, here's my question. Does that work better as a title? Or is there a *great* title we're missing?

I want to give these books the audiences they deserve. Help me out.

Thanks

Dave