The Rails Studio in Denver has sold out, but Mike and Nicole have just announced a third studio. This one’s on the west coast, in (hopefully) sunny Pasadena on January 26-28. This time we’re being hosted by Earthlink, and we really appreciate their support of the local developer community.
If you’re interested, I suggest signing up fairly early—we seem to fill up fairly fast.
OK, so they don’t rhyme, but they still go together. So it’s only natural that following on from the Rails Studio, Mike and Nicole would branch out and announce the Ajax Studio. The first one will be held in Reston on February 9-11.
Who’s giving it? It was an easy choice. I’m very possessive about the “Pragmatic” label, so I’ll only be happy when Pragmatic Studios were given by people I know and trust. The Ajax training will be given by two of the best: Stu Halloway and Justin Gehtland. Not only are they experts in the field, they also happen to be two of the best speakers and trainers I know. So, if you’d like to add some Ajax magic to your web applications (ASP.NET, Java, and Rails), you might want to check this out.
(ps. Mike tells me the Denver Rails Studio has only a couple of seats left, so if you’re thinking of going, now’d be a good time to call.)
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...
Well, the cat's out of the bag. After gathering gathering feedback on a venue, Mike Clark and I are thrilled to announce our first Rails Studio. It's a two day intensive Rails event (preceded by an optional 1 day Ruby tutorial for those who've not used it before). It's going to be a lot of fun: Mike and I work well together, and we're both really passionate about Rails.
The first studio is in Reston, Virginia: convenient for folks in DC and New York too. We'll be doing more (hopefully lots more), so be sure to keep looking at the site for details.
The only fly in the ointment is timing: to get everything organized, we need folks to sign up in the next 3 weeks. In fact, if early interest is an indicator, you might not want to leave it that long...
We’re trying to gauge interest, and to work out the best cities. The democratic way to decide seems to be to put it to a vote, so if you’d like to wander on over the the wiki, you can both vote for a location and register to be notified.
Could I beg a favor—could you only vote for a location if you would seriously plan to attend there?
Thanks.
I’m really looking forward to coming back in June for our first Pragmatic Studio, the workshop that Andy, Mike Clark, and I are running. With my head down for so long in the Rails book, I hadn’t noticed how close we’re getting to that—there are less than 10 days left for early registration. I must get out more…
So when three of us got talking, it seemed natural to see if we could bring the threads together and produce a combined workshop covering the Starter Kit essentials. The more we talked, the more fun it sounded—we wanted to put together something a bit more lively and interactive that the typical "sit and listen to someone talk" session. And we wanted to make it stick—these practices are vital to project success, and the more we could help teams come away with the will and knowledge to use them, the better.
Mike did all the work, and he’s done an incredible job. The result is the Pragmatic Studio, a series of two-day events held in cities around the country. The first is in Denver on June 20th and 21st, followed by dates in Seattle and Reston. This is just the start—if you want us to come to your town, drop Mike a note and let us know.
I’m excited about this. In the past, we needed to find companies who’d pay the full cost for us to come in and work with their teams. Now Mike’s put together events where companies can share the costs, sending as many team members as they want.
Maybe we’ll see you there…
I just discovered that I'll be giving "How to keep Your Job" as a keynote at this year's rOOts Conference. This came as something of a surprise: I hadn't actually realized that I was invited. It'll be good: rOOts is a great conference: it is nice and intimate, the audience and speakers have a wonderful time, and Bergen is a great town.
One of my New Year's resolutions is to try to plan the conference trips better. Traditionally, I travel somewhere, do the conference, travel back, and then two weeks later get an e-mail from some company in the conference city saying "oh, we wish we'd known you were going to be here." Perhaps there should be a site where speakers can register their itineraries. In the meantime, it looks like I'm going to be in Norway in early May if anyone wants to meet up.
