ChicagoRuby @ Chime

Our Host:
Chime® is a financial technology company that believes core banking services should be helpful, easy, and free. We work with national banks to offer banking products and services that better meet the needs of everyday people. All of our members’ account balances are held at regulated, FDIC-insured banks: The Bancorp Bank, N.A. and Stride Bank, N.A., Members FDIC.† Together, we’re addressing the industry’s fundamental misalignment between what’s good for banks and what’s good for consumers.
We want to profit with our members, not from them. That’s why Chime doesn’t rely on overdraft fees, monthly service fees, or minimum balance requirements. Our business was built with important safeguards at the center, which ensure customer deposits are always safe and accessible.
Today, we offer a member-first banking experience that helps people spend, save, and build credit** — all without unnecessary fees. Members can access their pay up to two days early with direct deposit1, enroll in fee-free overdraft+, grow savings with a high-yield savings account, and build credit with no credit check. With the new Chime Card™2 and Chime Prime, eligible members can also earn 5% cash back§§ on a category of their choice while continuing to build credit safely.

Speakers:
🎤 Ifat Ribon (in person) - Fewer Tests, More Confidence
AI can write tests in seconds, but it can't tell you which ones matter (yet). This talk shows how Rails teams can build high-confidence test suites when AI generates most specs, using clear testing principles and practical guidelines to write fewer, better, and more maintainable tests.

About Ifat: Ifat is a Principal Architect at LaunchPad Lab in Chicago. She enjoys untangling complex problems, finding the right words for hard things, and helping teams make confident technical decisions. She’s a big fan of good abstractions, long runs along the lakeshore, and finding the signal in the noise.

🎤 Alan Ridlehoover (remote) - Indispensable: What Human Programmers Can Learn from Human Computers
Code used to be something we cultivated by hand. Now machines write it for us, and a quarter of a million tech workers have been laid off in less than a year. If you've been quietly grieving your relationship with code, you're not alone. And you're not the first.

In 1958, NASA began replacing its human computers with IBM mainframes. Three women from the segregated West Area Computing Unit — Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson — made themselves indispensable to the mission anyway. Each chose a different strategy: retool, transform, or specify.

Now it's our turn as Rubyists. The mission is still here. The role is not. This talk borrows their strategies, with gratitude, for the transition we're living through now — and shows how to stay indispensable.

About Alan:
Empathetic leader @ Cisco.
Passionate Rubyist.
Fallible human.
Storyteller. International speaker.
Environmentalist. Feminist. Ally.
Swell photographer. Rusty drummer.
Loving husband and twins dad.
Owner of too many hats, given I only have the one head.

Location:
333 N Green St, Chicago, IL, 60607

Location Details:

• No walk-ins allowed (every attendee must be registered)
• Register/RSVP with your First + Last name
• EVERY IN PERSON ATTENDEE MUST FILL OUT THIS REGISTRATION FORM (https://forms.gle/oKbX26tQXDNBhBdH6 )

For remote attendance:
Join us via the following Zoom URL.

We want to hear from you!
Interested in speaking but unsure what to talk about? Interested in hearing a specific topic? We have compiled a list of potential topic ideas that members of the community are interested in learning more about.
See: this google spreadsheet for potential talk topic ideas.
For moderation purposes, this spreadsheet is only available for comments and admins will add ideas from comments onto the list.
Reach out to Michelle (michelle@zooniverse.org) if you have any questions.