LA Ruby / Ruby on Rails October Meetup

This month's meetup will be held at YP (formerly AT&T Interactive) headquarters in Glendale. YP is also sponsoring food for this meetup.

Schedule

7:00 – 7:15 Open
7:15 – 7:30 Introductions
7:30 – 9:30 Presentations
9:30 – 10:00 Open / Networking

Presentations

Each meetup features 3-4 presentations of 30 minutes each, and should pertain to Ruby / Ruby on Rails, or be of general interest to the Ruby community. Please contact Alf Mikula (https://www.meetup.com/laruby/members/5722863/) if you are interested in presenting. Include a title, brief summary of your proposed presentation, and a brief bio about yourself. Please see past meetups for examples.

A Foo walks into a Bar: Programming meets Improv by Dan Walmsley

As developers, we use practices like TDD, pairing, and agile methodologies to maintain focus and clarity while writing code. However, in some situations these practices are less effective; TDD-ing undefined solutions and pairing with other developers with different approaches and ways of thinking can be a major challenge.

The performance art known as Improvisational Theatre, or Improv, has a number of things to teach us about how to collaborate well and maintain momentum in the face of uncertainty and differences of approach or opinion. In this talk, Dan Walmsley draws on his 13 years' experience as an R&D developer and CTO as well as 17 years as a comedian and improvisor to show how we can have more fun and solve big challenges quickly by following just a few simple rules of engagement.

Dan Walmsley is VP of Engineering at NationBuilder, an online Community Organising System. Prior to working at NationBuilder he was CTO at Purpose, a consultancy that builds online social movements. He has also performed and directed improv, sketch and stand-up at festivals and comedy rooms in the US, UK and Australia since 1995.

Clear Views by Charles Hudson

Maximizing view maintainability through rigid organization, language segregation, and judicious use of partials and helpers.

Charles Hudson is a Senior Software Engineer for Yellowpages.com, specializing client-side development, and suffers from chronic Code Rage.

An Introduction to Ruby's Garbage Collector by Andrew Kim

A brief overview of how the garbage collector works and why you might care.

Developer for the tools team at Yellowpages.com building data apps. Stumbled upon Rails at at a startup 5 years ago, been happily stumbling ever since. When not programming by day, I'm spending time with my church.

Web Design is CRAP – and why you need to know it by Chris Lemcke

Programmers need to have basic design skills. Learn 4 basic principles of visual design that you really need to know.

Chris Lemcke was born in the wild hills of Burbank, and raised by a traveling band of gypsy ruby devs. After years of hunting bugs in the javascript wastelands, he is settling down to a quiet life of farming CSS stylings.

Driving Culture Change: Arduino Traffic Light by Alf Mikula

YP's engineering team has an extensive automated test suite, but our efforts so far to socialize the testing process has been a mixed success at best. Learn about our new traffic light indicator, built on Arduino and Sinatra, and the cultural change we are driving with it.

Alf Mikula is a Director of Engineering on YP's consumer-facing web team, and LA Ruby's Chief Instigator.

Parking

Park in guest parking for 611 N. Brand. There are entrances on Sanchez, Brand, and Doran. YP will validate parking.