About us
Montreal.rb YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdH1GtEMJi8&list=PLRAf4zt5oEjc2mqmEN9m_O0JovQCXxvxt
Montreal.rb is a community of Ruby/Rails Software Engineers who work in Montreal. Its focus is to facilitate knowledge exchange between various Montreal-based Ruby/Rails Software Shops, and to have Montreal Software Engineering professionals share Expert-level knowledge that helps other professionals with their jobs.
The group is organized by Andy Maleh, a 4-time RubyConf speaker and a 2-time RailsConf speaker. Andy also maintains many Ruby open-source gems, including award winning gems like Glimmer DSL for Web (Fukuoka Prefecture Future IT Initiative 2025 MoneyForward Award Winner) and Glimmer DSL for LibUI (Fukuoka Ruby 2022 Special Award Winner). He has an MS in Software Engineering from DePaul University, Chicago and a BS in Computer Science from McGill University, Montreal.
We meet every 3rd Wednesday of the month (except when that conflicts with a holiday; in which case, we either meet on a different day or cancel the event).
Even though this profile is written in English, most of us speak French. Presentations are sometimes bilingual. Bienvenue à vous chers amis francophones!
If you are a Software Engineer and have an idea for a talk that you would like to share with others, please contact (DM) the group organizer Andy Maleh. Keep in mind that giving talks is one of the best ways to improve your skills in Software Engineering, so it is both a process of giving and receiving at the same time.
This community is 100% a volunteer effort by the organizers and contributing speakers. A lot of hard work goes into organizing this community and preparing presentation material that must not be taken for granted. As such, it is expected that all members give back continuous support by attending regularly without discrimination against any speakers or topics (even if they knew a topic, attendees could contribute by sharing their experience and asking good questions).
We fully believe that Ruby is the best programming language today in high level dynamically typed languages such as JS, Python, PHP, Perl, and Elixir (unless that changes in the future with a newer language). This group is a comfortable space for Software Engineers to fully express their appreciation and love for Ruby in solving customer problems as a superior solution to other similar languages.
P.S. Please note that montrealrb.com is operated by a previous organizer of the group who is no longer with us, so its information is out of date and inaccurate. Please use this meetup group as the main reference for Montreal.rb.
Upcoming events
12
De Age of Empires II aux taxis électriques: Bâtir une intelligence sans IA
Anticafe Montreal - Place Des Arts, 294 Sainte-Catherine St. West, Montreal, QC H2X 2A1, Canada, Montreal, QC, CA(An optional book club discussion is included at the end of the event, expecting a read of Designing Data Intensive Applications chapters 3 & 4)
Doors open at 6:00pm (pre-networking). Talk starts at 7:00pm. Book Club starts at 8:00pm. Networking time starts at 9:00pm. Must check-in on the computer upon arrival because Anticafe is a coworking space. The coworking space fee includes coffee/tea/snacks and costs about $10 per person. If you cannot afford it, let the organizer know and the organizer can take care of it.
De Age of Empires II aux taxis électriques: Bâtir une intelligence sans IA [45m] - Hugues Lamy
« Est-ce que ma civilisation a besoin de plus de bois ? » « Quels taxis sont prêts pour ce client ? » Deux questions en apparence simples, mais aux ramifications multiples : comment agréger de l'information provenant de plusieurs sources et en tirer une décision ? Quels sont les critères ? Un engin à base de règles offre une grande flexibilité pour modéliser ces décisions à partir d'une masse d'information. L'expert y sculpte la logique selon son expérience et peut raffiner l'ensemble au fil du temps. Produire plus d'archers ou renvoyer un taxi à une borne de recharge par -20°C : dans les deux cas, la réponse est déterministe, rapide et traçable. Là où l'IA générative improvise, un engin à base de règles est précis — et chaque décision peut être expliquée. J'ai le plaisir de vous proposer un retour dans le passé avec un gem Ruby peu connu, Aristotle, et la notion de moteur de règles, pour ouvrir vos horizons sur l'intelligence sans IA.
Bio:
Consultant indépendant en technologie. Plus de 30 ans d'expérience TI, "couteau suisse" de la transformation numérique. Programmeur Ruby on Rails depuis 20 ans. "Programmais" en Basic sur un TRS-80 à l'age de 10 ans. Ingénieur de formation de l'École Polytechnique de Montréal. Projet notable: TéoTaxi. Fan de jeux vidéo (No Man's Sky, Guild Wars 2), de jeux de société et de disque golf.
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If you have a Ruby talk idea you would like to present at a future Montreal.rb meetup, please contact the organizer (Andy Maleh) to get your talk scheduled in an available future meetup month (it is also possible to bump talks by organizers of the group into later months to take one of their month slots for your talk). You can also contact the organizer if your company is interested in hosting a future Montreal.rb meetup at their Montreal office. Note that speakers must present in-person in Montreal because the goal of the meetup is to encourage more in-person networking and socialization around Ruby Software Engineering topics with maximum communication bandwidth. Talks are recorded and posted on the @montreal-rb YouTube Channel if talk speakers agree.2 attendeesPoint-in-Time Recovery for Postgres on a Server You Own by Almokhtar Bekkour
Anticafe Montreal - Place Des Arts, 294 Sainte-Catherine St. West, Montreal, QC H2X 2A1, Canada, Montreal, QC, CA(An optional book club discussion is included at the end of the event, expecting a read of Designing Data Intensive Applications chapter 5)
Doors open at 6:00pm (pre-networking). Talk starts at 7:00pm. Book Club starts at 8:00pm. Networking time starts at 9:00pm. Must check-in on the computer upon arrival because Anticafe is a coworking space. The coworking space fee includes coffee/tea/snacks and costs about $10 per person. If you cannot afford it, let the organizer know and the organizer can take care of it.
Point-in-Time Recovery for Postgres on a Server You Own [1h] - Almokhtar Bekkour
Rails 8 made deploying to your own server the default with Kamal, but the database is where people get nervous. How WAL archiving and base backups work, how to restore to a timestamp into a throwaway Postgres without touching production, and how to prove backups work by restoring them on a schedule. Based on what I built for Railyard, the deploy platform I run (written up at https://almokhtar.dev/blog/point-in-time-recovery-on-your-own-server/).
Bio:
A senior software engineer in Quebec, Canada. Written production Ruby on Rails since 2017, and Go for Railyard's server agent, CLI and Terraform provider.
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If you have a Ruby talk idea you would like to present at a future Montreal.rb meetup, please contact the organizer (Andy Maleh) to get your talk scheduled in an available future meetup month (it is also possible to bump talks by organizers of the group into later months to take one of their month slots for your talk). You can also contact the organizer if your company is interested in hosting a future Montreal.rb meetup at their Montreal office. Note that speakers must present in-person in Montreal because the goal of the meetup is to encourage more in-person networking and socialization around Ruby Software Engineering topics with maximum communication bandwidth. Talks are recorded and posted on the @montreal-rb YouTube Channel if talk speakers agree.3 attendees*Talk to be determined. Please apply to speak.*
Location not specified yetDoors open at 6:00pm. Talk starts at 7:00pm. Networking time starts at 8:00pm.
**Montreal.rb Talk Topic To Be Decided*** [30m-1h] - ***Speaker(s) To Be Decided***
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If you have a Ruby talk idea you would like to present at a future Montreal.rb meetup, please contact the organizer (Andy Maleh) to get your talk scheduled in an available future meetup month (it is also possible to bump talks by organizers of the group into later months to take one of their month slots for your talk). You can also contact the organizer if your company is interested in hosting a future Montreal.rb meetup at their Montreal office. Note that speakers must present in-person in Montreal because the goal of the meetup is to encourage more in-person networking and socialization around Ruby Software Engineering topics with maximum communication bandwidth. Talks are recorded and posted on the @montreal-rb YouTube Channel if talk speakers agree.1 attendee*Talk to be determined. Please apply to speak.*
Location not specified yetDoors open at 6:00pm. Talk starts at 7:00pm. Networking time starts at 8:00pm.
**Montreal.rb Talk Topic To Be Decided*** [30m-1h] - ***Speaker(s) To Be Decided***
--
If you have a Ruby talk idea you would like to present at a future Montreal.rb meetup, please contact the organizer (Andy Maleh) to get your talk scheduled in an available future meetup month (it is also possible to bump talks by organizers of the group into later months to take one of their month slots for your talk). You can also contact the organizer if your company is interested in hosting a future Montreal.rb meetup at their Montreal office. Note that speakers must present in-person in Montreal because the goal of the meetup is to encourage more in-person networking and socialization around Ruby Software Engineering topics with maximum communication bandwidth. Talks are recorded and posted on the @montreal-rb YouTube Channel if talk speakers agree.1 attendee
Past events
135
