Robby on Rails

If you’re coming to Portland for RailsConf or CabooseConf, be sure to introduce yourself (and we’ll try to do the same). A few of us from Planet Argon will be attending the conference. I thought that I’d make it easy to spot us by putting some faces to our names.

In corner #1 we have Alex Malinovich who is our Director of Deployment Services. If you have any questions about hosting options, deployment tips, and scaling your Ruby on Rails application.. be sure to tug on his shoulder. I also overheard that he’ll be giving people discounts on our Boxcar products to those he meets in person.

Alex Malinovich, Director of Deployment Services

In corner #2, we have Andy Delcambre who is on our development team. You might remember Andy from his series of blog posts/tutorials on using Git and getting Basecamp RSS feeds working in Google Reader via a Mongrel-based proxy (our team is still using this approach using this after ten months!).

Andy Delcambre, Software Developer

In corner #3, we have Gary Blessington who has been leading our design and development team. If you’re looking for a job working with Ruby on Rails, be sure to introduce yourself to Gary as he’s hoping to meet up with several applicants who will be in Portland this week.

Gary Blessington, Director of Design and Development

In corner #4… is me. I’m not doing any talks this year so I plan to do wander around stress-free as I’m not finishing my slides at the last minute or preparing for panel talks. I’m happy to field questions and exchange stories with you. :-)

Robby Russell

We are hiring... so feel free to introduce yourself to any of the faces above.

...and most importantly, I hope you have a great time in Portland!

If you’re coming to Portland, Oregon for RailsConf 2008 or CabooseConf… I’d like to invite you all to check out our collection of articles that we wrote to highlight some stuff to do in town. We’ll be posting a few more before the conference, but wanted to help you all plan out your visit in our wonderful little city.

Portland Revealed series

• Episode 2: Beertown
• Episode 3: Get outdoors
• Episode 4: Stay Awake During RailsConf
• Episode 5: Places to Work
• Read them all

Stay tuned as we’ll be posting more over the next week.

Picture yourself and your laptop. It’s been over a day and you’re sitting on a train with a group of Rails developers with a view like this over your shoulder.

Hacking and reading on the train.

Enjoying the sceneary of the U.S.A.

Two years ago… a group of us went from Portland to Chicago for RailsConf 2006 on the Argon Express.

I know this is a tad late… but uf you haven’t purchased plane tickets to Portland yet for CabooseConf or RailsConf 2008 and would be interested in catching the train from somewhere the East Coast, email me and we’ll talk. I’m hoping to organize the Argon Express 2008 over next few weeks.

On Saturday, I had the great pleasure of being up in front of several hundred people with the following individuals on the the Business of Rails panel at RailsConf.

Photo by James Duncan Davidson

Moderated by:

• Nathaniel Talbott, President, Terralien, Inc.

The Victims:

• Justin Gehtland, Founding Partner, Relevance
• Geoffrey Grosenbach, Topfunky
• Andre Lewis, Earthcode Studios
• Joe O’Brien, artisan, EdgeCase, LLC
• Robby Russell, Director, PLANET ARGON

Overall, the experience was fantastic. I really enjoyed the questions that Nathaniel and the audience threw our direction, both during and after the session. Throughout the remainder of the conference, people would catch me and present complicated business questions to me and ask for my input. I think that I even helped one guy make his final decision about which job offer he was going to accept (btw, did you decide yet?). It’s always great to share my experiences of leaving my last full-time job (3+ years ago), moving to Rails exclusively (2+ years ago), how Allison and I went from two people in an attic to seven people in an attic in about a month... to having an office in downtown Portland and clients around the globe. I’m also always happy to share my not-so-happy experiences throughout the past few years as well. Running a business is hard stuff as it comes with a whole lot of responsibility, which can lead to stress. It was great to know that the rest of the panel has had their difficult experiences. While Rails makes everything feel easy… running a business is a whole different spectrum of challenges. ;-)

At one point during the session the audience was asked, “How many of you are considering starting your own business based on Ruby on Rails?”

The response?

Based off of my extremely scientific calculations (looking around the room), I’d estimate that around 30-40% of the audience raised their hands! Wow. It was fantastic to see that there was that much interest in people starting venturing off onto their own. Imagine… a flood of new companies, competing directly with us… and guess what? I think that’s awesome! Awesome for Rails. Awesome for future startups. Awesome for everyone!

Let’s face it. Rails isn’t going anywhere for a long time.

So, now that the conference is over, questions have begun to appear in my email box. Thank you all for writing. What if you could have a sounding board to throw questions to on a regular basis? Unfortunately, our session only lasted a hour at RailsConf and too many questions weren’t gotten to. Well, I’ve asked the rest of those on the Business of Rails panel to join me on a google group, titled, Ruby on Rails meets the Business World.

If you’re looking to (A) start your own Rails-based business, (B) already run your own Rails-based business, or ((C)) have business experience that you’d like to share with those in camp A and B… then join the community and start some conversations.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to learning from you all and hope that my experience of co-founding and leading PLANET ARGON can be of benefit to all of you.

Photo by James Duncan Davidson

Josh Knowles just mentioned an article written by David Chelminsky, titled, an introduction to RSpec – Part I. In this article, David introduces you to some of the new language that appeared in some of the recent versions of RSpec as well as give you a complete tutorial on building some specs.

Last night, I had the opportunity to sit down with Aslak Hellesøy and David Chelimsky for a few hours and talk about my experiences of using RSpec at PLANET ARGON and how it’s helped us redefine and evolve our process. In particular, how RSpec has helped us reshape our process of gathering user interaction specifications from our Interaction Design team and business rules from our clients.

If you’re in town and are using RSpec… or are thinking about using RSpec… and see these guys… thank them for all the hard work that they’re doing… and of course, if you run into anybody else on the team... do the same. :-)

Aslak Hellesøy and David Chelimsky

Also, by the end of the conference... Graeme and I are hoping to have a small project done to help encourage more adoption of Behavior-Driven Development

Yay! It’s almost conference time… and I’m almost completely thrilled!

Why am I not more thrilled? Well, mainly because RailsConf is being hosted here in Portland, which means that I don’t get to travel by train like we did last year via The Argon Express. (ah… the memories)

One perk of being here already… is that I get to act as a tour guide to visitors. For example, earlier today… Josh Susser (hasmanyjosh) joined Graeme and I for lunch in downtown Portland, OR. It was exciting to hear about how he and his fellow Rubyists at Powerset are using Ruby and Rails for various projects. John also spent a few minutes introducing us to Merb, which some people think will become popular in near future. We’re expecting more visitors to come by the offices over the next few days.

If you’re in Portland already (Wednesday)... you might head over to the Lucky Lab for a game of Werewolf, which I believe Michael Buffington is organizing the event. I’m going to try to make it… maybe I’ll see you there!

Flickr Group

I created a flickr group named RailsConf 2007, and started to use the tag railsconf2007 for flickr photos. I look forward to seeing all your photos from the event!

IRC Channel

As of this afternoon, there are almost 20 people hanging out in #railsconf on freenode. Stop by and introduce yourself!

Portland Revealed

If you haven’t already subscribed to our feed, you might have missed that the PLANET ARGON team has been posting several articles about things to do, see, and drink in Portland during your visit to RailsConf. Here are a few that we’ve posted so far.

• Portland Revealed: Episode 2: Beertown
• Portland Revealed: Episode 3: Get outdoors
• Portland Revealed: Episode 4: Stay Awake During RailsConf
• Portland Revealed: Episode 5: Places to Work
• More coming soon!

You can also peak around GoSeeOregon (a Rails application!) to find places around town to go see.