Paul Dix Explains Nothing

Speaking at GoRuCo

I'm excited to be returning this year as a speaker at the Gotham Ruby Conference (a.k.a. GoRuCo). I'll be presenting on the same topic as my talk at Scotland on Rails, which is recommendation systems. The talk is titled "Collective Intelligence: Leveraging User Data to Create Intelligent Rails Applications".

GoRuCo is a one day single track Ruby conference in NYC on April 26th. The lineup of speakers looks really good and registration just opened last night so register quickly! It's only $125 and attendance is limited to 120 people. I think that the smaller group makes the event more interesting and gives more people a chance to meet and talk.

Speaking at Scotland on Rails

I'll be giving a talk titled "Collective Intelligence: Leveraging User Data to Create Intelligent Rails Applications" at Scotland on Rails! The title is a bit of a mouthful. It translates roughly into a talk about recommendation systems (like Amazon). Recommendation systems are sometimes a subset of machine learning, so it's a topic that I'm really excited about. I can't wait to help show that Ruby and Rails can be used for solving hard problems too.

Scotland on Rails is a two day conference in Edinburgh on April 4th and 5th. My friend and colleague Bryan Helmkamp will also be there presenting on Story First Development. It's the perfect excuse to make a trip to Scotland! If you need more motivation, take a look at the list of talks.

Introduction to Rails @ Columbia

Earlier this week I gave an introductory Rails talk to fellow computer science students at Columbia. It was a student organized event with a pretty decent turnout of 30+ people.

Thanks to everyone who attended. Here are a few pointers if you're interested in digging into Ruby and Rails:

Links
A decent Rails 2.0 compatible walk through by Fabio Akita

Books
The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez (a Rails 2.0 must)
Programming Ruby "the Pickaxe book" by Dave Thomas (required reading for any ruby coder. Make sure to get the 2nd edition and NOT the 3rd.)
The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton (a classic with a cookbook approach. Great reference)

I've taken Agile Web Development with Rails off my list of recommended beginner reading until it gets an update for 2.0. I think that the walk through as an introduction with a little bit of reading through Pickaxe should be enough to dive into The Rails Way. There are a ton of other Rails books out there about how to build a social network or some other thing. I haven't read any of those so I can't comment on their quality, but I have thumbed through and read a little bit of Obie's book and can say that it's pretty comprehensive. It's also probably the most up to date book on the market.

Screencasts
Defintely check out Geoffrey Grosenbach's Peepcode screencasts. I watched the Rspec and Git screencasts and thought they were great. The beginner should check out Rails From Scratch part 1 and Rails From Scratch part 2, both of which have Rails 2.0 updates. Those actually may be the best way to start before digging into Obie's tome.

Also check out the free Rails screencasts put together by Ryan Bates.

At the beginning of my talk I listed a bunch of NYC companies that wanted to be listed as interested in recruiting Columbia students that want to get into Rails. Here is that list:

1. Mint Digital
2. EastMedia Group
3. Motionbox
4. StreetEasy
5. LimeWire
6. Indaba Music
7. Bear Stearns
8. thoughtbot
9. curbed.com
10. www.mirRoRplacement.com
11. Agile Partners
12. Medidata Systems
13. Arvato Systems
14. TechSmart Solutions Group
15. www.4elbows.com
16. www.recyclebank.com
17. myJambi.com
18. www.chalq.com
19. Climate Culture

 

Hopefully I did my little part to help spread the Ruby and Rails gospel into the ivory tower.