Search results for: “rubyconf 2012”

  • RubyConf 2012 recap (part 2)

    Continuing from part 1 of the recap, here are the remaining six talks I attended during RubyConf in Denver:

    • Y Not – Adventures in Functional Programming by Jim Weirich
      Jim’s presentations never disappoint and this was no exception. Similar to his prior talk where he built Git from scratch, except this time he build the Y-combinator using nothing but stabby procs. Mind blowing.

    • Ruby vs. the World by Matt Aimonetti
      A fascinating look at how Ruby stacks up agains three other languages: Go, Clojure, and Scala. Matt included plenty of code examples and shared his thoughts about the pros and cons of each language.

    • Real Time Salami by Aaron Patterson
      Building real-time monitoring systems in Ruby while enjoying delicious salami. What better combination could there be? Aaron even brought samples for everyone. I won’t call it bribery… [slides]

    • Inside RubyMotion by Rich Kilmer
      One of the most crowded talks of the conf, Rich demonstrated how to build iOS applications in pure Ruby. Impressive is an understatement. Does this project offer sweet escape from the dungeons of Objective-C? You be the judge.

    • The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei
      A practical exploration of team dynamics, communication, code quality, and problem solving. [slides]

    • Simulating the World with Ruby by Bryan Liles
      The real world has millions of “objects” interacting in seemingly random ways. How would we go about modeling this in Ruby? Bryan demonstrated how and threw in a healthy dose of statistics for good measure. [slides]

    Attending RubyConf this year made me regret skipping last year. I’m looking forward to visiting Miami Beach for RubyConf 2013.

    If you’re interested in picking up new tricks and techniques for your own programming, or are just looking for a healthy dose of motivation, you should consider attending as well. My advice is to act fast once tickets are announced. They tend to sell out very quickly.

  • RubyConf 2012 recap

    After being unable to attend RubyConf last year, I was thrilled when I heard that this year’s conference would be held in Denver. Having lived in Boulder for several years, I’ve learned to love Colorado, the scenery, and the people. So it was almost a given that I would be attending.

    RubyConf 2012 was one of the most useful Ruby conferences I’ve been to. The variety and quality of the talks and the venue combined to create a memorable experience. My reading list is slam full of interesting things I picked up at the conf and want to keep learning about on my own. Another reason this was a great conf: the swag. I left the conf with no less than 8 T-shirts, all of which I’m reasonably sure I will actually wear (sometimes free shirts are rendered unwearable by being poorly made or just plain ugly). Some attendees even scored 9 or 10 shirts.

    But enough about shirts. Let’s go over some of the best talks I attended. (Which, by the way, will be posted online by Confreaks shortly, if they aren’t there already.)

    • My Name is MagLev by Jesse Cooke
      A Ruby implementation sitting on a Smalltalk VM, sporting a baked-in ORM that transparently persists your Ruby objects to the database. No more ActiveRecord wrangling!

    • Implementation Details of Ruby 2.0 VM by Koichi Sasada
      The 20th anniversary edition of Ruby was previewed at RubyConf and boy howdy does it have some nice features. Besides better method dispatch performance, the ability to prepend a module is very handy. The target release month for Ruby 2.0 is February, 2013.

    • Ruby Monitoring State of the Union by Joseph Ruscio
      Joseph surveyed various options for monitoring your Ruby programs: New Relic, statsd-ruby, Librato, and various monolithic open source software packages.

    • Zero Downtime Deploys Made Easy by Matt Duncan
      The title was misleading since Matt opened by saying there is no silver bullet. But he did share some interesting tricks to avoid locking database tables during long migrations, and also outlined a way to migrate between API versions.

    • Refactoring from Good to Great by Ben Orenstein
      One of my favorite talks of the conf, Ben gave several examples of smelly code and then proceeded to live code his way through various refactorings. Highly recommended.

    Tomorrow I’ll recap the remaining six talks, including Jim Weirich’s keynote which involved stabby procs and succeeded in completely blowing my synapses. Stay tuned.

  • Indieconf 2012: Seven Lessons in Personal Marketing

    After a brief interruption so I could post my overdue RubyConf 2012 recap, we return to Indieconf at the McKimmon Center to learn “Seven Lessons in Personal Marketing.” [slides]

    Alan Stevens was a dynamic speaker who kept the audience’s attention throughout his presentation. He explained that to do this, he treated the presentation as a conversation. As soon as he entered the room, he began talking with someone in the audience. He then transitioned into his presentation without missing a beat. By doing this, he dramatically reduced the pre-talk jitters he usually gets before he speaks in public. Clever, practical, and something we should all try.

    Alan’s talk focused on “The Seduction Community,” something I wasn’t previously familiar with. Apparently, it’s a group of people (I’m guessing mostly guys?) that analyze the social forces involved in interpersonal relationships and seek to “hack” their behavior so they can pick up women. Alan was introduced to this concept by Merlin Mann.

    “How did this topic possibly make the cut?” Hang with me, it all makes sense by the end.

    Some of the “pickup artists” Alan mentioned are:

    Many of them have blogs where they regularly post advice on social hacking, but most of them just run sites about how to get more dates or how to make yourself more attractive to women. I can’t imagine the damage I’m doing to my SEO by linking to them, but I digress…

    “All sales is nothing more than making friends.” –Shane Pearlman

    With that quote we come to the main point of Alan’s talk: you can hack your social interaction to make more friends and, as a direct result, sell more stuff. Here are his Seven Lessons summarized:

    1. it’s OK to talk to strangers
      • nature has not designed you for the world in which you now live
      • beware of your lizard brain (the limbic system)
      • Karl Rohnke’s CSP model (comfort zone, stretch zone, panic zone)
      • approach anxiety (it never goes away, so don’t try to make it go away)
      • “Confidence is not the goal. Competence is.”
    2. lean back
      • panhandler’s “lean in” emotionally and physically
      • don’t be a panhandler
      • physically lean back, “hey, it’s cool”
      • there’s nothing to lose here
      • everyone has a shield
      • “Your primary goal must be your own enjoyment.” (not that you need anything or have a goal in mind)
    3. prepare your mental frame
      • examples: 13 year olds, Bette Davis, kid sister, underwear, the host
      • mental attitude that helps you give off the right signals
      • are you chasing butterflies or are you being a light that draws what you want to you?
      • be lighthearted (everyone doesn’t have to like you)
    4. provide value
      • give people insight into themselves
      • enter a set at the same or slightly higher energy as the people in the group
      • this can help make other people more comfortable
      • reach people at an emotional level
      • seek rapport, not approval (understand each other’s feelings)
    5. talk to groups
      • talking is the only means you have of conveying your personality
      • speak slowly, with pauses and enthusiasm
      • Toastmasters
    6. get warmed up
      • loud music, jumping up and down
      • get out of your shell BEFORE you’re in a given situation
      • practice your mingling on the socially challenged
      • get into a talkative mood and practice talking to everyone
    7. have a plan
      • two essential components: Avatar and Story
      • be yourself, but be your best self
      • Avatar: the image you present, should be slightly different than the norm but not weird
      • Story topics: did something fun, did something you weren’t supposed to do, took charge of a situation, etc.

    Something else Alan said really struck me: “Networking is doing favors for other people.” This isn’t about taking advantage of people, hypnotizing them into buying your crappy stuff, or being friendly just so you can get something in return. This is about genuinely caring for other people and trying to figure out what you can give them that will cause them to give you something in return.

    It’s about “putting your best foot forward” and eliminating the inhibitions and barriers that are preventing you from being an effective salesperson. Because as freelancers, we have to be able to sell our services effectively or we won’t last long.

    I’ll close with a final book recommendation from Alan: “The Art of Mingling” by Jeanne Martinet. This one looks really good. I’ve added it to my Christmas list. Santa take note.

    Tomorrow I’ll recap Katie Benedetto’s talk titled “Shaping Your Solopreneurship to Your Life.”

    This post is one in a series from Indieconf 2012

  • Indieconf 2012 recap

    Indieconf 2012

    Indieconf 2012 happened this past Saturday at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh. I’ve attended every indieconf for the past 3 years and this was by far the best yet. Michael Kimsal does an incredible job of recruiting speakers and organizing a full day of thought provoking presentations. I really don’t know how he does it all. He must be superhuman or something.

    I didn’t regret attending any of the 7 talks I went to. That’s unusual. Even at some of the best conferences I’ve attended like RubyConf or BizConf, there were always at least a couple of talks that I didn’t find very useful. That wasn’t the situation at indieconf. Over the next few days I’ll be posting some useful takeaways from each talk so stay tuned.

    This post is one in a series from Indieconf 2012

  • 2014 in review

    I’m always trying to develop better habits in my life. But sometimes it’s hard to determine which new technique will give the most benefit for the least investment. Often it’s helpful to learn from what others are doing. Take Nathan Barry and Brennan Dunn for example. Both of these guys routinely summarize the good and bad in any given year. I’ve decided to emulate them. The result is this, my first annual review. It’s mostly for my own benefit, but read on if you’re curious.

    The good

    For both my business and my personal life, 2014 was a good year. Not great, but good.

    The year began with some interesting consulting work for Medaxion, a company I’ve been working for off-and-on since mid-2011. They’ve built up a solid development team since then and their success in the medical software marketplace has been gratifying to watch. Their software has a heavy iOS component and while I’ve only dipped my toe into iOS development so far, it’s something I want to pursue more aggressively at some point. That being said, I learned plenty from the Ruby API work I did for them in 2011 and 2012, and the EHR certification work in 2013 and 2014. In particular, I took what I learned from the API work and put together a presentation I’ve given in multiple venues, including Triangle.rb.

    Contract work was light over the summer due to a flare up of a health condition I’ve been suffering from since mid-2012. I ended up making some pretty dramatic dietary changes by dropping grains, dairy, nuts, eggs, sugar, and artificial sweeteners from my diet (essentially, the Whole30 diet minus the potatoes). These changes dramatically improved things for me and I plan on continuing the diet into 2015. What excites me about this is that I can undoubtedly use what I’ve learned to build some new information products one day.

    In October I began consulting for Candle Science, a locally owned company that sells candle making supplies to customers all across the country. It’s been a positive experience. I’ve enjoyed learning how their warehouse works (99% of the software systems running their Morrisville warehouse were built from scratch). To developers who focus on SaaS apps, mobile development, or APIs, e-commerce can seem like a boring, unchallenging area to be working in but it’s actually quite complex. Ensuring orders get packed and shipped properly, from the correct location, to the correct address, with payment being processed successfully, and with inventory levels being appropriately updated, is extremely challenging. It’s an interesting business domain to be working in and I look forward to continuing to learn more about it in 2015.

    Teascript, my SaaS app for homeschoolers, had its best year yet. People continue signing up for the service despite my complete and utter failure to promote it in any meaningful way last year. Aside from a $30/month AdWords campaign, it’s been word-of-mouth driving this growth. I’m hoping to change that in 2015. In December I managed to deploy a massive redesign (the first since the app launched in 2007). This brings the app into the modern age with an attractive Bootstrap template. The previous design was extremely difficult to build upon. My hope is that switching to Bootstrap will give me a better foundation for future growth.

    Sadly, I didn’t attend any national conferences this past year. RubyConf was tempting but was just too far away. I also didn’t participate much in the local meetup/user group scene, which was to my detriment. This is something I intend to correct since both attending and presenting at meetups has been an incredible source of personal and professional growth for me in the past. The last time I presented anything was March of 2013. That’s just too big a gap for my taste.

    My EMS job continued being a source of interesting stories this past year. I’m required to work a minimum of 48 hours each month to retain my status as a part-time EMT. The sense of satisfaction I get from this job is well worth the time spent away from my (much higher paying) software work. I also learn so much, both from the patients I care for as well as the other EMTs and Paramedics I work with. Wake County is privileged to have such a competent, professional EMS system and I’m proud to be a small part of that.

    On a personal level, I joined the choir at my local church. Singing is something I really enjoy, but haven’t had an outlet for until now. Our choir director, Aaron, just earned his doctorate and does an incredible job leading both the choir and the orchestra. Performing in December’s Christmas concert was a phenomenal experience that I will never forget.

    I had experimented with CrossFit in late 2013 and continued that experiment into the first part of 2014 but ended up dropping my membership, primarily due to the high cost. I was definitely starting to see some changes, and overall felt much stronger than I did before I started the program, but even with the first responder discount it was still twice as expensive as my current gym membership. I still run occasionally but have been focusing on training with free weights and resistance bands which seems to fit much better with my lifestyle.

    The bad

    Not everything that happened last year was good, unfortunately.

    I did nothing with my Lord of the Rings movie site and my distance education blog last year. Google ads on the distance education blog actually have a phenomenal click through payout so I have incentive to drive more traffic there, but it’s just not something that has interested me like it did in previous years.

    My company web site also stagnated and I freely confess I’m just not sure what to do with it at the moment. I can’t seem to make up my mind about what my brand should be: myself or my company, Adeptware. My name is more recognizable in the software community, but I also like the idea of divorcing myself from my brand so I can eventually hire other people to run the thing for me.

    Despite multiple opportunities to build information products last year, I neglected to make any forward progress whatsoever. This is something I’ve already started changing in 2015 with my new 7 Days to Kick Sugar email course. I’ve learned a lot about health and nutrition this year and figure this is a good way to share what I’ve learned with others.

    I’ve owned a home since 2007 and until mid-2014 hadn’t had any huge maintenance problems or major expenses. That changed with the discovery that my front porch roof was rotting away due to a mistake that had been made in its construction. Neither the builder nor the warranty company were willing to accept responsibility so I had to cover the repair entirely out of pocket. This was a frustrating experience and a timely reminder that builders and insurance companies can’t be trusted to do the right thing in a pinch. Best to “hope for the best but plan for the worst” when it comes to these types of situations. Fortunately I’ve always kept an emergency fund so covering the expense didn’t require me to incur any debt.

    I did very little to fill my consulting pipeline last year. Granted, there wasn’t much of a need with Medaxion dominating the first part of the year and Candle Science dominating the latter. But it still would’ve been good practice. Although ultimately I want to move away from consulting and into products.

    Finances

    Unlike Nathan and Brennan, I’m not comfortable sharing actual figures. Maybe this will change one day, but for now I’ll just give percentages for each category of income in 2014. I had 4 primary sources of income: software consulting, my part-time EMS job, Teascript subscriptions, and advertising on my blogs and web sites.

    Last year was my slowest for consulting since 2010. This was due to a variety of factors, but primarily time taken off for health reasons. Consulting income still dominated all other revenue streams at 79%.

    Teascript had a record year, coming in second at 19% of revenue. This is a 58% increase over figures from 2013 despite the minimal promotion I’ve been doing. That surprised me. It’s gratifying to know the app is proving useful to so many homeschool parents.

    Income from my job as a part-time EMT was 11%. This is not so surprising given the paltry wage we pay our EMS workers in this country. It’s really quite pathetic. I have a lot of respect for my Paramedic friends who have to work full time (plus overtime) to support their families. It’s a difficult, dangerous job and they should get paid more to do it.

    Advertising came in dead last at barely 0.2% which isn’t a surprise given that I have only a handful of Google ads running on a couple of blogs and my Lord of the Rings site. Still, it’s nice to be generating something from those web sites, even if it’s not going to cover retirement just yet.

    Conclusion

    Overall I learned a lot in 2014 and, while I could have taken advantage of more opportunities, I did end up making forward progress in some important areas. My goals for 2015 include:

    • Expand marketing for Teascript
    • Develop a new information product
    • Increase the amount of writing I’m doing
    • Increase the amount of speaking I’m doing
    • Attend one meetup per month

    This should keep me plenty busy. I never make New Year’s resolutions since I think they’re rather silly, but I’m hoping that by listing my goals here I’m increasing perceived accountability and encouraging myself, if only on a sub-conscious level, to make good things happen in 2015.

    What are your goals for 2015? What went well last year? What went poorly? I’d enjoy hearing from you. Feel free to comment below, and thanks for making it this far. I hope reading this motivated you in some way. And I hope 2015 will be an incredible year for you.

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