I will be conducting my presentation, “Using Rails to Create an Enterprise App: A Real-Life Case Study,” as a Brown Bag presentation at AOL on November 27th, 2007.
Yes, It’s Confirmed
I will be be doing the December presentation for the Washington DC Ruby on Rails User Group. The meeting will be held December 13th at George Washington University, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM.
December DCRUG Meeting
Still waiting for final confirmation, but right now it looks like I’ll be presenting at the December meeting of the Washington DC Ruby on Rails Users Group. The meeting will be held at George Washington University. The topic is going to be “Leveraging OpenID in Rails.”
Surviving the AOL 2007 Layoff
I was fortunate enough to survive today’s layoff at AOL, which was particularly brutal for the Dulles, VA campus. Half of the development team that I worked for got cut today. Many of my friends and co-workers also got the axe. While I am, of course, happy to continue having a job that’s a mere 5 minute commute for me, I can’t help but think that, in some very fundamental ways, AOL has lost its way.
AOL Unconference
David Keener did a presentation on JFreeChart at AOL’s Unconference. This unique event exposed AOL’s IT staff to a wide array of technical topics presented by some of AOL’s top technologists.
First Internal Rails App at AOL
David Keener led the team that launched the Exception Request Tool (ERT), the first internal corporate application to be fielded (and actively used) at AOL using Ruby on Rails. This follows on the heels of Ficlets (which later became Ficly.com) and circaVie, the first two customer-facing applications fielded with Rails.
Giving October Presentation for DCRUG
It’s official. I’ve signed up to do the October presentation for the Washington DC Ruby Users Group. The topic of the presentation will be “Using Rails to Create an Enterprise App: A Case Study.” The talk will focus on real-life issues, and solutions, associated with using Rails to create a business application for use by AOL employees. I’m currently seeking permission from AOL to release real-life screen shots and related information. It should be an eye-opening presentation.
Scotland Trip
The Keeners went to Scotland for vacation from May 10 to May 21. Highlights included visits with Sally’s relatives, various pubs, shopping, Dave pulling a muscle, various pubs and limping around places like Glasgow.
Chad Fowler’s Rails Class
Compliments to AOL, for procuring several sessions of Chad Fowler’s Ruby on Rails class, one of which I’m enrolled in beginning Monday, March 26th. Chad Fowler is the author of the book “Rails Recipes.”
Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group
Douglas Sellers gave a nice presentation on the practical uses of Selenium for testing web sites. He then demonstrated some of the advantages of using Selenium on Rails to improve the testing experience. Afterwards, Sean Mountcastle spoke on REST development in Rails.