Whew. Shirt orders for RubyNation 2012 have been submitted to CustomInk, and we spent a pile of money. Red T-shirts for attendees; black polos for speakers and organizers; and charcoal hoodies for organizers (by special request this year).
RubyNation 2012 Shirt Design Review
Since this is 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar (and possibly the world), we decided to go with a Mayan theme for our RubyNation Conference shirts this year. Here’s the logo for this year shirts, compliments of Don Anderson, our illustrious graphic artist.
According to Don: “The glyphs are the Mayan date for March 23rd — 2 Chik’chan, 13 Kumk’u 2012.”
And for the really curious: “Dots represent 1 and bars 5, the shell is zero. Mayan is base 20 and from right to left, 12 (1’s) + 0x20 + 5×400 = 2012. Yes I know this isn’t the real Mayan Year, but if I did the long count I wouldn’t have enough room. 2012 makes more sense.”
General Dynamics Sends Ten
I’m very pleased that my own company, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, is sending ten people to RubyNation 2012.
RubyNation 2012 Schedule Finalized
The organizers met tonight and worked out the schedule for all of the talks at RubyNation 2012, which will be held March 23 – 24. I’m speaking right before the Saturday Closing Keynote by Corey Haines.
Rails and the Apache SOLR Search Engine
Here’s the official description of the talk I’ll be giving at RubyNation 2012:
Rails and the Apache Solr Search Engine
What good is content if nobody can find it? Many information sites are like icebergs, with only a limited amount of content directly accessible to users and the rest, the “underwater” portion, only available through searches. This talk will show how Rails web sites can take advantage of the world-class Apache Solr search engine to provide sophisticated and customizable search features. We’ll cover how to get started with Solr, integrating with Solr using the Sunspot gem, indexing (including both documents and data within a database), and both basic and advanced search techniques. Along the way, we’ll also cover some best practices and some architectural recommendations.
RubyNation 2012 Tickets Now on Sale
Tickets for RubyNation 2012 are on sale now. With RailsConf on the left side of the country, where else are you going to get your Ruby fix? The conference is March 23 – 24, 2012.
RubyNation 2012 on the Horizon
Planning activities began today for RubyNation 2012, which will be the 5th year anniversary for the conference. We start planning more than 8 months before the conference, commencing with a planning meeting and kick-off dinner for the organizers.
Confident Code
Avdi Grimm’s Rubynation 2011 talk on “Confident Code” is now available online. Check it out online at Blip.tv!
RubyNation Main Room Videos
I’ve solved most of the workflow problems with the RubyNation 2011 video content from the main room, the footage that was shot with the awesome camera that we borrowed from Near Infinity. In the video realm, “workflow is a fancy word for getting video from the camera into a format that you can use for editing with all elements intact. It’s backed up by Dave’s Video Corollary – “no matter where you get video from, it will never be in the format that you need.”
The camera is a Sony EX1 HDCAM. Sony produces a free software component called the XDCAM Log and Transfer Utility that allows Sony video footage to be imported into Final Cut Pro for editing. If you’ve saved the entirety of the content from the digital card (i.e. – the full directory tree), then importing works just fine.
Since Gray Herter, RubyNation’s Chief Organizer, wanted the Ryan McGeary talk done first, I was successfully able to import the footage into Final Cut Pro and edit it. So, that talk is just waiting on the single-width animated intro bumper from Don Anderson before it goes out live on our Blip.tv channel.
Most of the talks are in fine shape. However, there was a glitch on Friday (the first day of the conference) that corrupted some metadata from one of the digital cards. This has impacted the Scott Chacon, Nick Gauthier and Jerry Cheung talks. I still have the raw video footage (so nothing is actually lost), just not the top-level metadata that will allow it to work with the import utility. I have a Plan B and Plan C for dealing with that content.
Plan B uses Adobe Premiere to handle the raw Sony video files, for which it is supposed to have native support. Plan C uses a commercial utility (about $120 or so) to recover the footage from the raw Sony video files if Adobe Premiere doesn’t work.
It looks like the video footage is clear enough that I can get away with not doing the side-by-side video/slide thing that we did last year. Or, at least, that’s true of Ryan McGeary’s talk, where the slides were distinct, well-designed and clear. I may need to do side-by-side on some of the talks that are more code-focused. I’m currently deciding this on a case-by-case basis.
I think this year that we’re also going to spring for a professional-level membership with Blip.tv, so we can have larger files, higher priority for transcoding activities and ultimately deliver high-resolution videos for viewers.
Anyway, welcome to the world of video production, where the work really begins when the event is over.
RubyNation 2011 Photo
Many thanks to the incomparable Don Anderson for snapping this photo of me at RubyNation 2011. I was giving my “Killer Business Models” talk.
