Railsgirls comes to Berlin
On the 13/14th of April, Railslove will help to bring a very special Rails event to you: Railsgirls will take place in Berlin!
Railsgirls is a workshop where women can learn how to write a Rails application from scratch. It aims to give them the tools and vocabulary to build the web as they see it. The focus is on building things, not only programming, so the curriculum also includes some design and marketing flavors. Best: no previous knowledge needed. Even better: it’s non-profit, that means totally free for participants!
Quoting Karri Saarinen, one of the organisers:
The Internet was built by and for boys. As a girl, one often feels like lacking the vocabulary to access it. With Rails for Girls, we want to demystify the world of web applications and encourage women to learn about software development and programming. We believe that women need the skills and language to understand that world.
Before, Railsgirls already took place in Helsinki, Singapore and Shanghai, where it helped some 100 women building their first Ruby on Rails application. Check out some of the presentations and results of those past events.
Among other well known local Berlin Ruby developers, Lena from Railslove will be one of the coaches. This means the participants can not only listen to high quality presentations, but will also be guided step by step through the material in small groups.
If you’re interested in participating, fill in the application form on their website. You have time to do so until the 4th of April. Men can also apply when they’re accompanied by a woman, but women will be given priority when there are more applicants than spaces (and there are already more than 50 applications for Berlin, and counting).
If you are already into Rails or Ruby, you can also join the coaches team. Sponsoring is still welcome, too (Railslove is helping out with covering costs for the venue). Next events up are Tallinn, Vienna, Krakow, Buenos Aires and Helsinki again – if you want to suggest your city, drop the organisers an email.
Railslove proudly annouces Railslove University
Last year Railslove did some workshops for companies like AdCloud and Daily Deal, where we taught them some basics about Ruby and Rails and some more advanced tips & tricks about api design. Then some US guys called 2012 to be the year to learn to code and we’ve started thinking if we should do this more often: training people, who are interested in learning to code.
Some of us still remember the early days at university, when Lars, Jan, Tim and Stephan got into Ruby and Rails in a 3-day hands-on workshop led by our friends and Rails masters from outta space. So the first thing that came to our mind was to give others the same chance we’ve once had and so we anounced a beginner’s workshop “Ruby and Rails from Scratch” for students of Cologne University of Applied Sciences to take place in early January at our offices. As we’ve talked to some other developers and friends about it, we quickly found out that there are even more people other than students interested in our intensive Rails training, so we made it official and silently launched our Railslove University.
On the 4th of January we started with 9 participants and a day full of Ruby. Ralph not only taught them about the beauty of code, but also introduced them to basic priciples of coding in general, of course testing your code was a big part of it. The next two days were all about Rails. We started with a short introduction to the framework itself and peppered it with extensive hands-on parts to start building an own little web application. After covering all essential parts of a web app with Ruby and Rails we finished the workshop with a big round of pizza for everybody and a ceremonial presentation of our gorgeous diplomas.
As a motivation to go further and because we like a little competition all workshop participants were invited to a coding challenge, endowed with a 50 € amazon.de voucher. All in all we had a great time and so did our trainees. Here’s what Tim Czubayko said about it:
One workshop. Three speakers. And a lot of interesting hands-on parts. The “Ruby on Rails from Scratch” workshop showed that test-driven development is a lot more fun than I’ve expected. With this workshop I’m up with all the advanced basics of Rub on Rails programming.
His complete review can be found on Tim’s blog.
Now, if you’re gonna say: “How I could I miss this?!”, we’re glad to announce a few more workshops in the near future: There’ll be a next Rails beginner workshop in march (Mar 14 – Mar 16). If you’re interested in it, sign up now! Or wait, there’s even more: By popular demand we also host some advanced workshops to cover special topics in-depth like building APIs that last, Going Global — Internationalization (i18n) of Rails web applications or BYOMAC – Bring Your Own Models And Controllers. We hope you like them and we’d be super-glad to welcome you at one of our next workshops, too.
Well, we’ve got one more thing: We’ll have some superhero-class guest teachers on board working on their curricula. Be sure to follow @rl_university on Twitter to keep at it.
Remember: If you can’t get good Ruby on Rails nerds? Let your coders join one of our courses!
We @ Wroc_❤.rb and we ❤ Vention Dention
We’re proud to announce wroc_love.rb 2012. The very first of such conferences in a beautiful city of Wrocław. What is this conference about?
A fresh Ruby conference organized by thriving local Ruby community. We’re keen on experimenting, value original ideas and diversity of opinions – as long as they’re backed with valid arguments.
You can meet : Georg, Bumi, Mike, Ralph, myself and our friend Nick.
We’re giving a talk
What is our talk about? About.. “Pit .. Brad Pit..Pit’s..ahhr! Just get out of the trap!!!” In our talk we will share some of the most interesting, absurd, or funny moments and insights we have experienced in past couple of years. As developers and business founders, we present the best of our own mistakes and show you how we got out of the pits we fell into. Believe us, we’ve been there as well and, hopefully, attending our talk will help you not make our mistakes. ;) It will be a serious fun! The talk will cover both technical and other subjects. Each mistake will get a 2-3 min coverage. Read more about us and our talk at the conference page and on their blog.
We love punk rock
Did you know we have our own band? No? Ok… now you know it! We’re proud to indroduce you to…
Vention Dention
Oh yeah. Vention Dention is on tour again… and we’re with them all the time. So the next gig’s are:
- wroc_love.rb, 10.-11. March 2012, Wrocław, Instytut Informatyki, Uniwersytet Wrocławski
- Nodecamp.eu (Details coming soon)
We’re planing some more gigs with them and everything will be announced on their homepage, on Railslove’s Vention Dention Homepage and via Twitter (@ventiondention). So stay tuned!
For now, just for you… Vention Dention:
Vention Dention Logo Animated
See you @ wroc_love.rb!
DRUG #25
During my leave in beautiful Wrocław, I had a chance to attend DRUG #25 meet-up. DRUG (Dolnośląska Grupa Użytkowników Ruby) is Lower Silesian Ruby user group, and their meetings usually take place once a month.
Andrzej Krzywda introduced me to a non-written rule of DRUG, which states “[i]f it’s your first time then you are presenting a talk”. I presented a quick talk about Travis CI. While it came as no surprise, that everybody knew the topic, it was especially nice to see people asking more detailed questions about current state, the future and sharing what they have done with Travis.
The people I met are tremendous and I will be happy to see them again on Wroclove.rb! Big thanks to all attending and especially to @kolarzowski, @piterniel for having me at their office during my leave. See you all soon!
Railslove at war
Today, January 11th, 2012 – a date which will live in infamy – Railslove was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the dark forces of 9elements.
Railslove was at peace with that nation and looking toward the maintenance of peace. In a brutal attack 9elements took one of the Railslove team members as hostage while being on a friendly mission visiting their headquarters.
It will be recorded that the visit of the Railslove member took place on solicitation of 9elements – it is obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago.
Because of this circumstances we are forced to protect ourselves and have to free our team member.
I ask that Railslove declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by 9elements on January 11th, 2012, a state of war has existed between Railslove and 9elements.
Let Paintball Borken be our battleground for this gigantomachia!
proof:
