Hawaii Ruby On Rails Conference - Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii - October 4-6 2009

Aloha!

We’re excited to announce the formal schedule for Aloha on Rails, the Hawaii Ruby on Rails Conference! We’ve put together two amazing days of quality, relevant, timely, and thought provoking sessions. A big mahalo to our speakers for sharing their story. And a really big mahalo to all our attendees and guests who are coming to share in the discussion.

Putting together a schedule is not easy. There were a few things we had to balance to ensure a quality program.

First and foremost, we know that single track sessions are very popular with attendees. No one is forced into a potentially difficult decision of what talk to attend. Also, annecdotal evidence suggests that the entire crowd attends every session, then discussion and debate increases (a major goal of any conference) as everyone has experienced the same material.

We were incredibly lucky and humbled to receive an overwhelming amount of talk proposals. So many talks captured our theme of “Talk Story” or discussed cutting edge technologies that a single track format wouldn’t cut it. Therefore, we are attempting a hybrid Single/Dual Track conference format. As you can see in the schedule, approximately half the day will be Single Track, while the other half will be Dual Track. We tried to put the technology-specific talks into the dual track, as those are more specific and therefore focused. The higher level talks, such as those that help you excel at your career, deal with technical debt, or explore the balance between dogmatism and pragmatism in agile methodologies, will be single tracked.

In talking with other conference organizers and attendees to previous regional Rails conferences, we received lots of great scheduling feedback. One thing we heard over and over again was, “The hallway conversations are invaluable. Ensure there is a lot of time between sessions.” We heard that loud and clear, and have scheduled a 15 minute break between each session. We hope that’s a good compromise between giving attendees enough time to move between sessions and discuss what they just learned, and not too much time that the flow slows down and everyone loses momentum.

Aloha on Rails is much more than a series of technical and career sessions. We’ve scheduled additional activities to ensure attendees have a well-rounded experience and get the most out of their trip to Hawaii. We’ll start each day with a morning run around Kapiolani Park, sure to kick-start the brain and wake you up. There’s nothing like an early morning jog, with the ocean breeze, to really start your day on a positive note.

To help celebrate the event, our friends, and the fact that we’re in one of the most beautiful places on earth, Agathon Group, an international hosting provider with SaS 70 data centers, has generously sponsored the Official Pau Hana Party for Aloha on Rails! Join us for free drinks and pupus Monday evening at 6pm, across the street at Tiki’s, and watch the sunset over Waikiki Beach with your friends and colleagues.

We’re so excited to host everyone and to put on a great show. We’ll see you in Waikiki!

Aloha!

Scott Chacon, from Github and author of the new book Pro Git, gave a sneak peak of his upcoming talk for Aloha on Rails. Titled “The Birth of Git”, Scott will tell the story of how Git and Mercurial were born, and how these two modern distributed revision control systems have evolved. By teaching the historical context and motivations, and philosophical and implementation differences, of these systems, Scott hopes attendees will gain a deeper appreciation for these critically important tools.

Register Today to talk story with Scott and the rest of the incredible lineup of speakers and sessions at Aloha on Rails, the premier destination event for Ruby on Rails.

See you in Waikiki!

Aloha!

What are you striving for when you write code? Correctness? Passing tests? A chance to apply that KillerWickedAwesomeInvertedArrayBubbleDistributedRingSort? Beauty?

Strive for maintainability, according to Tammer Saleh, formally of Thoughtbot, author of Shoulda, and now an independent consultant in the San Francisco area. Tammer, along with Chad Pytel (founder of Thoughtbot), will be presenting “You’re Doing It Wrong“, at Aloha on Rails, the Hawaii Ruby on Rails Conference.

“You’re Doing It Wrong” features all new material from their upcoming book, “Rails AntiPatterns - Best Practice Ruby on Rails Refactoring”, published by Addison-Wesley. Tammer and Chad will take real life code, code they have seen in the wild, and will fix it live on stage. You can even submit code to be healed and rehabilitated.

In this interview, Tammer talks about the root cause for some of these anti-patterns and how to avoid them. Plus, learn why you should attend conferences, and what Tammer is looking forward to in Hawaii.

Register Today to meet Taleh, Chad, and the rest of our incredible speaker and session lineup!

Aloha!

This is not the design talk to be afraid of. This is Design with a capital D. Michael Nieling, founder and principal at Ocupop, will be teaching attendees why Design is the single most important aspect of the development process, and how to address these critical concerns with intelligence and an engineer’s unique abilities. Michael, an engineer turned Designer, has experience designing everything from retail kiosks to interactive web applications to iPhone applications.

Certainly, programming code, architectures, and APIs are important, but they exist only to deliver what is really essential: a truly satisfying and complete user experience. A holistic and pervasively applied Design is the key element to accomplish this goal. Michael will tell stories to illustrate this point, and will help attendees approach and apply Design across the entire product life cycle.

Register Today for Aloha on Rails to meet Michael and the rest of our incredible and friendly lineup of speakers and sessions!

p.s. Michael told me after reading this post to add that he wants to make clear that he doesn’t give a shit about getting a single new client as a result from this talk, he just wants to make sure he doesn’t ever have to use another poorly designed product again. Ever.

Aloha!

I was so excited to visit Alan Gates at Yahoo. I’ve never been to the Yahoo campus before, and I wasn’t disappointed. Alan is a very friendly host, and Yahoo’s cafeteria had lots of gourmet (and cheap) options. Also, I think I saw Jerry Yang hanging out.

While I was there, I sat down with Alan to learn more about his talks at Aloha on Rails, the Hawaii Ruby on Rails Conference. Alan will be presenting two talks. The first talk, Thinking in Map Reduce, introduces the Map Reduce paradigm and covers what types of programs it is good for and how you can start writing Map Reduce programs. The second talk, Intro to Pig, introduces Pig, the high level language for data processing on Hadoop. Pig makes it very easy to write Map Reduce programs, and lets users get up and running very quickly. Pig is essentially a Domain Specific Language for Map Reduce programs. Alan is the architect for the Pig project, so this is a rare chance to learn about this cutting edge technology from the source.

Register Today to learn about Map Reduce and meet Alan and the rest of our amazing lineup. Seats are selling out, so act fast! Register before September 1st for our Early Bird rate.

Aloha!

While I was in San Francisco, I was lucky to sit down with Blake Mizerany, author of Sinatra and engineer at Heroku. Blake will be presenting “Forget Kindergarten, Learn to Scale” at Aloha on Rails, the Hawaii Ruby on Rails Conference. During the interview, Blake gives us a sneak peak into his talk, which covers lessons learned from building Heroku. Blake will also teach why these techniques work, ensuring attendees have a deep understanding of scaling theory and practice.

Register Today to meet Blake and the rest of our incredible lineup at Aloha on Rails, the premier destination event for Ruby on Rails!

Aloha!

We are humbled by the overwhelming response to our Call for Participation. We have received submissions covering all aspects related to web development and Rails. A big mahalo to all those who sent in an abstract.

We will now start the tough job of reviewing the abstracts to assemble the final program. We expect to have the entire two day conference mapped out in about a week. We will contact all those who have submitted proposals, regardless if they are accepted.

See you at Aloha on Rails!