Keynote and Speakers
Register now to meet and learn from these speakers and more. Audience size is limited to ensure everyone will be able to introduce themselves and talk story.
- Chad Fowler - Keynote
Chad Fowler is an internationally known software developer, trainer, manager, speaker, and musician. Over the past decade he has worked with some of the world’s largest companies and most admired software developers. He loves to program computers and, as part of his role as CTO of InfoEther, Inc., spends much of his time solving hard problems for customers in the Ruby language. He is co-organizer of RubyConf, RailsConf, and RailsConf Europe and author or co-author of a number of popular software books, including the recently released “The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development“.
Chad will be presenting “The Passionate Programmer”.- Obie Fernandez
- Obie Fernandez is the author of The Rails Way, the definitive reference guide for Ruby on Rails, Series Editor of the Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series and well-known member of the international Ruby community. Obie is the CEO/Founder of Hashrocket, a boutique web consultancy and product shop headquartered in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
Obie will be moderating “Modeling Maturity”. - Gregg Pollack
- Gregg Pollack is a Rails Activist who lives in Orlando, Florida where he develops web applications and produces educational media for his company, Envy Labs. He is very active in the Orlando Tech community, helping organize BarCampOrlando, the Orlando Ruby Users Group, and CoLab, Orlando’s first official co-working space. You can checkout some of his media work by listening Rails Envy Podcast, downloading a screencast from EnvyCasts, or viewing some of the recent conference videos he’s produced.
Gregg will be presenting “On the Edge of Rails Performance”. - Anthony Eden
- Anthony Eden is currently the CTO at chi.mp, a personal content hub and identity platform built on top of the .mp top-level domain. Anthony has been developing software for the web since 1995. Beginning with Perl and then Java, Anthony developed a wide variety of web sites and web applications for publishing, domain registration, and the mobile web. In 2005 Anthony began using Ruby and Rails and quickly made the switch from Java to using Ruby for the majority of his work. Anthony has a long history of open source development including recent additions such as ActiveWarehouse and Rails SQL Views.
Anthony will be presenting “Technical Debt - Rewrite or Refactor”. - Desi McAdam
- Desi McAdam hails from the great state (and former penal colony) of Georgia. Along with founding DevChix, an organization geared specifically toward women in development, she’s a member of other socially progressive and humanitarian groups. She’s nearing the completion of her pilot’s license, likes to break into tourist attractions around the world and wants to wrestle a pig someday. Desi has a broad background of skills from system administration to web development (including several years experience with Agile practices) and earned her degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech.
Desi will be presenting “Dragons, Riddles, and Rails Applications”. - Jon Crosby
- Jon Crosby is a San Francisco Bay Area developer specializing in Ruby, JavaScript, Objective-C, and Open Web technologies. Jon is the author of CloudKit and a committer on several open source projects including rack-contrib and the OAuth ruby gem. He is an active member of the Open Web community and is currently employed by Engine Yard.
Jon will be presenting “The Machines Are Alive”. - Scott Chacon
- Scott Chacon is a Git evangelist and Ruby developer employed at Logical Awesome working on GitHub. He is the author of the Git Internals Peepcode PDF as well as the maintainer of git-scm.com and the Git Community Book. Scott has also presented at RailsConf, RubyConf, Scotland on Rails, Google and a number of local groups, and blogs at jointheconversation.org.
Scott will be presenting “The Birth of Git”. - Blythe Dunham
- Blythe Dunham is snowgiraffe, a Seattle based Ruby on Rails consultant as well as co-founder and Architect at Spongecell. Specializing in back-end server and database development, she has spent over a decade mediating disputes between ORM code and relational databases in a couple people languages and a bunch of computer languages. So, a few years ago when Blythe began developing with this “Ruby on Rails”, most of her friends thought it was a new snowboarding trick. A certified database whisperer, Blythe is excited to share some tips and whispers on optimizing the interaction with your Rails application.
Blythe will be presenting “Hey… Is That Your Database Crying?”. - Charles Nutter
- Charles Oliver Nutter has been co-lead of the JRuby project for the past four years, working on performance and Java integration, and helping to coordinate community efforts. During that time JRuby has become a premier platform for Ruby users, allowing both a gateway to Java-centric organizations as well as an excellent Ruby implementation. Charles hopes to expand JRuby’s success to other JVM languages, building the JVM into the best platform for multi-language development.
Charles will be presenting “JRuby: From Zero to Awesome”. - Yehuda Katz
- Yehuda Katz is currently employed by Engine Yard, and works full time as a Core Team Member on the Rails and Merb projects. He is the co-author of jQuery in Action and the upcoming Rails 3 in Action, and is a contributor to Ruby in Practice. He spends most of his time hacking on Rails and Merb, but also on other Ruby community projects, like Rubinius and Datamapper. And when the solution doesn’t yet exist, he’ll try his hand at creating one – as such, he’s also created projects like Thor and DO.rb.
Yehuda will be presenting “Rails 3 Public API”. - Alan Gates
- Alan Gates has been in RDBMS and large data system development for over 10 years. He has been a developer at Yahoo for 6 years, where he was one of the lead designers and developers of on an in-house multi-petabyte data storage and query system. He is one of the original committers on the Apache Pig project, and is now the architect for the Pig development team.
Alan will be presenting both “Thinking in Map Reduce” and “Introduction to Pig”. - Jim Weirich
- Jim Weirich is the Chief Scientist for EdgeCase LLC, a Rails development firm located in Columbus Ohio. Jim has over twenty-five years of experience in software development. He has worked with real-time data systems for testing jet engines, networking software for information systems, and image processing software for the financial industry. Jim is active in the Ruby community and has contributed to several Ruby projects, including the Rake build system and the RubyGems package software.
Jim will be presenting “The Grand Unified Theory of Software Design”. - Sarah Mei
- Sarah Mei heads the Open Workshop project at RailsBridge, where she works to bring new voices into the Rails community. Open Workshop runs introductory Rails workshops, and supports people running their own by making resources and tools freely available. Sarah is a Senior Software Engineer at LookSmart in San Francisco. She has, among other things, a CS degree from UC San Diego, a blog, a husband, a preschooler, a baby, a weakness for puzzle games and pirates, and an apartment with way too many computers in it.
Sarah will be teaching the “Rails Training in Paradise” tutorial. - Chris Selmer
- Chris Selmer is an expert Ruby on Rails architect with over 10 years of project leadership and hands-on development experience. He specializes in leading small teams on fast-paced development projects. As Director of Client Solutions, he oversees Intridea’s client services efforts. Before Intridea, Chris led Better Endeavor LLC, a Ruby on Rails consultancy. He has also worked as a software architect for George Washington University and the University of Maryland. Chris spoke at Railsconf 2008 on developing web applications in 48 hours, is an active member of the Rails community, and helps run the Washington DC Ruby User Group.
Chris will be presenting “Surviving the Journey from Rails Coder to Manager” - Michael Nieling
- Michael has a background rooted in both science and art. Following an undergrad in Biology and Pre-Med Michael was quick to capitalize on his new-found marketability by trading in scalpel and scrubs for shovel and shred-stick, moving to Breckenridge, CO. During the “lost” years, increased involvement in the action sports industry led to multiple opportunities that provided an opportunity for a lifetime of design sensibility to finally mature. A binding here, a board there, a catalog over there, suddenly Michael found himself back at the University of Wisconsin-Madison pursuing a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Product Design while maintaining a small marketing and design consultancy. Since graduation, OCUPOP has offered the ideal outlet for his uniquely holistic creative, analytical and entrepreneurial talents; after all, where else could someone develop everything from printed and digital collateral, to environments, interiors and consumer products for dozens of local and national accounts while still surfing, snowboarding and windsurfing 100 days a year?
Michael will be presenting “You Don’t Need a Logo”. - Chad Pytel
- Chad Pytel is founder and CEO of thoughtbot a web application development firm which focuses exclusively on Ruby on Rails and the creators of shoulda, paperclip, and factory_girl among other open source projects. He is also co-author of “Pro Active Record: Databases with Ruby and Rails”, is currently working on a new book, Rails AntiPatterns, and he publishes, along with the rest of the team at thoughtbot, the blog GIANT ROBOTS SMASHING INTO OTHER GIANT ROBOTS.
Chad will be presenting “You’re Doing It Wrong”. - Tammer Saleh
- Tammer Saleh is an experienced developer living in San Francisco, and working as an independent Ruby on Rails and iPhone consultant. He wrote the Shoulda testing framework, which at last count was in use by about 15% of the Ruby community. He was also the primary developer and project manager for Thoughtbot’s fantastic Hoptoad service, and is currently co-authoring Addison Wesley’s Rails AntiPatterns with Chad Pytel. He’s also spoken extensively at various Ruby and Rails conferences. In previous lives he’s done AI programming for the NCSA and the University of Illinois, and systems administration for Citysearch.com and Caltech’s Earthquake Detection Network.
Tammer will be presenting “You’re Doing It Wrong”. - Corey Donohoe
- With 8 years of open source contributions and a previous life immersed in skate culture, Corey usually brings a different perspective to things. Corey is Engine Yard’s oldest technical employee and currently maintains a large part of the internal application infrastructure used by Engine Yard employees and customers. Overall he’s a pretty chill dude that’s looking forward to the opportunity speak and surf in Hawaii this fall.
Corey will be presenting “Everything I Know About Being an Open Source hacker I Learned From Indie Hip Hop”. - Blake Mizerany
- Blake has been into ruby since way back in 2001, and is the creator of Sinatra, the popular ruby microframework. Blake spends his days at Heroku, where he makes mind-blowing features out of ruby and erlang, and often says “you’re doing it all wrong”. He speaks regularly at ruby events and in conjunction maintains a completely indiscernible beard-shaving schedule.
Blake will be presenting “Forget Kindergarten, Learn to Scale”. - Marty Haught
- Marty Haught is a software engineer/architect residing in Longmont, Colorado where he runs a lean-focused consulting company specializing in Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects. Between being involved in the Boulder startup scene and running the Boulder Ruby Group, Marty somehow finds time to raise his children with his beautiful wife and enjoy the great outdoors of Colorado.
Marty will be presenting “Lean Teams - How To Do More With Less”. - Jon Larkowski
- Jon “Lark” Larkowski is employee number one or two Hashrocket, depending on how you count. He holds an Electrical Engineering/Computer Science degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jon co-founded RubyJax: Jacksonville, Florida’s best and only Ruby user group. He heroically escaped a bleak, dystopian world of .Net, grey cubicles and demoralizing waterfall methodologies, and now luxuriates beachside under palms, enjoying agile project management and extreme Rails development. Jon hails from scenic Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, home of speedy Cray Supercomputers and refreshing Leinenkugel’s beer. Lately, he’s into the easier kinds of yoga, the heavier brands of Scandinavian progressive metal, and the spinnier style of ping pong.
Jon will be moderating “Is Agile Too Slow?”. - Pat Maddox
- Pat Maddox is a Ruby programmer who used to love Rails, but having discovered Seaside now only tolerates it
He’s been doing this Rails thing for a while now - four and a half years ago he launched pregopoker.com, one of the first Rails sites running in production and earning revenue. Since then he has become active in open source, dabbling in various projects and focusing mostly on RSpec and the state of Ruby testing in general. He is excited about the new wave of challenges that are facing established Rails teams & apps - how to scale technology and how to scale with the business. He’s a firm believer in RSpec, emacs, jquery, postgres, and hefeweizen.
Pat will be presenting “Domain Driven Rails”. - Ezra Zygmuntowicz
- Ezra Zygmuntowicz is a founder and developer at Engine Yard. He has been active in the Ruby community for over five years, and has contributed to many open source projects, including Rails, Merb, Rack and Rubinius. He is co-author of Deploying Rails Applications, published by The Pragmatic Programmers, and speaks at Ruby, Rails and Cloud Computing related events throughout the country.
Ezra will be presenting “Where Do I Put This Data?”. - Benjamin Sandofsky
- Benjamin Sandofsky was Lead Engineer at AT&T Interactive, and soon starts work at Twitter. At ATTi, he has overseen development on Yellowpages.com, developed tools and frameworks to tie together ATTi properties, and contributed to the Yellowpages.com native iPhone app released on the App Store launch day. He has been working with Rails since v0.12, contributed a number of patches, and placed in the first Rails Hackfest. His personal projects have included Thumber, Starrup, and ActsAgainstDouchebar.
Benjamin will be presenting “Staying Above the Ghetto”. - Nathaniel Brown
- Nathaniel is the founder of the first ever Ruby on Rails conference, Canada on Rails, hosted in Vancouver, BC which sold out with over 300 attendees. He has been working with Rails in large scale environments since 2005 and has seen the rise of Rails to become one of the key technologies fuelling the growth of rapid agile development. He has worked with, advised, and led Fortune 500 development teams across North America utilizing a wide array of development, infrastructure, and analytic technologies. He is currently located in Denver, Colorado as an Executive VP of a stealth startup soon to be launched in Q3 of 2009. Nathaniel also has been enjoying the life of a fashion photographer when he finds any moment of spare time. His work can be seen at http://perity.com.
Nathaniel will be presenting “Distributed Cluster Management with Chef”. - Matthew McVickar
- Matthew McVickar, 24, is a web developer, designer, usability engineer, cyclist, and music-obsessive originally from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Matthew is entirely self-taught, but counts the Zeldmans, Sagmeisters, and Donald Normans of the world among those from whose expertise he gathers inspiration. Graduating with a BA cum laude in Japanese Language and Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Matthew traded in plans for years of isolation as a translator of post-war fiction for a move to Hawaii to co-found and principal a Ruby on Rails consultancy and development firm called Sakuzaku. As of April 2009, Matthew has moved on into the invigorating world of freelancing. When he’s not hacking, debugging CSS for Internet Explorer, or producing dozen-page usability analyses, you can find him putting together mixtapes or DJing and performing live musical gigs in downtown Honolulu. He misses the snow in New England and his Japanese is getting rusty.
Matthew will be presenting “You Don’t Need a Logo”. - John Woodell
- John Woodell is a web developer at Google, working primarily on internal Rails applications. He is a Ruby enthusiast, and contributor to the appengine-apis project. John’s early career was in technical publishing and print advertising. He started creating web pages in the early ’90s, and spent over a decade developing sites in Perl, Java and PHP. John discovered RubyOnRails in 2005 and has been a dedicated Rubyist ever since. John also hosts Google Tech Talks on Ruby and related topics.
John will be presenting “Ship Your App In A Container”.
* Schedule subject to change.
