Madison Ruby Conference is more than a typical one-track conference. We’re committed to bringing together two great communities by showcasing the assets of the local Ruby community and allowing Madison visitors a chance to experience one of the best, brainiest, and least-expensive places in the United States to live and work. This is the only conference in the Midwest where you’ll meet developers, yogis, business developers, and perhaps even artisan foodies all in the same place. Inspire, energize, and connect with Madison Ruby Conference.
Our Speakers
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Our Workshops
Need to brush up on Ruby or related technologies? Get a jumpstart just before the conference with world-class workshops by leaders in the community. These one-day classes on August 22 will give you the tools and connections you need to get started or to reach the next level. Classes will run from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM. Lunch will be provided.
Don't Despair
Pairing with team members possessing disparate skills With Elisabeth Hendrickson and Pat Maddox
Software teams can benefit when developers pair with designers and testers. It can be challenging when people possess disparate skills. In this workshop we will explore effective pairing strategies and techniques.
Rapid Prototyping with Middleman, Slim, Sass, & Compass
Bermon Painter
Discover the benefits of building a rapid prototyping framework with Sass & Compass along with the static site generator, Middleman. Rapid prototyping is an easy way to streamline your development process and involve UX & visual designers as well as front-end developers. The workshop will cover:
- How to rapid prototype pages
- Creating a modular front-end framework of widgets
- Pre-processors in all their glory (Slim, Sass & Compass, Coffeescript)
The real power in rapid prototyping is that it allows you to stand up a faux application to test a proof of concept without dedicating a lot of precious developer time. Since it's all built on Ruby it's easy to migrate over to the real application later or toss away.
RailsBridge Womens Outreach Workshop
The target audience is anyone who has a laptop computer and is willing to devote a Wednesday evening and full day on Thursday to learning how to develop a web application using the popular Ruby on Rails framework.
This workshop is intended to reach out to women (of all skill levels) who are interested and / or new to Ruby and Rails.
In this workshop, we'll take you through building a complete web application using Ruby on Rails. By the end of the workshop, you'll have an application on the internet that connects to a database and reads and writes information.
Registration for this free workshop is now open.
Objects, Rails, and Long-Living Code
Noel Rappin
Over the past year or two, there's been a lot of conversation in the Rails community about the applicability of Object-Oriented techniques to Rails applications. This conversation becomes especially important as the Rails community is increasingly managing long-lived applications. Techniques and phrases like "DCI", or "Rails is not your application", or "Composition is better than inheritance" or "Dependency Injection" get thrown around. All these techniques sound impressive, but if you came to Rails precisely because it didn't have the kind of architectural overhead that other frameworks required then you're probably looking at these ideas with some skepticism.
One thing missing from this debate for many developers is a chance to create and work with code developed using some of these techniques. In this workshop, a sample application will be presented and extended using many of the code techniques listed, with special emphasis on isolated testing. At the end of the day, attendees will have a much better sense of how these OO and more structured techniques work in Ruby and Rails, and where they work and might not work for their future projects.
Our Venue
In 1998, local businessman W. Jerome Frautschi made a breathtaking, multimillion dollar commitment for the development of a cultural arts district in downtown Madison. The Overture Foundation was established to solve the space needs of the city's major arts organizations, and internationally famous architect Cesar Pelli designed the project.
Madison Ruby is taking over this venue for three days. Using everything from breakout rooms, such as Rotunda Studio to the three-hundred and fifty seat Playhouse Theater we have a visually striking environment to spark and exhilarate our attendees.
