Meet thoughtbot at Railsconf 2012

We’ve had an abnormally warm Winter and Spring in Boston this year, but thoughtbot likes it EVEN HOTTER so we’re going south to Austin. As a bonus, Railsconf is there. If you’d like to meet a real, live thoughtbot employee, here’s who you can expect to see there:

Chad is the CEO of thoughtbot. You may recognize him from books like Backbone.js on Rails or movies like Humans Present: tmux. Chad’s been focusing on workshops and other learning materials. If you have an idea for a book, screencast, or workshop, come find Chad. I’m sure he’d love to hear about it!

Matt is our COO. He’s into movies, too, and he’s the mastermind behind such open source works as flutie and pacecar. If you have an idea for a web app or want to discuss your favorite kind of trail mix, look for Matt.

Joe isn’t always the CTO of thoughtbot, but when he is…actually, he always is. Joe is the original author of factory_girl and capybara-webkit. He’ll be working on those, as well as his secret project with Mike Burns. If you’re interested in any of those things, come find Joe.

Jon is one of the co-founders of thoughtbot. He wrote the paperclip gem. You may have heard of it. It’s kind of a big deal. He also wrote the excitingly-named cocaine. If you want to help out with paperclip, find Jon.

Mike is a long time thoughtbotter and just moved to Stockholm. He loves open source, Swedish slang, and the Oxford comma. If you want to discuss open source or pull requests, just follow your nose to the…well, look for Mike.

Josh likes testing more than he likes food or oxygen. He’s also the maintainer of factory_girl. If you want to yell about testing or factory_girl, Josh is ya boi.

Ben is a speaker and conference enthusiast. If you’re at a conference, look for Ben’s name. He’s probably on the speaker list under “v” for “Vim.” If you want to talk about speaking, Vim, or travel, you can’t do much better than Ben.

Prem is a frequent contributor to Rails (you may have heard of it), paperclip, and other open source libraries. If you have a strange problem with paperclip, the asset pipeline, or Rails in general, look for Prem; I bet he can tell you what’s happening.

Gabe brings humor, vocabulary, and Star Wars to thoughtbot. Gabe wrote kumade and can probably tell you how to pronounce it. He’s also a frequent contributor to open source, and has been focusing on shoulda’s matchers lately. For a good time, find Gabe.

Joel just started at thoughtbot after several years as a mercenary. He’s a chatty one, so if you’d like to talk about anything - Ruby, Rails, Sass, beer, dogs, beer for dogs, or the economic viability of dogs as laptop stands - find him. He’s the one with the big head.

Hope to see you there! If not, look for us at one of our other upcoming events.

See you at RailsConf

As in years past, the majority of thoughtbot will be at RailsConf this year.  In addition to just attending, we’re lucky to be involved in 3 sessions:

• Avoiding and Fixing Rails AntiPatterns I’ll be running (along with Tammer Saleh) a tutorial session on Monday.  We’ll cover a variety of useful tips and practical advice from our in-progress Rails AntiPatterns book.
• Building an API with Rails Joe Ferris will be on this panel session Tuesday along with representatives from Twitter, 37signals, Github, and the New York Times.
• Lapidary: the Art of Gemcutting Nick Quaranto will be giving this talk Thursday, reviewing the past and future of Gemcutter and how it became the new central RubyGems host.

We hope you can attend these.  And if you see us around, feel free to say hi.  I’ll be the one wearing shin guards.

I Will Miss You, Portland, Oregon

Basically all of thoughtbot went to Portland for RailsConf this year, and we had an awesome time. We also took a lot of photos, and put them on Flickr (see Eric Mill’s, Mike Burns’, and Tammer Saleh’s). Portland is an awesome city, thoughtbot is full of awesome people, and the Rails community has some gems of people in it too.

I guess RailsConf was a technical conference, but I don’t remember any of that stuff. The trip turned out to be filled with moments of zen for me. Here are just a few that I acquired in Portland this year:

• At a nearly empty Dante’s on a quiet Thursday night, a DJ plays music that nobody appreciates but a lone undulating man figure in front of the stage. A TV screen above the stage plays Escape From New York for a half an hour before silently switching over to Asian pornography.
• Playing Robotron 2084 at Ground Kontrol while a DJ spins up Judas Priest’s Exciter.
• At Powell’s Technical Books, in response to my question about which books he’s been reading here for fun, my art-history-graduate-turned-web-entrepreneur friend Greg calmly leads me to a book on Erlang.
• At the famous 24-hour donut shop Voodoo Donut, I order a Triple Chocolate Penetration, but am told they’re out, so I settle for a Diablo Rex.
• Wandering with Ben and Greg through the 3-floor parking garage under Whole Foods for over an hour in search of Greg’s 2-door blue Honda Civic.
• Riding in a cycle rickshaw at midnight, past a forlorn Pete who utters to us “I waited a long time.” without elaboration as he fades into the distance.
  
• Standing with Josh on the “Steel Bridge” at the river in the middle of the night, above at least 30 sleeping ducks on the riverbanks.
• I listen to Jared tell me that he also attempted to visit Voodoo Donut, but was halted at the door by a sign reading “Marriage in Progress”.
• Inside the Gravitron, I want to capture the bizarre gravity, so I take a photo of whoever is near me. It happens to be an n-teen-year old girl, whose nearby father is none too pleased when I show her the picture after the ride.
• Sitting motionless with Tammer for half a minute at the top of The Skyscraper in an open chair, 165 feet above Portland, staring at the nearby buildings and mountains, before beginning a second 75-mph journey through the sky.

More Upcoming Events

I was very excited to have my talk selected for RailsConf. I’ll be presenting Advanced Active Record Techniques: Best Practice Refactoring – I hope to see you there.

Tammer will be presenting BDD With Shoulda at ScotlandOnRails on April 4th-5th.

And as we previously mentioned, he’ll also be presenting on Shoulda at the MountainWest RubyConf on March 28th and 29th.

acts_as_conference was a lot of fun. It was great to meet some of you, and get to know others a bit better. Hopefully we can (re)connect at these upcoming events.

Caulk or Ford?

Fellow RailsConf attendees, we invite you to weigh in on one of the key issues sure to face all of us as we complete our pilgrimages to the ruby mecca that is Portland.

When you get to the river – will you float your wagon on a raft, or will you attempt to ford across?