Sushi in Minneapolis

(Mon Jan 15, 2007) [/Studio] #

We had the privilege of joining a sharp group of folks from the Ruby Users of Minnesota group for a tasty dinner and good conversation last week. Many thanks to Jonathan Dahl and Dan Grigsby for organizing the dinner, and also to Nick Sieger and Luke Francl for the insightful chats at my end of the table.

If you find yourself in Minneapolis trolling for great sushi, or just a place to hang up your parka and thaw out, I highly recommend Fuji Ya. And if you're coding Ruby in the local area, consider hanging out with the group. It's a great local community of Rubyists.

Thanks again for your hospitality, guys!

Pragmatic Studio 2007 Winter Schedule

(Sat Dec 30, 2006) [/Studio] #

To help you plan when you might visit us for Rails and Ruby training next year, we've posted the Pragmatic Studio schedule for the first quarter of 2007. The January offerings are now open for registration, and you can pre-register for later Studios.

The Rails Edge Conference: January 25-27 in Reston, VA
Ruby on Rails Training: January 10-12 in Minneapolis, MN
Ruby on Rails Training: February 12-14 in Bellevue, WA
Advanced Rails Training: March 12-14 in Chicago, IL
Enterprise Ruby Training: March 28-30 in Reston, VA

Hope to see you in the new year!

Pragmatic Studio Job Network

(Mon Oct 16, 2006) [/Studio] #

I'm excited to announce the Pragmatic Studio Job Network: an effective way to find and post jobs that specifically require the tools we teach folks to use in Pragmatic Studio—Ruby and Rails!

It's open to everyone, and all profits of the job board will be donated equally among various charities. I blogged the details over on the Studio blog.

If you know of projects looking to hire full-time, part-time, or on-the-spot Ruby and Rails talent, I hope you'll consider referring them to the job board. There's a very good possibility that they'll find the right person there, and as a bonus they'll be helping great causes.

Advanced Rails Studio

(Mon Apr 10, 2006) [/Studio] #

The state of the art of Rails is advancing rapidly. With each new Rails version and application built on Rails, developers are learning new techniques to solve problems quickly and elegantly. In turn, their web applications stand above the crowd.

We want to help you take your Rails knowledge to the next level. So today we're excited to announce a new Pragmatic Studio offering: Advanced Rails. It's a hands-on, master-level workshop that Dave Thomas and I are very much looking forward to teaching. You'll learn the cutting-edge techniques used by the experts to build killer Rails apps with confidence and efficiency.

We're still finalizing exactly when and where we'll hold this Studio. But if you're seriously interested in attending, please let us know and we'll get back to you when the details are confirmed.

Thanks!

Announcing Production Rails

(Sun Apr 02, 2006) [/Studio] #

So you've built your first Rails app, tested it thoroughly, and managed to secure a memorable domain name. Now it's time to release your app into the big, bad world. But before you launch, you'll need to ask (and answer) some important questions, including:

Is the app in shape to meet user demands?
Which production web and application server will you use?
What will the production environment look like—hardware, OS, supporting infrastructure, etc.?
How will you deploy incremental releases onto the production server(s)?
How will you monitor the app to ensure your customers are getting the best service?

These are questions everyone who has deployed a production Rails app has grappled with. Ruby on Rails is all about creating high-quality web applications quickly, but deploying those apps isn't always as straight forward. Added to which, the collective wisdom of the Rails community regarding deployment continues to evolve.

We think we have something that will help. Today we're excited to announce a new Pragmatic Studio offering: Production Rails. It's a hands-on workshop focused on helping you deploy your Rails applications into production, and effectively managing them when they get there. We'll have a server on hand with the network infrastructure and software to allow you to gain experience deploying Rails applications.

We don't take this topic lightly, which is exactly why we're bringing a leading Rails deployment expert aboard to help teach it. James Duncan Davidson has deployed a variety of Rails-based applications, big and small, for several companies. Moreover, he comes with extensive experience in hard-core Unix systems management and networking. We couldn't be happier to have the best of the best teaching Production Rails.