From: Bill Guindon Date: 2005-02-19T00:58:25+09:00 Subject: Re: Virtual Ruby Group On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 22:36:06 +0900, Lyle Johnson wrote: > On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 23:04:34 -0500, Zach Dennis wrote: > > > Sort of, and sort of not. I remember going to a few other Ruby Groups > > web sites (I think Seattle.rb was the most recent and it was mentioned > > on the list) and I really the liked the idea of people getting together > > and starting projects together. I thought this was really awesome of > > these groups to do this. > > Oh, yes. Definitely. > > > irc is great, but i don't know if it is the right spot to solicit to > > others, "hey do you want to band together and work on a project > > together?!" I dont' want to disrespect the #ruby-lang channel or scare > > people far far away. I'd think it's a fine place to do that. And for a larger project, you can set up another channel. > This mailing list and the IRC channel seem like the obvious places to > do that already; that's why it would sort-of worry me if we set Yet > Another Web Site where you go to solicit other people to join you on a > Ruby-related project. That is to say, I don't want us to get so > "diluted" that it actually becomes *harder* to find Ruby people > because you're not sure web site, or mailing list, or IRC channel to > flock to. Splintering the group can be a problem, but all that's needed is occassional posts here announcing updates, or a couple of group members to add urls, irc channel name, etc. to their sig files. > > I was thinking that a Virtual Ruby Group could be as simple as a couple > > people who didn't have other rubyists in their area to band together on > > their own ML, and to setup online meetings once a month to start a > > project together. This seems like a good way for ruby programmers, both > > new and advanced to be apart of something. This could get as geeky as > > people with WebCams, Microphones, etc... or just be a 2 people emailing > > each other back and forth. > > Oh, yes, now this sounds fine once a group's established. I haven't > yet had a chance to look at Skype (http://www.skype.com) but it might > be something that you could use; it seems to have a pretty high geek I've not tried skype, but I hear good things about it. I've done quite a bit of voice chat (in fact, I'm chatting a buddy in Georgia atm), and it can work well. Not sure how well it works in large crowds, about the most I've tried is 6 or 7, and that may be a realistic limit. > quotient. ;) And of course Hal mentioned the desire to integrate pair > programming capabilities into FreeRIDE; there might be other > Ruby-based technologies that you could develop to facilitate these > virtual user group meetings. In our case, we tend to rely on http://rafb.net/paste/ for quick/dirty stuff. We also have a "private" version of that, but it's quite limited - ie: doesn't keep a history, etc. I would love to see a "team" version of nopaste, that keeps a project history. Something that falls between Forums and CVS. Perhaps this should be the first project -- building a small team communication center? > > I may be wishful thinking here, and this wasn't entirely thought out to > > be honest. I was just thinking when I was at the Ruby Meetup Group(s) > > web site, "WOW there are alot of 1-2 people groups, if they joined > > together there'd be a whole slew of rubyists, just think what they could > > accomplish!". > > Yes, and let me be clear that I'm not trying to throw cold water on > the idea. I'm glad you're excited about it and hope that it goes > somewhere. I'm one of those people out in the Ruby desert (that is the > Tennessee Valley) and until I recruit some more guys at work to get > into Ruby, the Internet is my virtual user group too. ;) > > This also seems like the appropriate place to mention the RubyCentral, > Inc. codefest grant program (see http://www.rubycentral.org); it is a > program designed to provide support for local and regional groups > working on development of Ruby libraries. The first round of > solicitations has just ended (i.e. you can't apply for a grant right > now), but if this first round of work goes well there may be > additional ones in the future. I look forward to see how that works out, and I'm hoping for the best. I still have a the beginnings of an xBase library that I'd love to find a team to help flesh out. -- Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)