Ruby Manor: Now with less vapour

About a month or so ago, James Adam and I announced Ruby Manor. We’ve not been idle in this time, and there’s now a Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor/ for people to sign up to if they want to participate.

As we mentioned on the website and initial announcement, Ruby Manor is an experiment in putting on a conference. The major part of that, for you, is that we want the content, and to some extent the on-the-day schedule, to be community driven. In our experience the typical conference goes like this: Announcement, Call for Proposals, nothing, nothing, nothing, Schedule Announced, panic about what the hell you’re actually going to talk about (if your talk was accepted) or decide whether or not it’s worth the ticket price (if you’re not), Conference starts. We want to fill in those blanks.

If you have an idea for a talk:

  • suggest it on a new thread
  • listen out for feedback from the community
  • use the feedback to shape your talk
  • keep the discussion going, these people are your audience, use them!

When reading you should reply to these proposals with:

  • a simple “Yeah, that sounds interesting”

  • questions about an outline of the talk so you can…

  • …suggestions to help the speaker shape the talk to cover what you are interested in

  • offers to help the speaker out

As it gets closer to the date of the conference we’ll start choosing the talks for the conference based on those with the most community activity and interest. So as both an attendee-speaker and an attendee-listener it’s in your best interests to use this group to make Ruby Manor what you want it.

Thanks,

Murray Steele & James Adam