VIDEO UPDATE: What’s better than nerds, pizza, and beer? Our thoughts exactly. That’s why on May 19th, we gathered Toronto developers at the TWG studio for our debut #nerdlearn panel, THE FUTURE OF RAILS. A big thank you to our three panelists, Kevin Faustino, Pete Forde, and Scott Tadman, as well as to our wonderful(ly nerdy) audience for their amazing questions and participation.

As promised, our marketing superstar (and part-time videographer) Jon Lim filmed the event… enjoy:

Thank you to all the panelists and attendees that made it out to nerdlearn last night. We had a great time, and were very impressed with the quality of discussion, questions, and learning.

I’d like to give a special shout-out to our distinguished moderator, Dessy Daskalov, who did an amazing job of organizing the event, and setting the tone for our discussion on THE FUTURE OF RAILS. Thank you Dessy, we look forward to many more nerdlearn panels.

Some highlights from the night:

“PHP developers are typically like hunter gatherers… occasionally there are pockets of civilization (cakePHP, Fuel, CodeIgniter)”
- Scott parallels programming communities to the evolution of human subsistence strategies.

“When Unspace started off, our customers asked us what would happen if we all fell out of a plane? We encouraged competition, so our customers would be comfortable using Rails.”
- Pete pointed out that the biggest challenge facing Rails, is the lack of up and coming junior developers. Large companies rely on a reliable supply of developers to continually meet their software demands.

“The biggest problem Ruby has with moving to the enterprise, is the firewall… gems”
- Kevin on the resource restrictions RoR devs can make use of behind enterprise firewalls.

Thanks again, and hope to see you at future #nerdlearn panels!

OTHER RUBY ON RAILS EVENTS TO ATTEND:

May 20th (today): Ruby Job Fair at Unspace, featuring Rubyists, Employers, and Spiked Tea – http://rubyjobfair.ca
June 2nd: Technologic at UnSpace, featuring Giles Bowkett – http://technologicto.com
Every 3rd Monday (except for December): Rails Pub Nite, 7pm at the Rhino
Toronto Ruby Brigade (includes Ruby Hack Night and Ruby Book Club): http://www.meetup.com/torontoruby

On May 19th TWG is hosting, “Good Developers Drinking Beer and Learning from Each Other” code named #nerdlearn. Much akin to our Good People Drinking Wine events, #nerdlearn is for local developers looking to connect with some of TO’s best senior developers in a panel/Q&A format.

This inaugural #nerdlearn will focus on THE FUTURE OF RAILS (yes, in all caps), but going forward we’ll choose topics that influence the entire sphere of being an excellent developer.

RSVP here: http://guestli.st/55083

MEET THE PANELISTS:

Pete Forde, Unspace:

In 2004 Pete founded Unspace Interactive. Not long after, he transition from proprietary Microsoft development to becoming one of the first adopters of Ruby on Rails. He was the curator of the RubyFringe and FutureRuby conferences, and hosts the popular monthly “Rails Pub Nite” developer event — of which there has been over 50 to date.

An avid traveler and occasional touring rock drummer, Pete is passionate about music and film photography. He recently co-founded BuzzData, a data publishing and collaboration hub.

Pete also likes to explore places you’re not supposed to go:

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TWG’s own, Scott Tadman (brought to you by the number 4):

Since 1990, before most of us had even heard of the web, Scott’s been a database manager, network engineer, system administrator, software developer, creative director, writer, and electrician. So you can bet he’s involved at every stage of the projects TWG produces.

Scott is TWG’s Senior Architect; co-founder of PostageApp.com; and 4-time Science Fair Winner when he was a kid (unfortunately no photo available).

He is also the #4 Answerer on Stack Overflow for ruby-on-rails so be sure to ask him lots of questions at #nerdlearn – http://stackoverflow.com/tags/ruby-on-rails/topusers

You can also find Scott at: twitter.com/tadmanter & github.com/tadman

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Kevin Faustino, Nulayer:

Kevin is a passionate programmer and craftsmanship advocate who works at Nulayer as a Senior Software Developer. He has been professionally developing for 6 years, with the last 3 years focused on Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

When not working, he is organizing the Toronto Ruby Brigade and blogging at adventuresincoding.com.

You can also find Kevin at: twitter.com/kfaustino & github.com/kfaustino

We also suspect that Kevin likes Lost:

Meet Kevin, Scott and Pete on May 19th, 6:30pm at TWG HQ: http://guestli.st/55083

Other upcoming Dev events you might be interested in:

May 20th: Ruby Job Fair at Unspace, featuring Rubyists, Employers, and Spiked Tea – http://rubyjobfair.ca

June 2nd: Technologic at UnSpace, featuring Giles Bowkett – http://technologicto.com

1. Microsoft can’t possibly screw it up more than Ebay did. Seriously, Ebay did nothing with Skype in 4years… except sell it for almost exactly what they bought it for in 2005.

2. If they royally mess it up, then someone other than my mother might actually FaceTime me. (Apple get on this would ya)

3. Skype’s brand is so big (and respected) that they have the clout to influence Microsoft’s culture and approach to the net. Redmond’s foray into the web has been lacklustre at best. I give them minor credit for buying Hotmail back in the day, but they blew it not too long after. I suppose Bing is ok, but it’s hardly more than a plug-in for Internet Explorer* – a product which most people have to use, or don’t know how to get out of using. Skype however has the chance to shape how MS approaches their future web and mobile products, and that’s actually interesting to me.

Maybe we’ll have a 4 horse race after all: Google, Facebook, Apple, and bringing up the rear… Microsoft.

Bonus points…

The #4 reason why I’m totally fine with Microsoft buying Skype: After all these years, it appears that I’ll actually pay for a MS product!

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* the worst product in the history of the internet