schedule.html

---
layout: master
title: Steel City Ruby Conference 2013
---
<section class="content">
  <div class="container full-schedule">

    <h1>Schedule</h1>
    <div id="friday" class="day">
      <h2>Friday</h2>
      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Carina C. Zona</h2>
          <p>
          Carina C. Zona is a web developer and consultant.  She has taught for
          Girl Develop It, Black Girls Code, RailsBridge, PyLadies, and
          RailsGirls. She served on RailsBridge core team and Women Who Code core
          team. She is also a certified sex educator. In her spare time, she
          engineers baked goods.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>Handcrafting Community</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72671955" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/cczona/handcrafting-community-steel-city-rubyconf-2013">Slides</a></p>
          <p>
          Community-building can seem like a herculean effort that must be
          coordinated among many.  But it doesn't have to be.  One is plenty.
          </p>

          <p>
          How can we handcraft a fulfilling code career?  How can we support
          peers in developing theirs, whether newcomer or artisan?  How can we
          contribute, without having to be expert?  How do we develop social
          capital among community members, and channel those investments into
          people who are just entering? How will we craft a thriving community,
          using only simple tools & scarce local resources?
          </p>

          <p>
          We'll examine the history of major successes -- in Ruby community,
          Python, and well beyond -- and extract lessons to apply generally. It's
          a story that weaves in personal narratives of rising into that, both
          well and clumsily.  It's about transforming minor ambitions & frequent
          iterations into a scope of change that looks amazing. By making choices
          to do small things well and thoughtfully, rather than with concern for
          how they scale.
          </p>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Julie Pagano</h2>
          <p>
          Julie is a software engineer who likes to focus on the front-end and user 
          experience. When she's not working at her day job, she focuses on 
          championing diversity in tech and building the Pittsburgh tech community. 
          She co-organizes and teaches classes for the Pittsburgh chapter of Girl 
          Develop It, an organization that helps teach women how to code.
          </p>
          <p>
          Julie is also known for her smashing Feminist Hulk impressions and her 
          Roomba-powered cat army. If you listen carefully, you may be able to hear 
          her screaming her catchphrase, "my technology will be intersectional or 
          it will be BULLSHIT!"
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>I Am a Front-End Web Dev (and so can you!)</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72682175" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p><a href="https://speakerdeck.com/juliepagano/i-am-a-front-end-web-dev-and-so-can-you-scrc-2013">Slides</a></p>
          <p>
          Want to improve your front-end web development skills, but aren't sure 
          where to start? Then this is the talk for you! We'll learn about HTML, 
          CSS, JavaScript, and more. This crash course will give you a jumpstart 
          and point you in the right direction to learn more.
          </p>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Greg Baugues</h2>
          <p>
          I started programming on a TRS-80 when I was seven years old, and have
          spent most of my professional career straddling the line between
          programming and client facing work. For the last six years I have
          worked at Table XI, where I currently serve as Director of Client
          Services. I live in Chicago with my beautiful wife, Rachel.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>Developers and Depression</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72690223" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p>
          I am a developer, and I have Type II Bipolar and ADHD.
          </p>

          <p>
          Over the last six months I've been writing and speaking about mental
          illness in the developer community, ever since we lost one of our
          coworkers, Caleb Cornman, to untreated mental illness. There's a lot of
          shame around being sick, and mental illness is treated much differently
          than physical illness, which causes people who are suffering to avoid
          finding help.
          </p>

          <p>
          In this talk I will share the story of my struggles with depression,
          and getting diagnosed with ADHD and Bipolar, why it's especially
          relevant for developers, and how we can help those around us who are
          suffering from mental illness.
          </p>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Lightning Talks</h2>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72703334" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Angela Harms</h2>
          <p>
          Angela Harms is an agile developer, coach, facilitator, and
          instigator. She loves beautiful code that emerges from
          collaboration, and learning new ways to make it work. She lives with
          her unschooling family and a bunch of other nerds in Cleveland’s
          historic Ohio City.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>Being Human: a collaborative approach to making</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72700176" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p>
          Hey, nerds. How good are you at real collaboration? I don't mean
          cooperation, where everyone's doing their part. A collaborative
          solution is more than the sum of those parts. And I don't mean
          choosing the best idea among the competitors. Collaboration lets us
          create new ideas that none of us could have come up with on our own.
          Let's talk about what gets in the way of that kind of juice. Open up,
          make mistakes, learn, grow, and watch what emerges when we
          collaborate.
          </p>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Ashish Dixit</h2>
          <p>
          Ashish is a developer eagerly plotting his path along the <a
          href="http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596518387/walking_the_long_road.html">lifelong
          journey</a> of becoming a better problem solver. His current focus is to become a
          full-stack developer who can solve interesting problems through technology.
          </p>

          <p>
          Though he knows his journey has just begun, Ashish is a key member of the
          <a href="https://engineering.groupon.com/">Groupon Engineering</a> team where he
          collaborates with talented individuals to build internal tools. While he is not
          coding & learning from awesome people around him, Ashish likes to dabble in
          cooking, occasional running & bike rides when the weather is nice, and
          excessive tweeting about any delays involving trains, planes and automobiles.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>Channel your inner Jason Bay: How to be productive on a new Team</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72745494" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p>
          You've landed a great opportunity to work with some of the smartest
          people in the industry. You can barely contain the enthusiasm to learn and
          contribute to the team. You may not have all the required technical skills on
          day 1, but you are confident that you will get there with the support from your
          team. It's exciting & stressful at the same time because you need to start
          contributing right away.
          </p>

          <p>
          A lot of developers find themselves in these shoes, just as I did in
          not-too-distant past. This talk offers specific strategies developers of all
          skill levels can use to start making an immediate impact. These strategies have
          enabled me to contribute quickly on a new team and I want to share it with you
          so that they can help you on each new project or team you work with. I also
          want to share specific gotchas and share some tips on how to adapt and continue
          to improve once you have become productive member of the team.
          </p>

          <p>The talk will primarily focus on:</p>

          <ul>
            <li>Techniques for quickly learning a new codebase</li>
            <li>Finding ways to have a significant impact quickly</li>
            <li>Ways in which you can continue to be more awesome</li>
          </ul>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Jim Weirich</h2>
          <p>
          Jim Weirich first learned about computers when his college adviser
          suggested he take a computer science course: "It will be useful,
          and you might enjoy it." With those prophetic words, Jim has been
          developing now for over 25 years, working with everything from
          crunching rocket launch data on supercomputers to wiring up servos
          and LEDs on micro-controllers.  Currently he loves working in Ruby
          and Rails as the Chief Scientist at Neo, but you can also find him
          strumming on his ukulele as time permits.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>Friendly Flying Robots with Ruby</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72709097" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p><a href="https://github.com/jimweirich/presentation_flying_robots/blob/master/pdf/friendly_flying_robots-sans_movies.key.pdf?raw=true">Slides</a></p>
          <p>We use Ruby in our Web applications. We use Ruby in our scripting. We
          even use Ruby in our mobile phone applications these days. But here's
          something new: Using Ruby to control flying robots.</p>

          <p>The Parrot AR Drone is a consumer grade quadcopter designed to be
          controlled from your smartphone over a WiFi signal. However, the
          network protocols for controlling the drone are open and published in
          the AR Drone SDK, so what is more natural than using our favorite
          programming language to communicate and control these fun devices.</p>

          <p>This talk will cover the nature of the AR Drone protocol and the
          details of getting a Ruby program to communicate to and control the
          drone. We will talk about the challenges of remote controlling flying
          objects. And if all goes well, we will actually demonstrate all of the
          above.</p>

          <p>After all, admit it.  When robots finally take over the world,
          wouldn't you prefer that they are programming in a friendly
          programming language like Ruby?</p>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>

    <div id="saturday" class="day">
      <h2>Saturday</h2>
      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Konstantin Haase</h2>
          <p>
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>Architecting the Chaos</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72753961" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p><a href="https://speakerdeck.com/rkh/steel-city-ruby-architecting-chaos">Slides</a></p>
          <p>
          Basically a talk about the development of the Travis CI architecture,
          how an Open Source project without a clear team structure and initially
          no company behind it could become the build system for more than 36k
          projects without collapsing.
          </p>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Stephen Ball</h2>
          <p>
          Stephen Ball first learned programming playing with BASIC on the
          family's Atari 800 in the 1980s. Now he's the Lead Developer at
          PhishMe, Inc. where he gets to write Ruby and Rails code from home
          for a living. When he's not programming Stephen enjoys spending time
          with his wife and two children, playing videogames, and writing posts
          for <a href="http://rakeroutes.com">Rake Routes</a>.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>Deliberate Git</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72762735" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p><a href="https://speakerdeck.com/sdball/deliberate-git">Slides</a></p>
          <p>
          Your code can only say what it does right now. You can’t look at a
          method and see its history: the alternative approaches that have been
          considered, the algorithms that have already been outgrown, the
          simpler code that has been replaced, or the complicated code that’s
          been refactored.
          </p>
          <p>
          Not capturing this knowledge is a huge loss. In Deliberate Git I'll
          share how to use Git to write detailed commits that craft a cohesive
          story about the code without giving up a good programming flow.
          </p>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Lightning Talks</h2>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72813386" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Avdi Grimm</h2>
          <p>
          Avdi Grimm has been hacking Ruby code for over 10 years, and is still
          loving it. He is chief aeronaut at <a href="http://shiprise.net">ShipRise</a>,
          head chef at <a href="http://rubytapas.com">RubyTapas.com</a>,
          and a <a href="http://rubyrogues.com">Ruby Rogue</a>.
          He lives in southern Pennsylvania with his wife and five children, and 
          in his copious spare time blogs and podcasts at 
          <a href="http://avdi.org/devblog">Virtuous Code</a>
          and <a href="http://wideteams.com/">Wide Teams</a>.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>You Gotta Try This</h3>
          <p>
          A talk about metaprogramming, coding for fun, and the joy of sharing.
          </p>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Kerri Miller</h2>
          <p>
          Kerri Miller is a Sr Software Developer and Team Lead based in the
          Pacific Northwest. She has worked at enterprise companies,
          international ad agencies, boutique consultancies, start-ups, and every
          place in between. She mentors and teaches students and interns through
          RailsBridge and other programs. Having an insatiable curiosity, she has
          worked as a lighting designer, marionette puppeteer, sous chef, and
          professional poker player, and enjoys hiking, collecting Vespas, and
          working with glass.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72770891" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p><a href="https://speakerdeck.com/kerrizor/you-cant-miss-what-you-cant-measure-steel-city-ruby-conf-2013">Slides</a></p>
          <p>
          Adrift at sea, a GPS device will report your precise latitude and
          longitude, but if you don't know what those numbers mean, you're just
          as lost as before. Similarly, there are many tools that offer a wide
          variety of metrics about your code, but other than making you feel
          good, what are you supposed to do with this knowledge? Let's answer
          that question by exploring what the numbers mean, how static code
          analysis can add value to your development process, and how it can help
          us chart the unexplored seas of legacy code.
          </p>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>John Downey</h2>
          <p>
          John Downey is a developer working at Braintree. Braintree helps
          businesses accept credit card payments online with great
          development tools and first class support. There he has worked on
          their highly available infrastructure and integrations into the
          banking system. In his free time he contributes to open source
          projects and mentors high school students in the FIRST Robotics
          Competition.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>DevOps for the Rubyist Soul</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72791610" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p><a href="https://speakerdeck.com/jtdowney/devops-for-the-rubyist-soul-at-steel-city-ruby-2013">Slides</a></p>
          <p>
          Ruby developers have many great options for simply hosting their
          web applications. But what happens when your product outgrows
          Heroku? Managing your own servers can be an intimidating task for
          the average developer. This session will cover the lessons we've
          learned at Braintree from building and maintaining our
          infrastructure. It will cover how we leverage Ruby to automate and
          control all of our environments. Some specific topics we'll cover:
          </p>


          <ul>
            <li>Orchestrating servers with capistrano</li>
            <li>Using puppet for configuration management</li>
            <li>Our cap and puppet workflow using git</li>
            <li>How vagrant can provide a sane test environment</li>
            <li>Some pitfalls you should avoid"</li>
          </ul>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="row session">
        <div class="span6 speaker">
          <h2>Leon Gersing</h2>
          <p>
          i tend binary zen gardens in Columbus, OH.
          </p>
        </div>
        <div class="span6 talk">
          <h3>Keep Software Weird</h3>
          <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72780827" width="400"
            height="200" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen
            mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
          <p>
          How much code coverage does it take it ship a minimal viable product?
          How many Scrum Certifications does it take to make your team agile? How many
          languages learned make a journeyman a master? Currently, in software, there is
          an expressed desire to be taken seriously as craftspeople. To this end, we've
          introduced process, metrics and quantifiable boundaries as goal posts to hold
          up to those who may not understand what is involved in shipping quality
          software. As this practice becomes normal, developers are faced with an
          ever-expanding landscape of techniques, practices and pressure from thought
          leaders to take extra course work or certifications to validate the assertion
          that you are, in fact, a software developer. While some may see this as a
          necessary evolution of our field, I see it as a albatross round the neck of the
          creative developer looking to explore the depths of what is possible. While the
          safety of a well worn path may provide solace to the uninitiated, I find
          dogmatic implementation oppressive and exclusionary to those interested in
          exploring alternative approaches to solving problems with technology. Join me
          in an exploration of what I believe makes us unique as a subculture in this
          business world; examples of how we came to be by challenging the established
          idioms of the past in order to move forward into something exciting and new. To
          be our best we must be willing to dive into the unknown, to loose the binds of
          convention and explore the vast expanse of the unfamiliar. We must dare to be
          wrong, to be new, to be foolish, to be amazing and keep software weird.
          </p>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</section>