Montreal.rb

January – events + jobs

This month is a very busy. I got 4 events and 6 job offers to present to you. I hope you a ready for a long post .

Events

The first event is organized by François Beausoleil at Notman House on February 2nd. Yes, your last president of Montreal.rb is inviting for an afternoon of Scala with Actors for Twitter analytic and a workshop evening of complex SQL queries. Being good in SQL, is always useful for any Rails developer. Both these events are free and you need to register (Scala, SQL). For more information, see François’ blog post.

The next event is The Cloud Robotics Hackathon (register here). It will take place at the Notman House from March 2nd to March 4th. I’d really like to see a Ruby team participating to that event. If you are interested, you can contact me, I’ll try to build the team.

 

The Cloud Robotics Hackathon aims to catalyse the creative process and bring roboticists, programmers, and hackers to produce social robotic applications that use collaboration between machines through cloud-computing, and natural interaction with humans in order to reach useful goals. The mains instance of the Hackathon will be held in Montreal, and teams around the world are invited to hack as well at on the same day under the same rules.

By encouraging makers and hackers to embrace the technologies of the future (being cloud computing and robotics) we ensure that today’s creative minds will be prepared for tomorrow’s challenges. Hackers are invited to let their imagination go wild and come up with their own project ideas. A sample project could involve a cellphone robot using cloud computing to understand speech, text-to-speech, and web services to play a text based adventure game with a human in a more natural way than typing and clicking.

Don’ forget that Confoo will occur from February 29th to March 2nd at Hilton Bonaventure Hotel. Don’t miss your chance to socialize with Charles Olivier Nutter (headius – JRuby), Marc-André Lafortune (Ruby MRI), Joseph Wilk (Cucumber) and more from Ruby and other technologies. See the sessions list and register.

The first edition of StartupWeekend is coming in Montreal for the first time Feb 3rd to Feb 5th. The goal is to team up with entrepreneurs, designers and developers and launch a startup in 54 hours. Show how the members of Montreal.rb are good at launching product. If you are interested, I can help you organize a Ruby team. Just send me an email.

We have sponsors such as Fasken Martineau, HEC Montreal, Real Ventures, BDC and also developer-friendly sponsors such as github, context.io or uservoice.

We’re now partnering with StartupWeekend to give a 66% discount on tickets price (25$ instead of 75$), to encourage fellow ruby developers participate in the event. Send me a message to get the discount code.

Jobs

The first job offer is from GIGA Base. They are opening a software team in Montreal for the a China based company.

GIGA is an IT and Greentech company which is pioneering green material sourcing and construction in China with web-based softwares and services that evaluate project data, material chemistry and connect the entire green building industry.

GIGA is the go-to resource to find and source green products and services. Based in Shanghai, GIGA is an international greentech and green building pioneer. A global catalyst for safe, healthy products.

We believe architecture and product design can regenerate our environment. Our mission is to meet China’s growing demand for healthy products and services.

A totally new project is starting in Montreal. If you are eager to try to build you own company, this offer is for you.

Are you a rails expert? 

Are you sick of working on projects that never see the light of day?  **I have 7 Customers waiting and ready to pay.

Are you interested in being a part of a project that will revolutionize the way mobile equine professionals (Translate: Horse Dentists…crazy right?) do their job?

I’m unlike any other partner you’ll work with. (Yes, I’m not your boss, we are partners in this together).

I have been hitting the phones over the past 3 months working with hundreds of potential customers in this market and have ultimately flushed out a business problem that many of them face. The 7 I have ready to pay are the most passionate and eager of the bunch and will be our beta users.

Here’s what I need: I am looking for someone who is ready to put in a minimum of 30 hours/week on this project. I also want someone who will stick around and support their own code while we beta and then start to add new functions and features. I need a creative coder who will help me make decisions and be a part of the entire development process, a long-term (paid) partner who is ready to kick some serious ass.

By the way, I’m a huge fan of 37 Signals and so my goal here is to put out 1/2 of a product, get feedback, and refine. You’re going to love working on this!

If you’re interested in hearing more drop me a note at davidwalawrence@gmail.com or even better, call me at 514 926 7706 and we can go over the project in greater detail.

 

Qwalify (who paid the beers during last meet-up) is also searching RoR developers. They are based in Calgary but they are evaluating moving in Montreal. You can get in contact with them.

National Film Board of Canada is looking for someone to coach their Web team on finding the right BDD framework. Short contract of approximately 35 non consecutive hours. The contract must be completed by the end of March 2012.

Marc Lamarche from Swakes is also searching a partner/developer for his project. Don’t hesitate to contact him for any questions.

Recoset as searching for a DevOps guy. Contact them for more details.

This is it for January. I’ll see you all on February 21st. I’m still searching talkers. I’m counting on you.

Job offers

I’ve received a new job offer and a conference last week. I didn’t had time to post them so I do it today.

The job offer is from Antoine de Brabant from Jobbook. He should be at the next meetup on September 20th if you want to meet him in person.

Jobbook is looking for expert Ruby on Rails programmer(s) to lead the development project. Working with a team of motivated individuals in our 7000 sq. ft. downtown offices (includes basketball, workout center, showers, mini-golf…), Jobbook is an ideal environment for the Ruby entrepreneur.

We are launching next month across the top 40 Universities in North America, lead by our team of 50 student partners (including the Student Association presidents of McGill, Johns Hopkins, UCLA and UCBerley among others). This is a great time to join the team and help build the career site we’ve all been waiting for.

Send your candidatures to Antoine (antoine@jobbook.com)

- Share options and salary to be determined upon level of expertise / dedication to the project.

- Also accepting candidatures for junior positions.

The conference is a reminder of what was posted at the start of May by Francois. I should have three 10% coupon. If you are interested, send my an email. EDIT : The coupon for EvenBrite is MTLRUBYBOB. Here is Francois’ post.

Louis-Philippe Carignan from Elapse Technologies informed me that Robert C. Martin, Uncle Bob himself, is coming to Montreal to give his Clean Coders class. Uncle Bob will be in Montreal on October 24th and Quebec on the 27th. The class is 2 days each time. This is an excellent opportunity to get the best information!

Register on EventBrite.

For next meet up, I will post information about it tonight. I have some problem to find a local for us since Notman House has given our time frame to an other group. If you know a good place (free) around a subway station (preferably downtown), send me an email.

EDIT : Add EvenBrite coupon : MTLRUBYBOB.