For the job offer, Mentel searched for a web programmer beginner to expert in Ruby on Rail or PHP. Hopper.Travel was searching for a Ruby on Rails developper. And remember that FounderFuel take inscription until July 1st.

To recap: our mission was to build an application where people would register for events: simple in idea, complex in execution. Some gems I used:

• Rails (d’oh!)
• Capybara
• Steak
• RSpec

Of course, the full gem manifest is available in the repository’s Gemfile.

I think we made good progress. We haven’t done any UI work, but that’s something an enterprising people can fix in an evening. If you enjoyed the evening, send me your GitHub username and I’ll give you commit rights. Then you can code away at will!

The book club was also a blast: we had 5 books to exchange tonight. That was great news for me. We had books by Steve Krug, Russ Olssen and Noel Rappin.

Do you remember the survey to see if we move or not? Well, we are: the Notman House will be our venue starting on the May 17^th meeting. The Notman House is a shared co-working space with a venue for hosting meetups, such as ours. Sylvain Carle was very happy to have us move to the Notman House. Please change your address books: we’re moving to Sherbrooke and Clark.

In other news, I’m announcing the end of my tenure as the Montreal.rb organizer. I would like someone to volunteer to become the next organizer. Your tasks and responsibilities, should you choose to accept them, will be:

1. To reserve a venue once per month;
2. Find topics of interest and presenters to do them;
3. Announce (through the blog and ad system) meetings and RSVP links;
4. Keep the community informed of relevant news and topics through the blog;
5. Present a cohesive community to the world.

I will resign just before our July and August break. I had a great time as the Montreal.rb organizer, and count myself lucky to have had such great speakers and technologies to talk about with all of you.

• The 4-Hour Workweek and Timothy Ferris
• GitX (L)—A fork of Pieter’s GitX, with better UI
• Startup Gods
• Dropbox
• AppSumo
• Geckoboard
• Komando
• Le Calendrier des activités en TI au Québec
• Ignoring local changes to tracked files from Git
• Talker—Founded in Montreal, acquired by Teambox

Email Marketing:

• Campaign Monitor
• CakeMail—A Montreal Company!
• MailChimp
• SendGrid
• Postmark

Testing:

• Steak
• Capybara Railscast
• Capybara

Project Management:

• FogBugz
• Pivotal Tracker
• Teambox

Thanks again to Olivier, Colin and Sean for their excellent presentations.

A quick word from Olivier:

I believe the Job Fair is a good idea, since many people are either looking for something or have something to offer. If you haven’t already done so, please send me an email to tell me the details of your offers so I can post the information here. I’ll aggregate the information and do a separate post for the job fair results.

Thanks to all for braving the weather and here’s to seeing you next month, on March 15th, for the Ruby Implementation Month!

I also proposed a new format for the meetings. We’ll keep the 2 presentation format, but I’m adding a couple of thing. The new schedule will be the following:

1. We’ll start with the Book Club: bring one or more books you want to share with the rest of the group. Register your book at bookcrossing.com. Leave it on the table when you come in. I’ll ask volunteers to talk about their books: just a couple of minutes – what did you like about your book, why you bought it and so on. Email me what book you’ll bring so I know roughly how many books will be on the table.
2. Every 2 or 3 meetings, we’ll add the Gem Club: what gems did you recently use, how did your integration go, any caveats you want to mention. There’s a gem club in February. Tell me if you want to talk about your gems.
3. After that we’ll have the regular one or two presentations, keeping essentially the same format – 10 to 15 minutes per presenter. I’ll have a monthly theme: be prepared.
4. Any general public announcements would go here.
5. Finally, if you are looking for a contractor / intern / employee / employer / client, now’s the time to talk about it. Bring your business cards to exchange with other people. Send me your information so I can post it here as well.

Don’t forget to bring your friends: we were 32 yesterday evening. We had one of the bigger rooms at the CRIM. Great venue. The more friends, the merrier it’ll be, and having more people exposed to Ruby spreads the knowledge around!

Just to give you an idea, here are the people who were looking for a contractor / intern / employee yesterday night:

• Bandzoogle was looking for both interns and a full-time employee, their hiring announcement is Bandzoogle is hiring !;
• Hugo Frappier was looking for someone to pair with him on a business plan;
• Code Génome was also looking for someone.

There were more, and I’ll add them to the list as the information trickles in. Follow us on Twitter as @montrealrb.

Thanks again for coming, and see you next February 15^th for Database Month. I’m still looking for 2 presenters: tell me if you want to present.

Reach me at francois@teksol.info.

Jeff Heon posted the slides to his talk on Slideshare: Clojure for Rubyists. Cyril Robert didn’t have slides, but you can start with Django‘s home page.

Hugo Frappier announced a Rails training session at the CRIM. More information on the Ruby on Rails – Beginner and Ruby on Rails – Intermediate course pages.

Really great presentations by our “outsiders”. Thanks again for coming to meet us!

Final announcement: I’m looking for theme ideas. I believe having a theme for the evening is a great way to structure talks. Email me or leave a comment. Our next meeting will be on October 19th.

• Morgan Tocker
• Paul Mylchreest
• Jonathan Palardy
• François Beausoleil
• Jean-Sébastien Cournoyer
• Guillaume Bouchard
• Gary Haran
• Benjamin Yoskovitz
• Carl Mercier
• Sean Braithwaite
• Martin Aumont
• Marc-André Lafortune
• Aanand Prasad
• Blake Mizerany

On a related note, Drew Sechrist mentioned he was looking to build a team of engineers for his new startup, kuuzuu. Drew said he might be interested in building and hosting his team in Montreal. Show him all the talent we’ve got!

With this logo, and Gary’s talk, we suddenly find ourselves ready to generate lots of new content. To this end, I propose we have a Hacknight on March 4th, at 6:30 PM where we will dissect and extend one gem we, as a group, will choose. We have lots of great candidates.

The format I want to explore is as a group we concentrate on a single project. We have received permission to use Bloom’s offices again, so we have access to the big screen for coding. Essentially, I’m proposing a big pairing session, with 10-12 heads instead of 2. If you’re interested, please RSVP.

PS: If you want the logo, download it from http://teksol.s3.amazonaws.com/montreal-rb.png.

So, here they are: http://github.com/jpalardy/etc_config/tree/master

Update: Also, mina’s talk slides are here.