Nextly is a funded startup that makes your streams (Twitter, Facebook,
RSS) easily browseable and they’re hiring experienced Ruby developers in Montreal.

Two great talks are lined up for this month’s Montreal.rb.

The first talk has for subject “4 Hour Work Week for Hackers” from the infamous Marc-André Cournoyer. There are some pearls of wisdom in that talk. I’m sure we’ll all appreciate it.
 

The second talk is by the one and only Hugo Frappier and is entitled “10 Things I Learned at Railsconf” where he’ll give the low-down.

When : May 15th, 2012 at 18:30

Where : Notman House

Who : Everyone who is interested in Ruby on Rails or Ruby

How much : Free

Register : No need, just come, you’re welcome

Questions? : Contact Gary

I’ve also received some job offer for Rails work.

Nextly is searching a Ruby developer to do remote work for a Boston based funded start-up. For more information, they will be there tonight and you can contact Joy Khoriaty.

Bandzoogle, a Montreal based start-up, is searching a full-time Rails developer. You can have more information on their job page.

Ambrosia Technology is looking to hire one part- and one full-time experienced ruby programmers. They are a company currently in the process of developing a cloud-based POS system for restaurants. For more information, please contact Sebastien De Vuyst.

Hopper is organizing another Hack/Reduce Hackathon in Montreal on April 28th. 400 Hadoop nodes, free coffee, free food, free entrance. Don’t miss you chance. Register here.

EDIT: Update Nextly information

Our talks will be around a prize draw. You’ll be able to register shortly before the meet-up. The prizes include a JRuby t-shirt, 2 JRuby stickers, a bunch of Montreal.rb stickers, a Javascript: The Good Parts book. If you want to add something to the list (give something to someone in the community), send me a message and I’ll add it to the list.

In the first talk will be by Mathieu Chartier – president of W3Qc. He will present the application views. He’ll explain how to use HTML5 markup to have the best SEO score. You’ll see a lot of examples everywhere in the app.

 

In the second talk, Martin Provencher (a.k.a me) will show you how to use different templating engine to render those HTML5 views. We’ll at least see erb, haml, slim and mustache. Which one is the faster to render? Which one is the faster to implement? Which one is the best fit for you?

I’ll see you next Tuesday with a bunch of prizes.

When : April 17th, 2012 at 18:30

Where : Notman House

Who : Everyone who is interested in Ruby on Rails or Ruby

How much : Free

Register : No need, just come, your welcome

Questions? : Contact me

For everyone that missed the SocialGrapes‘ wine tasting event because it was at the same time of the last Montreal.rb, Daniel Haran invites us and MontrealGeekGirl to the next one on April 10th. More information and tickets here.

As mentioned at last meet-up, Gary from Qwalify still has few Peepcode vouchers for a free video. Contact him by Twitter and he will happily give you one.

On the job side, Jobbook is looking for 2 experienced ruby programmers and an intern. Don’t miss your chance to work on an interesting project with a motivated team. See the offer here.

The next meet-up will be on April 17th. I’ll send a new message when the speakers will be confirmed.

The first presentation will be by Sami Dalouche. Sami will talk about Git’s internals. Do you know what git is doing behind the scene when you execute a commit or a rebase? Did you already make a command that didn’t work and you never understood why? This presentation will go through git building-blocks (index, working directory, blob, tree, commit, tag, remote), whom understanding is a prerequisite to use git’s advanced features such as interactive rewriting of the history, rebasing, bisecting, etc.

In the second part, Rafael Rosa, our new ruby guy in town, will present us ruby-debug. Like most languages, Ruby has a debugger tool, but very few people use it, specially when coding without an IDE. Rafael will show how to set it up and use it to easily debug your code to find those nasty bugs that are hard to fix just with tests. He’ll also show how to use Pry, an alternative to the IRB console, which has lots of goodies.

Lots of interesting stuff this month, don’t miss it.

When : March 20th, 2012 at 18:30

Where : Notman House

Who : Everyone who is interested in Ruby on Rails or Ruby

How much : Free

Questions? : Contact me

This year, we present three activities that will be open to the public
during the ConFoo conference.

First, an opening party will be held at the Brutopia brew pub on
Tuesday February 28th from 6pm. Meet speakers, sponsors organizers and
attendees of the ConFoo conference in a joyful environment. The
Brutopia is located at 1219 Crescent.

Next, a company from Montreal will present how it builds websites that
can handle over 100 million requests per day. This presentation will
be held on Wednesday February 29th, from 5 to 6pm. It will be
presented by Eric Pickup from Manwin.

Finally, on Thursday March 1st, from 5 to 8pm, come celebrate
collaboration between technologies during our communities cocktail at
the Hilton Bonaventure hotel. The hotel is located at 900 De La
Gauchetière West.

For more information about the ConFoo conference, visit http://confoo.ca

Looking forward to seeing you there!

The first presentation will by by Olivier Melcher. He will take us away from the web with his subject : “Build awesome command-line applications with Ruby”. It will be an interesting travel.

 

 

The second presentation will be by Gary Haran with “Start your Engines”. During this talk, we’ll see how to make a rails engine and find out why you’d want to create one.

 

 

At the same times, I have a lot of news for your.

Remember that Confoo is at the end of this month. The conference is almost sold-out get your ticket quickly. Confoo is also searching volunteers for the event. Send me an email if you are interested.

Hugo Frappier manage for us to have a 10% discount for the next RailsConf. We have 5 tickets available until February 29th. Don’t be shy and ask the code from me or Hugo if you are interested.

Interested in hopping on a bus to Boston on the weekend of March 3-5 for AngelHack and showing our American friends what the Montreal startup scene is made of?

Context.IO has been invited to fill a bus with at least 30 Montreal hackers and bring them down to Boston for a one of the most prolific hackathons in North America.

http://angelhack.com/ 

WHAT IS ANGELHACK?

AngelHack brings together startup communities from around the country for a hackathon competition, judged by top Angel Investors, where participants build startup ideas. The only rule is all code must be fresh, so that everyone has a fair chance. Build your startup at AngelHack, win prizes, national recognition, and validation from Angel Investors on what they think of your ideas.

ANGELHACK 2.0

AngelHack 2 focuses on the startup communities in Boston and San Francisco and has over $50k in prizes to win. We estimate there to be over 600 participants for the March 3-4th event.

If you’re interested, your registration fee will be waived. There will be a small fee (between $20-$30) for the bus rental. Friday night accommodations will also be your responsibility, but Context.IO will work to get a great group deal at a hotel nearby. Keep in mind that Saturday night would be all hacking, so  accommodations will only be required on Friday night. We’ll ride in Friday evening and take the bus back overnight on Sunday.  Red eye FTW.

We need 30 hackers to be accepted to sponsor, so we’d love you all to come in big numbers.

This is an incredible opportunity for the Montreal Startup Scene. Being selected as a finalist or winner at this event would mean considerable press and visibility to some of the most high profile VCs in North America. Imagine Montreal took everyone by surprise with a win here? Let’s show them what we’re capable of!

Brainstorm on the bus, build in Boston, be totally awesome. This is not a weekend you should miss.

If you’re willing to commit, please submit your email address via the following form: 

https://docs.google.com/a/dokdok.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEhYU3JSWUM3clhYNFJ4Zkhldmk4RHc6MQ

As soon as we have 30 hackers, we’ll confirm our participation and follow up with all the juicy details!

 

When : January 21st, 2012 at 18:30

Where : Notman House

Who : Everyone who is interested in Ruby on Rails or Ruby

How much : Free

Questions? : Contact me

EDIT : Replaced “Templating Engines” from Martin Provencher by “Start your Engines” by Gary Haran.

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.

We start the year with a one hour presentation from Marc-André Cournoyer.

This presentation will teach you when and how to drop words such as “homoiconic” to impress your friends and family. … Oh! and we’ll also code a language similar to Io in less than 150 lines of Ruby code without any external library or utility. Satisfaction guaranteed!

 

A quick message to remember you that the early bird price for Confoo ends January 13th. You still have 3 days to save 200$.

When : January 17th, 2012 at 18:30

Where : Notman House

Who : Everyone who is interested in Ruby on Rails or Ruby

How much : Free

Questions? : Contact me

EDIT : It’s in January, not in December. Thanks for the info.

EDIT 2 : It seems we changed year also.

To start, I just want to inform you that on December 12th, a competition will take place somewhere in Montreal. You will be able to present small projects (around 2 days of development). The competition will raise funds for food or beers during the meet-up. More details soon.

This Saturday, December 3rd, the first Code Retreat in Montreal will occur during the Global Day of Code Retreat day.

A Code Retreat is a day-long, intense practice event, focusing on the fundamental of software development and design. Programmers from all horizons and languages are invited to challenge each others. Six 45-minutes sessions will be held to exercise your design and programmings skills. After 45 minutes, the code is deleted before getting ready for the next session. New pairs are formed and we start again.

Every session has a different focus. The Code Retreat is a great place to challenge and be challenged, to try something new. The strength of the group is through diversity, that’s why we need you.

If you are interested, all you need is your laptop with your development environment. TDD is preferred, so a test environment is preferable.

Contact the organizer or register.

The first job offer is from Recoset

Contract Sysadmin/Developer
Recoset is looking for a contractor to help us out with some infrastructure tasks.

Recoset is start-up based in Montreal doing predictive analytic for advertisement. We are a small team doing ambitious things with big data.

We need some help automating the various parts of our system and doing sys-admin tasks. Contracts will range in length but we’re looking to build a lasting relationship.

The ideal candidate will be a thoughtful hacker with great communication skills. The work includes Ruby, Nagios, Graphite and of course, linux (ubuntu).

We’re a cool company and we treat people well. Get in touch sean@recoset.com

The next job offer is from Marc-Antoine Ducas. He is starting a totally new RoR project and he is searching programmers to help him. It could be as a cofounder, a job or a contract. Don’t hesitate to contact him.

The next offer is from Nurun.

You’re passionate and enthusiastic about your work and naturally curious about new technologies and are ready to undertake new leading responsibilities?

Our Tech Lab wants your skills and ingenuity!

 

You’ll have the opportunity to interact with multi-disciplinary teams from our network in 6 different countries.

You must combine a solid development experience, practical understanding of deployment and operations and master the interplay between the three. You are also familiar with Rails applications architectures, writing SQL queries and managing servers. You’re active in the Rails community and are able to make informed decisions about when to use existing components or write your own.  You have strong ethics and technical judgment?   Stop searching, Nurun is for you.

 

Your main responsibilities will  include the support and maintenance of in-house applications, and development of new applications.  Optimization and development process and develop API for applications. Management of Code submissions from business units, testing and releases as well as monitoring processes.  You will also oversee and lead a distributed development team of 2-3 members.

 

Qualifications:

-          2-3 years of web application development using Ruby on Rails

-          Administrative experience of distributed version control technologies (Git, Mercurial)

-          Strong knowledge of both traditional database (MySQL) and newer nosql data storage solutions

-          Experience with cloud hosting providers and architectures

-          Experience working with ajax/messaging/queues

-          Experience with API design

-          Experience creating Ruby Gems

-          Experience with cross browser semantic HTML and CSS, up to date with HTML 5 and CSS 3 is an asset

-          Experience using JQuery and jQuery UI

 

Great career growth opportunities! Nurun offers competitive compensation and the choice of job location in either Quebec City or Montreal!

To apply: http://nurun.jobs/supHvE

The month of November is almost over. Don’t forget to support me with my Movember action against prostate cancer.

 

To conclude, I just want to remember you that there won’t be a Montreal.rb in December since it would had been too near Christmas. I will see you all on January 17th.