Christchurch Ruby

What we’re about

Super friendly group of software developers meeting monthly to discuss all things Ruby, software development, and tech in general. It's very casual, so come along and say hello!

For announcements and meetup reminders, join our mailing list. 📨

We also have an active slack channel (#christchurch) on slack.ruby.nz, so do join that as that's where we organise food before the meetup etc.

Meetups

We typically meet at 7:30pm on the 3rd Thursday of the month at Saltworks, 4 Ash Street, Christchurch. See the relevant meetup for details.

Oct 17, 2024 8 is the Magic Number

This month Rob Ingram is giving us a run-down of all things version 8: The number eight is prominent in the Rails world at the moment with the recent(ish) release of Turbo 8 and the impending arrival of Rails 8. We’ll take a tour of both, first looking at the...

Sep 19, 2024 How to Train your Manager

Leadership, management, and technical decisions never go hand in hand. This month we are lucky to have Dave Park leading a discussion about how to communicate effectively with your management team to get you what you want. Hopefully by the end of this you’ll learn a bit about your own...

Aug 15, 2024 Turbo Native — from Rails app to app store in a week*

This month we have Dan Lawler bringing us up to speed on one of the next-generation Rails features. Specifically, going from Rails app to app store in a week.* From the hotwired docs: “Turbo Native for iOS provides the tooling to wrap your Turbo-enabled web app in a native iOS...

Jul 18, 2024 Get Gud (at Git)

This month we have Ashton Moore giving us the low-down on one of the most commonly used tools in a developer’s tool-kit. He writes: “Git is a tool we all know (and possibly love), but let’s be honest - it has a tendency to fade into the background in our...

Jun 20, 2024 Practical Cryptography for Developers

This month we have Pete Nicholls here to give us an intro to what we, as developers should know about cryptography. Personally, all I know is that I should never ever write my own.. so, I’m looking forward to learning heaps! In Pete’s words -> “As developers, we encounter cryptography...

May 16, 2024 Women in Programming

This month we are lucky to have Saray Hay speaking to us on the subject of Women in Programming. Come along to celebrate the women who have pioneered crucial developments in software and information technology. A bit of a history lesson, followed by a discussion of the opportunities we have...

Apr 18, 2024 Zero to the app store in a week… and two years of ground work

This month we are lucky to have Dan Lawler talking to us about about a successful launch of a mobile app built using Hotwire - Turbo-Native… An extension to Rob Ingram’s Hotwire (https://hotwired.dev/) talk, we’ll discuss Hotwire’s Turbo Native implementation. After a couple years of prep work slowly converting our...

Mar 21, 2024 Design Mind, Developer Mind

Web developers and designers work together on the same projects, but we don’t always understand each other or communicate effectively. Isaac Freeman is a longtime Rails developer who has also worked as a web designer, and he’ll explore how the mindsets needed for each profession overlap and how they differ....

Feb 15, 2024 Albert Nisbet: Adventures in coding for the physical world

This month, we’re delighted to introduce debut speaker Albert Nisbet. He writes… “It’s object-oriented programming but not as you know it! In this presentation, I’ll be reflecting on the role programming has played in my recent foray into 3D printing. Join me to discover a new language for 3D parts,...

Jan 18, 2024 I read "PostgreSQL 14 Internals" so you don't have to

This month we are lucky to have Malcolm Locke to reveal the inner workings of Postgres. “I’ll try to distill the details most relevant to engineers from Egor Rogov’s book. This talk should be useful to anyone who uses PostgreSQL as a database for their applications. A basic knowledge of...

Dec 21, 2023 Xmas Social

As always, December’s meetup will be a social. Bring your games, instruments, and good cheer. Note the earlier time of 7pm, we will be organising pizza, so please RSVP on our Slack channel if you have any dietary preferences.

Nov 16, 2023 SV & NZ: Untapped Opportunity

Remote jobs aren’t always easy to get. Remote jobs working for a Silicon Valley startup when you’re applying directly from NZ definitely aren’t easy to get, but, it is possible. This month we are lucky to have Brendon Muschamp speaking to us about how to go about getting a remote...

Oct 19, 2023 The Imposter's Guide to Computer Science

Ever felt like you’re missing some core knowledge of computer science, despite being immersed in tech? In this talk, we’ll explore some foundational computing principles and see how they shape our work today. Perfect for self-taught developers, those curious about computer science, or anyone keen on a refresher of the...

Sep 21, 2023 Nick Butcher: Coordination, AI, and fighting Moloch without losing it all 🔥

This month, Nick Butcher shares his thoughts on “how coordination failures are screwing us all, how AI seems it could help, and why people who seem very smart are pretty worried about trying”. Nick is the CTO at CarbonCrop, a company making it simple to earn carbon credits and helping...

Aug 17, 2023 Coding escape, bring a laptop and prepare for a challenge

Note: pizza before meetup (please read message!) and the earlier start time of 18:30 if you’re coming for food (the meetup itself will start at 19:30) This month we have Ben Tillman giving us a coding challenge. So, bring a laptop if you have one (if you don’t - come...

Jul 20, 2023 Mark Haylock: Searching for performance outliers in a Rails app

This month, Mark Haylock will share his hard-won experience optimising Rails applications. He writes… Avoiding premature optimisation is wise, but eventually you’ll reach a scale where your traffic tests the limits of your application. Let’s explore a few options for proactively identifying problems - so you can create some additional...

Jun 15, 2023 Embrace the disaster your projects will inevitably become

Hey everyone! This Thursday, 15th June, we have a talk by Steven Chudley with the somewhat provocative title “Embrace the disaster your projects will inevitably become”. This talk will apparently cover many things, and the title will make more sense once we’ve experienced it. There may also be time for...

May 18, 2023 The dominance of the Array in Ruby

At last… a bona fide Ruby talk at the Ruby meet up! This month, Alexandre Barret will share some insights on the dominance of the array in Ruby — insights gleaned from attempting to safely inherit the Array Ruby core class. He’ll cover: Quick trivia on Array The problem with...

Apr 20, 2023 Growing old in tech

Malcolm Locke will give a brief summary of some facts, myths and observations on the challenges presented by ageism in the tech sector. In the second half we’ll have lightning talks, so, come prepared with your hottest takes!

Mar 16, 2023 Asynchronous Rails with Samuel Williams

This month we are very fortunate to be graced by the talents, wonderful company, and spoken words of Samuel Williams as he presents “Asynchronous Rails”! I was lucky enough to catch a version of this talk at RubyConf AU in February and I have been told that we are going...

Feb 16, 2023 ⚡️Supabase in Practice: The Future of Web Backends?

From the things-you-didn’t-know-you-could-do-with-a-database department… This month, Daniel will be sharing his experience building an app with Supabase. Supabase is a “Open Source” company, offering a turnkey platform for building PostgreSQL-backed web APIs (seriously, they are ALL IN on PostgreSQL 😍). “Supabase is a great place, For hosting your database. It’s...

Jan 19, 2023 January Meetup: ⚡️ Lightning Talks ⚡️

To kick off the year, we’ll be hosting lightning talks. Give us 10 mins of your holiday hacking, or just get ChatGPT to write a lightning talk for you.

Dec 15, 2022 Christmas social! 🎄

Bring games, instruments, and yourself!

Nov 17, 2022 ⚡️Lightning talks ⚡️

This month we will be hosting lightning talks! Please come prepared to give a talk, or prepared to enjoy someone else’s 🙂

Oct 20, 2022 “How to Hotwire a Rails app in 7ish easy steps”

This month we have the wonderful Rob Ingram presenting “How to Hotwire a Rails app in 7ish easy steps”

Sep 15, 2022 Contributing to PostgreSQL for fun and profit*

This month, Daniel Fone will be discussing his (mis)adventures fixing a bug in the pgcrypto extension, understanding the pgsql-hackers mailing list, and trying to get a patch applied during the commitfest. * He failed to contribute, he didn’t have fun, and no-one profited.

Aug 18, 2022 Lightning talks

This month, due to speaker illness, is now lightning talks.

Jul 21, 2022 Nick Butcher

Tonight we will have the privilege of being presented a talk by the illustrious Nick Butcher.

May 19, 2022 Hotwire: Turbo, Stimulus and the Future of JavaScript in Rails

Rails 7 promises some major changes in the way the JavaScript is packaged and used. Here to take us on a tour of all the new hotness is our very own Tim Ross. If you’re curious what the future of JavaScript in Rails looks like - come join us on...

Jan 20, 2022 Lightning talks

OUR VENUE HAS CHANGED - Saltworks 4 Ash street. Hi all, We’re kicking off the new year with lightning talks at our new venue, kindly hosted by the awesome co-working space called Saltworks https://works.nz/saltworks/ . It’s at 4 Ash street. The doors will be closed, but, we’ll have someone there...

Aug 19, 2021 Online Only Ruby AGM meetup

7:00pm · Online event, ,

We have had to cancel this event because of Covid Level 4. If you can join for the Ruby society AGM at 7pm please do (we need to make quorum). This is the link to the video stream https://bit.ly/ruby-nz-agm-2021 See you on the other side of lockdown!

Jul 15, 2021 Faster pagination in Postgres

Is your slow database getting you down? Do other sites load lightning fast and leave you with multi-second database round-trips? What you need is to come to this months meetup where we’re lucky to have Mark Haylock from Trineo sharing some of his recent learning about Postgres. Specifically he’ll be...

Jun 17, 2021 From dev to prod

It’s all well and good having lovely shiny sparkly code sitting on your dev machine, but, at some point it needs to wend its merry way to prod. This month we have Wayne here to talk to us about some of his learnings on taking many codebases from dev to...

May 20, 2021 Making Self-Supervised Learning + Startup Equity work for you

This month we are lucky to have Nick Butcher back to give us another talk - this time on supervised learning and also how equity works in startups… should be fascinating! —–EDIT— There will probably be time for Lightning Talks for the second half, so, bring along something to share...

Apr 15, 2021 GraphQL2 (yes, we've taken it to the next level)

After a couple of introductory talks in the past we’re lucky to have Rob Ingram taking a further look at GraphQL. We’ll cover how to prevent some common problems, best practices for building an API that can evolve over time and how to make the most of features of GraphQL...

Mar 18, 2021 Simple ways to secure your Ruby app & NZ Covid Tracer App

Please note: This event will only go ahead if we are still at Level 1. This month we have Pete Nicholls from Trineo giving us a talk on securing our Ruby apps: Like testing, application security is an essential domain. Fewer defects and risks make for happier customers and stakeholders....

Feb 18, 2021 Lightning Talks

The meetup is still going ahead, but, unfortunately our overseas special guest speaker Nahum has had to cancel his flights because of the timing of the pesky covid outbreak. So, bring your best lightning talk. If you happen to be extra prepared and have an actual talk you want to...

Jan 21, 2021 Lightning Talks

We’re going to ease our way into 2021 with an evening of lightning talks for this month. Have a think about something to share, maybe you’ve played around with ruby 3, maybe you solved a particularly weird bug (maybe you didn’t solve it, that happens too ;), or anything else...

Dec 17, 2020 December Social

Aaaaaaaaallll righty then. 2020 almost behind us, multiple covid vaccines on the horizon, and generally things are beginning to look up. It’s definitely time to celebrate & unwind at the annual December social. So - bring along some end-of-year cheer, musical instruments and games (board games, card games, entire pool...

Nov 19, 2020 Sarah Learns Network Programming Part 1: Introduction to Sockets

For the final talk of the year we’re lucky to have Sarah from Trineo giving an introduction to sockets. She’s going to attempt to answer questions like: What are they? Where did they come from? How does one use them? So come along to learn about one of the fundamental...

Oct 15, 2020 Localstack & Lightning Talks

WWWWOOOOOHOOOOO! Level 1 here we come. This month it’s going to be anactual in-person meetup. Our hosts Trineo require that anyone attending the meetup scan in at the door with the NZ Covid Tracer app. This month we are will have an intro to localstack given by Mark Haylock, and...

Jun 18, 2020 Context is everything.

Donald Rumsfeld had the memorable quote : “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.” In this talk Steve is going to put another twist on...

Mar 19, 2020 What next? Reflections on 15 years, 24 apps, and 1 mistake.

This month I want to start a conversation I’ve been planning for a very long time. I want to briefly reflect on my experience writing a lot of web applications, and then describe my now quite detailed vision for how I want to develop web apps in the future. This...

Feb 20, 2020 Bugs, bugs, bring out your bugs.

This month it’s “bug lightning talks”. The idea here: talk about a bug you came across and fixed (or worked around ;) horror stories we can learn from / brilliant insights to wow us with - whatever works. Could be a memory issue killing production, could be that time you...

Jan 16, 2020 The not-ruby ruby meetup

Hi all, This month it’s our “not ruby (!ruby)” Ruby meetup. For this one bring along a lightning talk on anything which isn’t to do with ruby. Can be technical, but, it certainly doesn’t have to be. Also, we’ll be putting out our yearly call for presenters shortly. If you’re...

Dec 19, 2019 Christmas Social

Where the heck did 2019 go? VOOM! Well, it’s time for the annual Christmas Social. Bring along games, Christmas cheer, and leave your laptops in the bag!

Nov 21, 2019 Rewriting LandOnline for LINZ

This month Wayne Carter has very kindly agreed to fly back from the North Island to give a talk on his work rewriting LandOnline for LINZ. There will probably be time for lightning talks after, so, have a think about what you’ve been working on or playing with for the...

Oct 17, 2019 Learning about Distributed Tracing

What is Distributed Tracing, what are some practical examples, and is it worth your time? Mark Haylock is on a mission to answer these questions - and is going to share what he has learnt.

Sep 19, 2019 GraphQL using Rails and React

In this talk, Tim Ross from Riparide will discuss a recent transition from a REST API to GraphQL, the challenges that were faced and the problems solved. He will also demonstrate how they are using GraphQL with a Rails backend and React client.

Aug 15, 2019 PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS with Rails 5.2 Attributes API

This month we have Patrick Davey giving an introduction to form objects. He’ll show how they work, when and where you’d use & overuse them, and how the fantastic Rails 5.2 Attributes API fits into it. There will be time for lightning talks afterwards, so, have a think of anything...

Jul 18, 2019 Learning is hard - How to train your neural net

This month we have Nick Butcher giving us an introduction to neural nets: the tech that autonomous cars, killer robots and game playing artificial intelligence all have in common. Neural nets are going to reshape the jobs landscape for the coming years with greater and greater levels of automation, come...

Jun 20, 2019 Sarah Learns the Ruby Standard Library Part I: FileUtils and CSV

From our very own Sarah Hay (the only singer/songwriter/engineer I’ve heard sing about refactoring!) “By popular demand, I’m going to give a talk on a couple of modules in the Ruby Standard Library with which people may not be too familiar: CSV and FileUtils. From the basic to the brilliant,...

May 16, 2019 Unspoilt By Progress: An Introduction to Progressive Web Apps

This month’s talk will be from Rails freelancer and meetup regular Rob Ingram. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) provide a new paradigm for how we use and develop web based applications. We’ll look at what we mean by Progressive Web Apps and delve into their features and the technologies that enable...

Apr 18, 2019 A Tale of Two CTEs: A Postgresql Adventure

This will be a jaunty frolic through two SQL queries, diving deeply into the single most useful and reliable component in our modern software stack. On the way, we will sample a smorgasboard of postgresql tricks I found useful to do a thing I was trying to do. JSON querying...

Mar 28, 2019 Designing for Ethical Online Discourse

Please note, there’s a change of venue & date for this meetup in response to the horrific attacks against the Muslim community here in Christchurch. This month Pete Nicholls will be presenting on Designing for Ethical Online Discourse. The meetup will be held at Trineo’s offices: Level 1, 181 High...

Feb 21, 2019 Lightning Talks (change from original talk)

Hi All, Unfortunately our original speaker is no longer able to make this meetup. So, at short notice, it’s time for (thunder roll) LIGHTING TALKS! Yes, bring your best lightning talk. Or a talk. Or a picture to share. Or a funky website you’ve discovered, or tell us why you...

Jan 17, 2019 What Could Go Wrong? The Subtle Science Of Coding for Failure

This will be the alpha version of my RubyConf AU 2019 talk. Software development is the anticipation of a thousand dangers: regressions, edge-cases, exceptions, attacks, downtime, the list is endless. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, we’ll build a simple model for quantifying danger, explore why the human brain...

Dec 20, 2018 Christmas Social

Where the heck did 2018 go? VOOM! Well, it’s time for the annual Christmas Social. Bring along games, Christmas cheer, and leave your laptops in the bag!

Nov 15, 2018 Down the rabbit hole with HTTP/2

This month we’re lucky to have Samuel Williams giving us a talk on HTTP/2 -> HTTP/2, while semantically similar to HTTP/1, is a binary protocol which significantly reduces per-request latency and overhead. Web applications built around the performance characteristics of HTTP/1 no longer perform optimally when served via HTTP/2. This...

Oct 18, 2018 Domain Driven Design

This month we are lucky to have Tim Ross giving an introduction to Domain Driven Design. Domain Driven Design is about designing software based on models of the underlying domain. The model provides a common language to help communication between software developers and domain experts. This talk will be an...

Sep 20, 2018 Dry-Validation: A talk and discussion

Philip will introduce everyone to the dry-validation library, one of his favourites. In this talk we’ll take a look through some examples and then follow with a discussion on the merits of dry-rb and of using a specialised validation library.

Aug 16, 2018 How to make bad decisions

One way to learn how to improve is to look at how that thing is done well. Another great way to learn is to look at how that thing is done badly and then not do it that way! This month we have Luke Arndt giving us a talk on...

Jul 19, 2018 you |> introduction to Elixir

This month is a two part evening, so, please try to arrive on time at 7:30 (or even 7:10 for setup). First up, for about 45 minutes or so we’ll pair up and work through a fun little coding challenge (it’s one of the ones from adventofcode.com , but no,...

Jun 21, 2018 Can f.lux stop you getting the blues?

This month we’re lucky to have Malcolm Locke giving a talk: “It’s the question on pretty much nobody’s lips, does f.lux actually work? This talk will be a journey of enlightenment taking us from the flat earth of blind faith to circumnavigate a sphere of topics including physics, physiology, optics...

May 17, 2018 Odiferous Code: A smell by any other name…

There exists a set of names for features of code that can indicate deeper problems in your application. These are called “Code Smells”. In this talk, Sarah Hay will introduce some of these code smells, and the associated refactorings to take your code from smelly to not-so-smelly. This talk will...

Apr 19, 2018 No REST for the Wicked: An Introduction to GraphQL

This month we have Rob Ingram giving us an introduction to GraphQL: “In 2015 Facebook made public its new data query language GraphQL. We will describe what GraphQL is, how it can be useful in API based applications and compare it to the REST interfaces with which we may be...

Mar 15, 2018 Asynchronous Ruby

“The goal for Ruby 3 is to improve performance significantly. A number of areas are being explored, including compilation, concurrency, garbage collection, data structures, etc. Server applications processing many concurrent requests are an area where Ruby typically struggles. The typical thread-per-request model is well understood, however threads are a limited...

Feb 15, 2018 A Definitive Guide to Naming Things

There’s an old saying that goes, “The two hardest problems in programming are cache invalidation, naming things and off by one errors” In this talk we’ll look at the subtle art of naming things, with a treatment on the common issues that arise when trying to name something, and how...

Jan 18, 2018 A Vue to a kill & A Technical Explanation of Bitcoin

This meetup Patrick Davey will be giving an introduction to the Vue framework and why he chose to use it and an attempt at explaining how it differs from React. Patrick: “The title is misleading, this talk has nothing to do with James Bond I’m afraid. I’ll be giving a...

Dec 21, 2017 Christmas Social

Another circumambulation around the sun almost completed, and therefore December’s meetup will be our yearly social meetup. Drinks from 7pm at Pomeroys (either upstairs or in the beer garden, depending on sunshine & space available). Also - games!.. If you have a favourite game/boardgame bring it along and we’ll hopefully...

Nov 16, 2017 Of bugs: I've seen a few

Bring out your bugs, bring out your bugs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs) This month Philip Arndt will be kick starting a discussion on bugs (interesting and otherwise). There are so many bugs out there, and learning from these situations is a great way to level up, as by definition, it’s something that was...

Oct 19, 2017 The Joy of (Enterprise) Refactoring

Back by popular demand, we are reprising our Joy of Refactoring (https://www.meetup.com/Christchurch-Ruby-Group/events/238205006/) meetup. This time, however, it’s Enterprise Ready™. Once again we’ll have a tiny* Rails app, this time featuring a simple Xero integration. For the first half of the night, we’ll pair up and explore some of the ways...

Sep 21, 2017 Building an app with Webpacker and Rails 5.1

This month we have Mark Haylock from Trineo giving a talk on using the webpacker gem with rails 5.1 . This seems to be the future of the asset pipeline in Rails, so, come along and learn how things are changing. The future is here. Well, it will be on...

Aug 17, 2017 Being inclusive: ActiveRecord eager loading internals

This month we have Malcolm Locke from Trineo with a talk on Active Record internals: Eager loading is one of the keys tools available for improving performance in the average Rails application. This talk will discuss how eager loading works, and some of it’s limitations and pitfalls. To paraphrase Douglas...

Jul 20, 2017 How I Discovered the Omission of 'React' in The Beatles' Oeuvre.

Ever wondered what all the excitement is for Frontend Frameworks? Know where they might come in useful in your app? Want to get started with React? If any of these are you, come along to this months’ (Ruby!) meetup where we have Sarah Hay from Trineo giving us an introduction...

Jun 15, 2017 Meetup: software development tales in the style of One Thousand and One Nights!

This month we are lucky to have Pete Nicholls regaling us with a “collection of tales from software development history, told in the style of One Thousand and One Nights” Just how Pete is going to rework tales like Alibaba and the forty thieves is anyone’s guess, however, if history...

May 18, 2017 Microservices

Do you know what Microservices are? Do you know when you might use them? Do you know the pitfalls? If not (or even if you do!) this is the meetup for you: Tim Ross will be giving us an overview of Microservices architecture and some lessons learned from a recent...

Apr 20, 2017 Let's Do An eCommerce!

Isaac Freeman of Stembolt will be live-coding an eCommerce site using Solidus, and discussing the various decisions and trade-offs you have to make when you’re adding customisations and extensions on top of a large complex platform. There will, as always, be time for any short lightning talks in the second...

Mar 16, 2017 The Joy of Refactoring

This month we’ll be attempting a calm and peaceful refactoring session in the style of Bob Ross’ Joy of Painting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlucWfTUo1A). We’ll be working through a few examples of Ruby and Rails code, and practicing some of the ways we can make code more readable and maintainable. Remember, there are...

Feb 16, 2017 Pre Rails Camp Social

Rails Camp is nearly upon us (http://camp.ruby.nz/)! As such, we’ll just be meeting for a drink and a chat this month. If someone has a demo or a talk — all the better! We’ll either be in the bar, upstairs at Catalyst, or in the beer garden depending on the...

Jan 19, 2017 Ruby! Orca! Dotfile management! what more could you want?

Patrick has been away travelling for a year, and is now back in ChCh. There will be a short talk including, but not limited to, the simplest way to manage your dotfiles (and why you should) and pictures of Orca. http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/7/d/6/6/600_457472102.jpeg What more could you possibly want in a meetup?...

Dec 15, 2016 Combined Christmas Social

In the spirit of Christmas goodwill and peace to all, this month we’ll be holding a combined meetup with a number of other Christchurch tech groups (JS, SQL Server, Azure, to name a few). We’ll be meeting at Winnie Bagoes from 5:30pm. See you there!

Nov 17, 2016 Monthly Meetup

We are lucky enough to have Pete https://twitter.com/aupajo speaking tonight on a variety of topics. We’ll also have some time for social interaction and to welcome any new members. We look forward to seeing you!

Oct 20, 2016 Monthly Meetup - Choose Your Own Adventure

Hi everyone, Unfortunately, neither Phil nor I can make the meetup next week. So it’s a case of choose your own adventure this month. If you decide to head to Pomeroys anyway, grab your towel and turn to page 42. If you have a cool topic to talk about, close...

Sep 15, 2016 Postgres (+ Rails) for Fun and Profit

This month we’re having a Postgres extravaganza (or PostgreSQL, pgsql, pg, depending on which side of the argument you’re on (https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/[email protected])). Increasingly, Postgres is the database of choice for many developers and engineers, and its steadily expanding feature set makes it incredibly competitive among modern data-stores. The aim of the...

Aug 18, 2016 Monthly Meetup

Current suggestions include: Extended pub dinner Chat about our favourite new ruby inventions Rails 5 if someone wants to tell us all about it … Profit! Currently leaning toward the extended pub dinner at Pomeroy’s with the rest naturally following on. Leave a comment if you’re coming and have opinions!...

Jul 21, 2016 Monthly Meetup

This month we will look into the dry-rb ecosystem. Either @parndt will do a presentation on this or will find a better one from the web 😉

Jun 16, 2016 Hanami Hacknight

This month we’re running a low key hack night with the intention of learning a bit about the Hanami framework. Hanami (http://hanamirb.org/) (formerly known as Lotus.rb) bills itself as “a modern web framework for Ruby.” It has a simple, stable API, a minimal DSL, and prioritises the use of plain...

May 19, 2016 Monthly Meetup

Hello everyone! This month we’ve spent our time helping to organise Rails Girls Christchurch. You have signed up to be a coach, haven’t you? If not, the form is here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wQJ93nMrq5nnZ3IWFI61aCMIU_ZiFix4a9a1-A4-gTo/viewform Due to this, we haven’t put much time into planning anything for this month’s meet up (sorry! Would anyone...

Apr 21, 2016 Working With Legacy Code and Other Bedtime Stories

This month we’re having a series of talks, led by Mark Haylock and Tim Ross. They’ll be speaking on Working With Legacy Code, with a focus on coping with existing legacy code, as well as how to leave a better legacy behind. In addition, we’ll have Pete Nicholls sharing some...

Mar 17, 2016 Monthly Meetup

For this month’s meetup, we are going to have ⚡️ Lightning talks!! So far we have talks from Daniel Fone, and Australian guest speaker Pat Allan! Come and join us this St Patrick’s day, and if you would like to give a lightning or other short talk then please let...

Feb 18, 2016 Lightning talks, RubyConf AU, and exercism.io

Wow, only 3 days until this month’s meetup! Coming off the back of this year’s RubyConf Australia, we’ll have a run down of some of the talks there — along with space for lightning talks on any subject! Let us know if you’ve got a 5 min topic you’d like...

Jan 21, 2016 Monthly Meetup

The New Year period and January have flown by and our next meetup is this Thursday — yes, today. Come along to Pomeroy’s (the beer garden outside, if the weather is nice, which it is currently) for 7pm on Thursday 21st. No talks this month, just good chats and a...

Dec 17, 2015 Christmas Social

Hi all! December has flown by and our next meetup is this Thursday — yes, in just 2 days. Come along to Pomeroys (the beer garden outside, if the weather is nice) for 7pm on Thursday 17th. No talks this month, just good chats and a chance to catch up...

Nov 19, 2015 What do you get if you cross Ruby and Beer? & more talks

This month we are having talks, including but not limited to one from Pete Nicholls on his beer setup. More details to come, but it involves at least Rack and Ruby and Beer. I mean really, what more does a talk need? There are spots for more talks, lightning or...

Oct 15, 2015 Naughts and Crosses

Did you know that they played Os and Xs in the days of the Roman Empire?! This month we have a small programming challenge based on the game of Naughts and Crosses (or Tic-Tac-Toe or Terni Lapilli or whatever you want to call it). Though a truly delightful amount of...

Sep 17, 2015 Raspberry Pi, SonicPi, Internet-Of-Thingsish

A few years ago some academics in Cambridge were wondering why there was such a decline in computer science students. One of the things they identified was that people weren’t growing up tinkering with computers. Not in the game-playing sense, but more in the programming sense. So, they designed a...

Aug 20, 2015 Monthly Meetup

This month’s exciting meetup is at Thursday, 20th August and will be back at our usual location of the Catalyst office above Pomeroy’s (Level 1, 284 Kilmore Street). Here’s a map provided by Pomeroy’s: http://pomspub.co.nz/contact-location Doors will open at 7PM, with talks starting at (not before) 7:30PM. After a quick...

Jul 16, 2015 Introduction to Ruby on Rails

At this meetup we will be giving an introduction to the Ruby on Rails web framework. There will be an opportunity to play with the framework and see how cloud services can be used to deploy your app to the Internet. There will also be a very gentle introduction to...

Jun 18, 2015 Hacknight: Guess who‽

This month we’re having a hacknight.. not going to say too much about it now, however, as a teaser: http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/0/7/4/600_438401076.jpeg Bring your laptop if you have one, but we will probably split into teams anyway as per usual. Same details as normal, 7pm for a 7:30 (sharp) start at Pomeroys....

May 21, 2015 Not Ruby Ruby meetup ;)

This meetup we are having lighting talks on Non Ruby topics. Ideally non technical talks, but we’ll take anything as long as it’s not Ruby (or programming specific) Talks can be anywhere between 5 and 15 mins, and should just be about something you’re interested in! So, we should all...

Apr 16, 2015 Scripting Vagrant with Sumit Khanna

This month we have a guest speaker. Sumit Khanna works on an open source project called vSense (https://github.com/BigSense/vSense). It’s a set of ruby scripts designed to build vagrant environments for a sensor network project he’s been working on called BigSense (http://bigsense.io (http://bigsense.io/)). His story… In 2011, Sumit Khanna was an...

Mar 19, 2015 Refactoring Techniques (lightning talks)

This month we are doing lightning talks - but lightning talks around the theme of refactoring. If you don’t know what refactoring is, one definition is : “Code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing computer code – changing the factoring – without changing its external behavior.” If you’ve been...

Jan 15, 2015 Succeeding with Open Source — Philip Arndt, and Lightning Talks

Hello fellow denizens of Rubytopia! This month (in only 8 days in fact!) we’re excited to have Phil back amongst us, after his worldwide adventure of travel and Ruby love. He’ll be giving a talk on Succeeding with Open Source which — based on his rubygems.org profile (https://rubygems.org/profiles/parndt) — he...

Jan 13, 2015 Social at Pomeroys (extra, does not replace monthly meetup which is on Thurs)

As per the discussion thread: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/christchurch-ruby/FodgwnA8KWk If you’re keen to come or need more details, best email the list.

Dec 18, 2014 Christmas Social

Come along to Pomeroys (beer garden outside, if the weather is nice) for 7pm on Thursday 18th. No talks this week, just good chats and a chance to catch up on all things Ruby, and maybe some other topics too, who knows, stranger things have happened. In January we’ll be...

Nov 20, 2014 Monsters, Prisoners & a righteous quest.

Hello All, This month we’re going to enter into a realm dark with danger. There will be archers, there will be slime monsters and a righteous quest. Prisoners to be rescued too, from memory! The aim is to work our way (in pairs) as far as we can through a...

Oct 16, 2014 I feel the need, the need for speed.

Hi, This months meetup is at 7pm Thursday 16th Oct at Catalysts office above Pomeroys. The meetup is going to be code-golf, but with a twist. The twist is that instead of trying to write the solution in the minimum number of chars, you have to make the code as...

Sep 18, 2014 Practical Machine Learning

Hi all, For our next meetup on Thursday 18th September (7pm, Pomeroys) we are lucky to have David Jones visiting his home town of ChCh temporarily from San Francisco. David has offered to give a talk on Practical Machine Learning: A rough outline to whet your appetite: Get a non-mathematical...

Aug 21, 2014 Ben Kearns: "Breaking Rails"

Visiting security consultant Ben Kearns will be using a typical Rails app to walk through the general process of hacking web applications and finding and exploiting bugs. He’ll then present some tips on how to protect yourself when developing Rails applications. After the talk he and a colleague will be...

Jul 17, 2014 Introduction to Ruby on Rails (CompSoc)

At this meetup we will be giving an introduction to the Ruby on Rails web framework. There will be an opportunity to play with the framework and see how cloud services can be used to deploy your app to the Internet. There will also be a very gentle introduction to...

Jun 19, 2014 Tales of Technical Trickery

Greetings fine citizens of the Ruby nation! tl;dr below. Updated Speaker List: Malc Locke — 10 shell secrets that will change your life FOREVER!!! Pete Nicholls — Ruby tricks Daniel Fone — HTML5 Forms: One More Strike Against The Javascript Fad Kale Worsley — PHP* Graham Wagener — Freemium Tools...

Jun 4, 2014 Docker, VPS in the Cloud, Chef, WellRailed

Very short notice for this (ad hoc) meetup tonight at 17:30pm The Wellington ruby group are having a meetup on running your own VPS (your own server in the cloud). They’ll be discussing Docker, Chef for provisioning, automated tools like cloud66 I believe and probably a few other things. We’re...

May 15, 2014 Meteor showers, lightning strikes, and meetup structure

Hi All, This months meetup will be on Thursday 15th May at the regular venue of Catalysts offices above Pomeroys Pub. There will be two parts to the evening. Firstly: Talks While not strictly Ruby (well, ok, at all) Nick Butcher is going to give a quick introduction to meteor.js...

Apr 17, 2014 Tanks! Guns! - Come shoot a fellow rubyist

Have you ever wanted to get into a virtual tank and zoom around the place shooting other tanks? If the answer is “Yes”, or “Maybe” then this months meetup is for you. You’ll get to program a robot and then pit it against your fellow competitors in a battle to...

Mar 20, 2014 Code Golf - Monthly Meeting

Hi All, The next Christchurch Ruby meetup is Thursday 20th March, 7pm, at Catalyst (above Pomeroys). Have you ever played code golf? Do you know what code golf is? If not - this meetup is the one for you. The idea with code golf is to take an algorithm and...

Feb 20, 2014 Monthly Meeting - Videos and General Chitchat

This month we are moving back to Catalyst for our meeting. We will watch a video or two. Please feel free to send suggestions. Meeting is open to all comers as usual, beginner or expert. See you all there :)

Dec 19, 2013 Christmas Social

Come to Pomeroys on Thursday for a social meetup before the holiday season is upon us. We’ll be there from 17:30 ish.

Nov 21, 2013 Lightning Talks (short talks on a bunch of subjects)

This month we have lightning talks. The floor is open for anyone to give a brief (5 - 10 mins) talk about anything you think may be of interest to the group. Quantity is preferable over quality (although both is ideal), we’d rather have a whole heap of loose show...

Oct 17, 2013 Newbies Night - come for an introduction to Ruby on Rails

We’ll be having a set of short talks on various subjects, followed by an ‘Installfest’ where members of the group will be available to help you install Ruby / Rails on your machines. The focus will be on beginner programmers, and those with experience in other languages who are interested...

Sep 19, 2013 *Middleman* and *Solving Imaginary Problems*

Aug 15, 2013 Monthly Meetup

Tim Carey-Smith will be presenting a talk “Acting in the real world”.