tundal45@github:~

The New York Ruby Meetup

If you are a ruby programmer/enthusiast living in New York City, I already know two things:

1) You need to attend the New York Ruby Meetup

2) I am extremely jealous that it does not take you 3 hours round trip and planning in advance

The second part is something that is only relevant to me so I won’t go into it but let’s focus on #1. The reason I say you need to go is because it’s a great group of people hanging out and talking about Ruby as well as other related technologies in the landscape. The organizers, Matthew Jording and Haris Amin, do an amazing job of choosing topics that vary in range from very beginner friendly to some advanced stuff.

What makes it even more fun for someone like me who has limited experience in Ruby, web development and open source tools is that it is an active discussion rather than someone giving a talk with others listening. If you have ever been to an unconference (if you have not, I highly recommend Ruby DCamp and I have heard a lot of good things about Bohconf), you will find that the meetup is inspired by the participant-driven nature of unconferences. If you are a code slinger, the group has a Github organization page and the group gets together now and then to work on some code together as well. Since it’s a social group, people usually hit a local bar in the area after the meetup to talk more over beers and snacks. It’s an all around fun crowd.

As a Red Sox fan, it is very hard for me to say nice things about New York City but the tech community in New York is definitely one of its strengths. Having a lot of smart people and a passionate organizers like Matt and Haris has made the New York Ruby Meetup very successful in building a community and making it worth the effort for me to make a 3 hour round trip just to hang out and geek out with these guys.

I am very thankful for this group to have started me down the path of learning Ruby by rubbing elbows with more experienced professionals and even though my technical expertise are still at the beginner level, the introduction to the community aspect of Ruby and the injection of passion that this meetup has given me is something I will forever be grateful for.

So if you are in the NYC area and are interested in Ruby, no matter your experience level, I highly recommend that you check this meetup out. If you are a beginner who is interested in learning more Ruby by doing, you should check out a sister meetup called Unearth Ruby. It’s a meetup for programmers that want to learn Ruby by working on problems found in the ruby quiz, project euler etc. We are trying to find venues for Unearth so if you are a company that can serve as a weekend venue for Unearth, please let me know in the comments section.