SYS-CON Events (www.events.sys-con.com) announced the first “Real-World Ruby on Rails” One-Day Seminar (www.rubyonrailsseminar.com) will take place on October 3, 2006, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California.

In December 2005, when Danish-born David Heinemeier Hansson unleashed into the world of Web applications version 1.0 of the open source application framework he called Rails, written in Ruby, his aim was to help developers achieve simplicity and allow them to develop real-world apps using less code than other frameworks and with a minimum of configuration.

Ruby on Rails, as it has come to be known ever since, certainly hit a dry spot. Armed with Hansson's mantra - such as "Don't Repeat Yourself" and "Convention Over Configuration" - developers found that Ruby on Rails (RoR) empowered them, allowing beautiful code to solve the problems most people have in Web-application development.

"It’s about taking the pain away and making you happy," Hansson - who was a speaker at SYS-CON Events’ inaugural "Real-World AJAX" One-Day Seminar (www.sys-con.tv/read/195218.htm) in March 2006 - has said.

He went on to argue that he usually advises people to cut their teeth in Web-development on the mainstream offerings first, before using Rails, because as he expresses it: "Once you’ve tried developing a substantial application in Java or PHP or C# or whatever, the difference in Rails will be readily apparent. You gotta feel the hurt before you can appreciate the cure."

Those attending SYS-CON Events' "Real-World Ruby on Rails" One-Day Seminar, on October 3, 2006 - many of whom by definition have already felt the hurt - can experience the happiness first hand, when top Ruby on Rails practitioners share their insights, expertise, and code.

Sessions range from Dave Hoover's "Acceptance Testing Rails" to Robby Russell's "Rails Meets the Legacy-World." Michael Huffington will be there to talk about "RoR & AJAX," Alex Bunardzic to explain how Rails reduces the number of decisions when building Web applications, and Steven Baker will describe "Behavior-Driven Development with RSpec."

Joe O'Brien will give a session about "Integrating Rails into the Enterprise Through SOA" and James Adam will discuss "Plugging into Rails"

Real-World RoR will reflect the fact that, after less than a year, there are people using Rails for everything from social sites to mortgage applications to selling baby clothes to sending invoices to managing humanitarian efforts. Rails is already represented in just about any Web-application domain you can imagine.

According to Hansson, Rails is about "The ability to quickly deliver functionality without feeling like a hack doing it" and it is in exactly that spirit that our "Real-World Ruby on Rails" One-Day Seminar will deliver an intense and high-octane education. Colocated with the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo, October 2-4, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA, the one-day seminar is being held October 3.

By the end of the day one thing is certain: every seminar attendee will know first hand why Ruby on Rails has been described as "Web 2.0 on Rocket Fuel"!!

Speaker Lineup:

James Adam (Plugging into Rails)
Dr. James Adam is the developer behind Rails Engines and author of the upcoming 'Rails Plugins' shortcut from Addison Wesley. He has 5 years experience as a contributor to the Ruby community and is a Rails early adopter and contributor. James currently is part of a small internal development team in London, producing real-world Rails applications within a corporate environment.

Steven Baker (Behaviour-Driven Development with RSpec)
Steven Baker is one of the key figures in the Ruby community when it comes to agile software development. He is the creator and lead developer of RSpec, the Behavior-Driven Development framework for Ruby, and is a featured speaker on applying agile methodologies at many of the Ruby and Ruby on Rails conferences. Steven continues to collaborate with leaders of the Agile and Ruby communities. He provides training and mentoring on how organizations can improve their productivity and efficiency through workshops and private sessions.

Michael Buffington (Ruby on Rails + AJAX)
Michael Buffington has been an entrepreneur and Web application developer for over 10 years. Michael cofounded Price.com Inc. in 1998, authored an advanced-level book on Macromedia's ColdFusion, and helped architect measuremap.com, Adaptive Path's new Weblog analytics service. Most recently, Michael has become notable in the Rails community for developing and managing the open source llor.nu online game, a highly addictive and massive game with some very simple underlying principles.

Alex Bunardzic (Rails Reduces the Number of Decisions When Building Web Applications)
Alex Bunardzic is a seasoned software developer, with 16 years of full-time experience building comprehensive software solutions. He specializes in delivering high-quality software products that are focused on helping users and businesses achieve their goals. In order to achieve and maintain high standards of delivery, Alex advocates the Less Technology/Less Infrastructure approach. This is the reason Alex embraces Ruby on Rails and AJAX, as these technologies allow him to deliver dramatically improved products with only a fraction of the effort usually needed to supply such solutions.

Dave Hoover (Acceptance Testing Rails Apps with Watir)
Dave Hoover is the lead agile practices consultant at Obtiva Corp and author of the upcoming 'Acceptance Testing Rails' shortcut from Addison Wesley. He enjoys learning about and contributing to the craft of software development.

Joe O'Brien (Integrating Rails into the Enterprise Through SOA)
Joe O'Brien is a co-founder of EdgeCase, LLC, a software development company based in central Ohio specializing in Ruby, Rails and Web 2.0 application development and training. Previously he was a developer with ThoughtWorks and spent much of his time working with large J2EE and .NET systems for Fortune 500 companies. He has spent his career as a developer, project manager, and everything in between. Joe is a passionate member of the open source community. Recently, he founded the Columbus Ruby Brigade and has helped organize the Chicago Area Ruby Users Group. His passions are agile development in the Enterprise, Ruby, and demonstrating to the Fortune 500 the elegance and power of this incredible language. Joe is currently working on a book for the Pragmatic Programmers on Ruby and SOA.

Robby Russell (Rails Meets the Legacy-World)
Robby Russell founded PLANET ARGON in 2002, and it has now grown to be one of the most well-known Rails development, consulting and hosting firms in operation. He is also currently finishing his long anticipated book, “Programming Rails,” for the leading technical book publisher, O'Reilly Media. Robby is well known in the Rails community, thanks to his popular Rails-related blog, robbyonrails.com.

Ryan Davis (Test Driven Development)
Ryan Davis has been using Ruby since 2000 and is a founding member of the Seattle Ruby Brigade, the ass-kickingest ruby brigade (per-capita). He has worked on and released coco/ruby, ParseTree, ruby2c, RubyInline, ZenHacks, ZenTest, and ZenWeb. He has not yet released BFTS, metaruby, or zero2rails but they are coming out RSN. His presentation at RubyConf 2005 on ZenHacks was very pretty.

Eric Hodel (Real-World Scalability)
Eric Hodel has been using Ruby for over four years and is a founding member of the Seattle Ruby Brigade. He has presented twice at RubyConf, in 2003 on a web application framework called Borges and in 2005 on MetaRuby, a re-implementation of Ruby in Ruby.

Sponsorship and Exhibit Opportunities
The Seminar will be sponsored by leading technology vendors. Information on sponsorship and exhibit opportunities can be obtained by e-mail at events(at)sys-con.com or by phone at 201 802-3020.

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