RubyCaribe

OpenROV: Robotics Underwater with Node.js

This video starts with a 5-minute presentation followed by 12 minutes of Q&A. The NYC Node.js audience was very interested in the OpenROV!

OpenROV is an underwater robot running Linux and Node.js. How is that connected to Ruby? It's not! But since great developers are polyglot, RubyCaribe participants will spend two evenings hacking on Node.js with a fun and interesting underwater robot.

On Friday afternoon, we'll take multiple OpenROVs out on the ocean for live testing. What a wonderful way to test your software skills!

You can have an OpenROV in Barbados and control it from a laptop in Taiwan because communication happens via TCP/IP.

Presented at the NYC Node.js group in September 2014.

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As the new year approaches, here’s some good news for anyone who wants to be awesome with Ruby. For a limited time, you can now buy a RubyCaribe ticket for $950!

Standard price for the 5-day RubyCaribe conference is $1,599. The $950 special offer will be available thru December 31, 2014. After that, the standard price will return.

Why attend RubyCaribe?

This 3-minute video tells you what to expect at RubyCaribe:

Highlights

Hands-on format: Each topic will start with a 30-minute presentation, followed by a 2-hour lab directly to the presentation.

Intimate setting. Only 100 RubyCaribe tickets will be sold. Spend quality time with the presenters and your colleagues.

Beautiful, tropical weather. Barbados in January! You deserve a break from the snow, ice, winter winds, frigid temperatures...

Bonus: Hack on OpenROV. OpenROV is an underwater robot running Linux and Node.js. Hack on OpenROV at night, and take it out on the ocean on Friday afternoon.

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What can you expect at RubyCaribe? Hands-on labs, where you get to apply what you learn immediately. Hacking on an OpenROV underwater robot. Lots of fun with your colleagues. Sun and warm weather in January!

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RubyCaribe is offering up to six (6) conference scholarships for students or professionals currently living in Barbados. Scholarship applicants will be judged on their ability to build a project using Ruby and related tools.

Note: Conference scholarships are now open to professionals (in addition to students) living in Barbados.

3-Minute Video

Here's a quick video overview of RubyCaribe.

Teamwork

Individual developers and teams of up to three people are invited to collaborate on a project. If a team-built project wins, all members of the team will receive a complementary pass for RubyCaribe.

Eligibility

Every member of the competing team must live and study on the island of Barbados.

Participants can compete as individuals or in teams of up to three (3) people.

If a multi-person team wins a scholarship, all members of the team will receive a complementary pass for RubyCaribe.

All source code must be managed via Git version control and submitted at GitHub in order to be eligible for evaluation. The GitHub Student Developer Pack offers a zero cost option.

Scholarship Rules are subject to interpretation, clarification, and changes by the RubyCaribe organizers at any time.

What to Build

Participants will be judged on their ability to build a software application using the Ruby language and/or the Ruby on Rails framework. Each team will be required to submit:

The URL for the running application built by the individual or team.

The URL for the GitHub repo where the code is stored. Only code committed (via $ git commit) before the deadline will be considered.

What should your app do? Your app will be limited only by the size of your imagination and the looming deadline. A simple app that performs as expected is better than a complex app that doesn't work.

Many developers achieve success by scratching their own itch. For example...

37signals (renamed Basecamp) built a project management app to manage their internal work flow. That app grew into Basecamp, which became the central product of the company.

Steve Wozniak wanted a simple computer for his own personal use. Woz teamed up with Steve Jobs to build the computer, and that was the beginning of Apple.

If you are currently a student, what software application(s) could make it easier for you to complete your school assignments? If you live in the Caribbean, what resources do you have in abundance (like solar energy) that you can build on? What other questions will lead you to create an app that gets you excited?

Deadlines

Participants are asked to register their intent to complete before the registration deadline. Registration gives you access to resources that will help you to build your project and compete effectively.

Register here to gain access to resources that can help you to build your app.

Submission Deadline : Wednesday, December 31, 2014 at 11:59pm Barbados time.

How to Get Started

The web is full of tutorials on Ruby, Rails, Git, and all of the tools you need to build a successful scholarship entry. The book Ruby on Rails Tutorial contains everything you need to get started. The book is available for electronic purchase, or you can read the HTML version online for free.

Judging Parameters

The judging committee will include faculty from the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill and members of the RubyCaribe organizer team. Criteria:

Subjective: How well does the app solve the targeted problem?

Objective: How well does the app perform in an objective evaluation from a tool like Code Climate?

Scholarship Rules are subject to interpretation, clarification, and changes by the RubyCaribe organizers at any time.

Questions?

This is the first year for the RubyCaribe scholarships, so consider this document a work in progress. If you have questions, feel free to contact the organizers.

About UWI Day On Saturday, January 31, 2014, RubyCaribe participants will visit the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill for for presentations and demos delivered by UWI faculty, students, and RubyCaribe participants.

About Dr. Colin Depradine Dr. Colin Depradine is Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. He holds degrees from University College London, UK (B. Eng. in Electronic Engineering), Imperial College London (M.Sc. in Computing Science), and the University of the West Indies (Ph.D. in Computer Science). Dr. Depradine is passionate about computer science education, starting as early as primary school and going through the doctorate level. His research focuses on human-computer interaction, especially user interface design for blind and deaf users, as well as the creation and use of specialized software for science education.

About Natasha Corbin Ms. Natasha Corbin is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with more than six years (6) experience working at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus providing project management and technical support for international donor funded projects. She was involved in managing the EU funded project entitled “Small Developing Island Renewable Energy Knowledge and Technology Transfer Network Project” (DIREKT) and more recently the grant funded ACP-EU (EDULINK II) project entitled “Knowledge Transfer Capacity Building for Enhanced Energy Access and Efficiency in the Caribbean (CAP4INN0) and IADB project entitled “Building Capacity and Regional Integration for the Development of a Generation of Entrepreneurs in Sustainable Energy and Information and Communication Technologies” (BRIDGE).

In 2011, she received the Principal’s Award of Excellence for outstanding staff achievements and in the same year she was awarded the prize for Best Collaborative Research Project. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Barbados Renewable Energy Association (BREA) and the UWI, (Cave Hill) Co-operative Credit Union Limited.

She holds a BSc honors degree in Environmental Science, MSc. in Natural Resources Management, MSc. Project Management and is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Environmental Science focusing on the areas of renewable energy and energy efficiency.

About Maurice Beckles Maurice Beckles grew up on the island of Barbados where from a young age his fascination with moving parts lead to an early interest in mechanics, electronics, and ultimately computing.  In 2005 Maurice earned a BSc Degree with honors from the University of the West Indies Cave Hill in Computer Science and Management having won the Chevron Texaco Scholarship for Academic Merit in 2002.  Since then he has worked in a number of industries from document processing, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, retail, and education in varying roles ranging from support to consulting.

The majority of Maurice’s efforts have surrounded support, systems administration, Linux / Windows integration and building custom Linux Appliances. Maurice is the Information Systems Technician for the Faculty of Science & Technology at the University of the West Indies where he is involved in System / Server Support, HPC, Open Source, and coordinating the computer science club.

Maurice recently became involved with LinuxBarbados, a non-profit user group aimed at the promotion and use of open source alternatives. Maurice enjoys swimming, playing the drums and is actively involved in philanthropic work at various schools conducting motivational talks, and story reading with a focus on science and technology as a means of problem solving.

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Check out this 3-minute video to learn more about RubyCaribe.

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Come spend time practicing the craft of software development with Corey Haines and Sarah Gray. This workshop will include specific, hands-on coding exercises that are created to challenge and entertain. Through the course of the time together, we'll talk about simple design, exercise our pair-programming skills and write some awesome code to solve interesting problems. About Corey Haines After leaving a career as a developer in a corporate environment, Corey Haines spent his time on working with and learning from other developers of all different skill levels. Out of this came an appreciation for the fundamentals of software development and the use of focused practice as a way to master them. Corey's workshops are always code-focused, emphasizing a hands-on approach to learning. He's the co-founder of the popular Coderetreat workshop, the author of "Understanding the Four Rules of Simple Design" and, of course, a cat lover. About Sarah Gray Sarah Gray is a software developer who's been building web-based applications since 2001. She believes the best software is a result of clear conversations and well-framed questions. In her practice she uses TDD to develop simple, modular code. She is currently a senior software developer at Trunk Club.

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Check out this 3-minute video to learn more about RubyCaribe.

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Functional Programming is more popular than ever. Languages like Clojure, Haskell, Scala, and F# and popping up everywhere. Even Apple’s new Swift language has a functional flavor to it. The popularity of SICP study groups seems to be at an all time high.

What’s a poor Ruby programmer to do? If you’re using JRuby you might be able to integrate with Clojure or Scala, but what about the rest of us?

This is where the RubyLisp project comes in. It’s an open source implementation of a large chunk of the Scheme language, written in pure Ruby and easily integratable into a plain ol’ Ruby app… or a RubyMotion app.

This session and the 2-hour lab will show you how to integrate RubyLisp into your Ruby apps.

About Dave Astels Dave Astels, award winning technical author, has 30 years of experience creating software, primarily using object-oriented and functional languages. Dave has worked for companies such as TogetherSoft, ThoughWorks, Google, and DRW. He currently works for SteelSeries, in charge of Research and Innovation. Dave once wrote a blog post that resulted in rSpec.

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Check out this 3-minute video to learn more about RubyCaribe.

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With the release of version 3.0, RubyMotion now enables developers to build Android apps in Ruby. This session will build on lessons learned during the iOS section. During the lab, identical business logic will be used to build two native mobile apps: One for iOS, one for Android. Even better, the session (including the 2-hour hands-on lab) will be led by the creator of RubyMotion himself.

About Laurent Sansonetti Laurent is the founder of HipByte, the company that produces RubyMotion, a toolchain for iOS, OS X and Android development in Ruby.

He worked at Apple for 7 years as a senior software engineer, on both iLife and OS X. A long time rubyist, he created the MacRuby project. In a previous life, he worked on IDA Pro and was an active contributor to RubyCocoa and GNOME.

Laurent will lead two RubyMotion sessions this year: iOS in the morning, and Android in the afternoon.

More Details

Check out this 3-minute video to learn more about RubyCaribe.

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RubyMotion enables developers to build iOS, OS X, and Android apps using Ruby. With RubyMotion, your Ruby source code is compiled by the same LLVM compiler that handles apps written in Apple’s Objective-C and Swift languages. RubyMotion development is fast, and the apps run fast, too.

This session (and the companion Android session) will show you how to use RubyMotion to build an iOS app, and how to re-use business logic from the iOS app while building a version for Android. Added bonus: The session (including the 2-hour hands-on lab) will be led by the creator of RubyMotion himself.

About Laurent Sansonetti Laurent is the founder of HipByte, the company that produces RubyMotion, a toolchain for iOS, OS X and Android development in Ruby.

He worked at Apple for 7 years as a senior software engineer, on both iLife and OS X. A long time rubyist, he created the MacRuby project. In a previous life, he worked on IDA Pro and was an active contributor to RubyCocoa and GNOME.

Laurent will lead two RubyMotion sessions this year: iOS in the morning, and Android in the afternoon.

More Details

Check out this 3-minute video to learn more about RubyCaribe.

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Machine Learning (or ML) offers the promise of having a computer pour through your data and automatically extract the information that you’re interested in. At least in theory. On closer inspection machine learning is a loosely defined collection of poorly explained statistical and algorithmic tricks that are magical when they work and fail fantastically when they don’t. Acquiring the needed skills for working with data safely is not easy.  This session, followed by two hours of hands-on lab time, will raise your comfort level with machine learning and Ruby.

About Randall Thomas Randall Thomas has been working in the technology industry for more than 20 years - doing everything from embedded systems, to digital video, to applied statistics to cloud computing. Specialties: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Clojure, Scala, C++, R, Applied Statistics, Data Mining, Javascript, Software architecture, Ruby, MPEG, Digital video compression, Data warehousing, SQL, Startups, Data analysis, Product Development, Business Development, Technical Due Diligence, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Agile Development.

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Check out this 3-minute video to learn more about RubyCaribe.

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Whenever you say that you're building a web application with Ruby, its almost implied that you will be using Rails to do so.

But imagine for a second that Rails does not exist at all. What kind of Ruby code would you write to make a web application work from scratch?

During this session we will think about and implement some of the MVC patterns that are taken for granted when using a framework like Rails, while at the same time write a web application with only a little help from Rack. 

About David Padilla David Padilla is CEO at Crowd Interactive, a leader eCommerce consulting firm based in Mexico.

He spends most of his free time trying out all the new technologies that come out everyday and reading other people's code to try and understand all the different ways developer think.

Through his career, he has been devoted to promoting the Ruby on Rails community in Mexico through rails.mx and the organization of the only Ruby conference in the area: Magma Conf.

More Details

Check out this 3-minute video to learn more about RubyCaribe.

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RubyCaribe (pronounced ka-REEB) is a conference for Ruby developers who are serious about ramping up their skills. The conference will be held January 27 - 31, 2015 in Barbados. January is a beautiful time to visit the Caribbean. Intermediate and Advanced Developers If you are an intermediate or advanced developer and you’re ready for the next level of performance, then take a serious look at RubyCaribe. Here’s why:

Every RubyCaribe session features a 30- to 45-minute presentation followed by 2 hours of deep-dive lab time. Everything you learn in the presentation will be reinforced during the 2-hour lab.

The venue, Hilton Barbados Resort, sits right on the ocean. Need a stretch break? Take a walk on the beach!

Bonus: OpenROV Underwater Robot For two nights we will hack together on OpenROV, an open source underwater robot running Linux and Node.js. The best developers are polyglot, right? On Friday afternoon, we will grab a boat for live ocean testing with a few OpenROVs. If you ever wanted to experiment with Node.js and IoT, RubyCaribe offers a great opportunity.

University Collaboration On Saturday, the final day of the conference, we will visit the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill. There we will interact with computer science faculty and students. Members of the UWI community will demo their work with solar energy and other areas touched by software. Who knows, maybe you’ll give a lightning talk about something you learned at RubyCaribe!

Work Hard. Play Hard. RubyCaribe will work you hard. RubyCaribe will make your brain sweat. So be sure to schedule a few days before or after the conference for sight seeing and relaxation. 

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