"Atlanta" Posts
Posted in Keeping it Simple, Atlanta, Business 
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Jonathan
As relatively new parent, my oldest is about to turn five. I’ve attended enough young kids’ birthday parties to develop a standard rating system for a
successful party. My rubric is simple and effective.
- Do they serve adult beverages?
- Do they serve adult food? (burgers = good. steak = better. no food? it better be a short party)
- As an adult, do I get cake?
- What about ice cream?
Its a simple system and it has helped me plan my own kids parties.
Good projects work the same way. A simple set of guidelines, when followed, insure success. Of all project guidelines, effectively managing scope is the most important. Pivotal tracker, our agile project management software of choice, keeps us on the straight and narrow when it comes to delivering value to our clients. This point was driven home for our recent work on a client’s project.
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Posted in Atlanta Comments
chris
After several years on the Operations team at SugarCRM, I decided to change things up a bit. As of this past Monday, I am now a Software Developer at Highgroove. The step from managing system infrastructure to programming in Ruby on Rails is a big one, but so far it’s been a blast.
Around 10am Monday, I biked the 4 miles from home to the office to an Aeron chair, a shiny new MacBook Pro and widescreen monitor, some snacks, a copy of Work Sucks, a cigar, and an empty office! Highgroove is a Results Only Work Environment so some people were working from home and others were still asleep. Eventually (most of) the rest of the team biked/motorcycled/drove in and started getting things done.
Ruby on Rails (and Ruby!) is completely new to me, but I’ve been picking up things pretty quickly. By Tuesday I was billing hours to a customer on a project, and by Wednesday I’d make a significant performance improvement contribution to another project. Matt, Charles, and the rest of the Atlanta Highgroove team have been exceedingly helpful answering my questions and explaining all of the magic that Ruby on Rails does behind the scenes, and I can now see why people that use Ruby on Rails think so highly of it.
The breadth of projects here is pretty huge: from enhancements on pretty straightforward web applications, to architecting high-volume APIs in front of huge data sets. I’m particularly looking forward to starting a new test-driven-development project with Rails 3 that relies on Chef and Capistrano for deployment to the cloud, using Pivotal Tracker to communicate with a client over as many iterations as it takes to deliver the end result.
Around 5pm, the music gets turned up and things wind down as people trickle out to concerts, bike rides, date nights, and things other than waiting for a pager to go off in the middle of the night! It’s been a great first week and I’m looking forward to the months to come.
Posted in Atlanta Comments
CBQ
If you’re thinking about doing this year’s Rails Rumble, Highgroove HQ in Atlanta (map) is offering up our office space for any teams in the Atlanta area for the competition (Aug 22 – Aug 23).
Highgroove has a team, and we know of a few more folks seeking teams. Ping us if you’re interested in joining or forming one. Registration ends soon (this weekend)!
Posted in Ruby on Rails, Atlanta, Speaking Comments
CBQ
Come see Matt talk about the Rack project, a minimal interface between webservers supporting Ruby and Ruby frameworks that’s behind the new Rails Metal functionality.
He’ll be going over Rack, and showing an example of a quick and dirty framework. He may even show how we use Rack handler’s to help handle Scout’s load.
Other topics include:
- Weather Stuff from a developer at the Weather Channel
- Rails Metal!
Check out the Atlanta Ruby Meetup Group and the January Meeting Event Details for more information.
Posted in Scout, Presentations, Atlanta Comments
CBQ
Last night, I demoed Scout to a room-full of Rubyists at the Atlanta Ruby User Group Meeting.
I would love to share all the wonderful feedback, but instead, I’ll share some of the excellent questions (and more elaborate answers) that were asked of Scout:
What are the security pitfalls, i.e. can someone simply write a ‘rm -rf’ plugin?
To answer that, let’s look at the architecture of Scout first:
- You install the tiny Scout client (which is a Ruby gem) on your server.
- The client connects over https (always) through a 256-bit secure, encrypted connection (the same encryption your bank uses).
- Scout never logs in to any of your servers.
- All communication is initiated by the client.
- The client downloads a pre-loaded plugin plan, consisting only of plugins of your choosing, so it cannot run plugins you didn’t explicitly authorize.
- The server also uses that same secure encryption for all communication. Individual accounts are protected.
- Client keys (uniquely generated) can be revoked at any time, disabling the client.
The security measures needed for Scout are the same as for any other software. In fact, in some ways, it’s easier to be more secure – the plugins are relatively few lines of code and easy to review. For a more closed environent, you can create a copy of the plugin code and host it on one of your own servers (a plugin is plain text).
Is Scout open source?
The Scout client is completely open source. The gem is a normal Ruby gem, open for development, and distributed under the MIT and/or Ruby License (whichever you prefer). The Scout Plugins people write are also completely open, in fact, they are surrounded and fostered by a community that encourages branching, fixes, and general open-ness.
The Server, where you aggregate your data, do reporting, and in general, collect information about your account is not open-source. We maintain the server, and keep all your data safe and sound.
When does it launch?
We’re doing the plumbing now – account subscriptions, a new home page, privacy policies, backup procedures, etc. We’ve recognized that lots of people are anxious to get going and we’re working to get it ready for public use as fast as possible.
Posted in Presentations, Atlanta, Ruby on Rails, Slingshot Comments
CBQ
A Presentation on with Screech Powers, Cesar Milan (The Dog Whisper), Sean Penn, and guest Ruby celebrity (and Atlanta native) Obie Fernandez. Despite the antics, Capistrano is a powerful, yet simple, bona-fide, big-boy tool. It sure does make our life easier. We like it so much, we’ve made it our goal with Slingshot Hosting to get your Ruby on Rails application up and running with our customized Capistrano Recipes, so you can focus on development.
Capistrano – Atlanta Ruby Users Group PDF
Posted in San Francisco, Atlanta, Business | 1 trackback Comments
Derek
Atlanta Technology Executive (and recent friend) Scott Burkett blogged recently on what Atlanta can do to emulate the entrepreneurial environment of Silicon Valley. Having lived in both areas, I’ve had a chance to meet and work with many remarkable entrepreneurs.
I think Scott hit many of the comparisons between Atlanta and Silicon Valley on the head. Atlanta is full of smart engineers, isn’t as forgiving to entrepreneurial failures, and like Silicon Valley, does a great job celebrating entrepreneurial heroes.
However, I don’t think the key to sparking innovation in Atlanta is tied to things like tax exemptions, venture funds, and cheap office space. When a company can start worrying about those things, they are already on their way. Innovation comes much earlier on in the process.
What are the biggest differences I’ve seen between Silicon Valley and Atlanta?
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