Again a great meeting. I was amazed to see how much Rails is being used these days.

A little less than a year ago at the first meeting, only a handful of the developers visiting were using Rails professionally. This time I not only wasn’t able to find anyone who was not yet getting paid to write Rails code, but I also talked with folks from three different startups using Rails; soocial, SugarStats, and Wakoopa.

Time for another one. The goal remains unchanged: a good chat about our experiences with Rails, Django, Seaside and other next generation web frameworks over a strong cup of coffee.

Photo by Rodney Ramdas

Please leave a comment to tell us you’ll be there or if you have any questions.

It was a lot of fun chatting with other developers at our second ‘morning coffee’ meeting today. Here’s a short video to give you a feel of the event:

Download video (Quicktime, 1.7MB)

Since we really enjoyed the first ‘morning coffee’ meeting, it is time for another one. The goal remains unchanged: a good chat about our experiences over a strong cup of coffee.

We have decided, however, to broaden the scope beyong Rails developers. Anyone working with next-generation web application frameworks, like Django or even Seaside, is invited too.

Please leave a comment to tell us you’ll be there or if you have any questions.

You can now subscribe to our podcast with talks from the Rails ‘show and tell’ meeting:

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Right now we only have ‘Unicode in Rails’ available, but you can expect more talks in the coming days. It’s also possible to download individual talks.

A big ‘thank you’ to Andy Lo A Foe, Rien Swagerman from Resource Studio, Simon de Haan from Eight Media, Flurin Egger from DigitPaint and Julian ‘Julik’ Tarkhanov for their talks.

We also like to thanks Greenpeace International for letting us use the basement and especially the Application Development Team for helping out with the gear.

More photos can be found in our Rails ‘show and tell’ meeting flickr set.

Here’s the list of talks for the Rails ‘show and tell’ meeting.

Introduction from Greenpeace

Martin Lloyd from the Greenpeace International Application Development Team will give a short overview of the work they’ve done with Rails and Django.

Audio (AAC) | Audio (MP3)

Web Services

Andy Lo A Foe will show us how to connect your Rails project to legacy Java and PHP applications using XML-RPC, SOAP and REST-style web services.

Audio with slides (AAC) | Audio (MP3) | Slides (PDF)

Content Management with Rails

Rien Swagerman from Resource Studio will talk about his experiences with building a CMS on Rails that’s tailored to the needs of his design studio.

Audio with slides (AAC) | Audio (MP3) | Slides (PDF)

Why Django?

Simon de Haan from Eight Media will talk about why they choose Django and not Rails as their default web development framework. An excellent opportunity to learn what the other hot new web framework is all about.

Audio with slides (AAC) | Audio (MP3) | Slides (PDF)

Mailing newsletters

Flurin Egger from DigitPaint will talk about the development of EntopicMail, a Rails application for mailing out newsletters that’s currently in use at organisations like Philips, NEN and the dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.

Audio with slides (AAC) | Audio (MP3) | Slides (PDF)

Unicode in Rails

Julian ‘Julik’ Tarkhanov will show us why the lack of Unicode support in Ruby is a problem when developing Rails applications. He’ll also talk about how he developed a very nice way to properly handle Unicode data in Rails.

Audio with slides (AAC) | Audio (MP3) | Slides (PDF)

Update: Added audio and slides.

The goal for this new meeting is to have a few developers talk about the stuff they do with Rails. It’s going to be a fast-moving and informal meeting; talking time will be limited to 10 minutes and there will be lots of opportunity for asking questions. We’ll have both dutch and english language speakers.

What: 6 short presentations by Rails developers

When: Thursday, June 22nd, 2006, 14:30-16:30

Where: The basement of the Greenpeace International headquarters at the Ottho Heldringstraat 5 in Amsterdam

Registration required: Leave a comment with your email address to register for this meeting (click ‘also leave contact information’).

I just found out that in Spain they’re drinking beer instead of coffee at Rails meetings.

When we proposed a Rails meeting two weeks ago, we thought we’d be having coffee with 4, maybe 5 fellow developers from Amsterdam. We never expected more than 30 people to show up, certainly not people all the way from Eindhoven, Venlo or Groningen!

It was a lot of fun chatting about Rails with all of these people. Please leave a comment if you’d enjoyed the meeting too.

We’re currently planning another fun event for Rails developers. We’ll post more information about it as soon as we get some things confirmed.

Update: You can find some photos here and here. For more comments on the meeting, see this, this and this post (all dutch).

There’s a lot of interest in the Rails meeting we proposed last week.

We’ll answer some of the questions that keep coming up.

Wouldn’t it be kinda busy?

Yes, probably, but we don’t think it will be too crowded.

I have to leave very early because I’m coming from Venlo/Groningen/someplace else far away. Can’t you start later?

Please remember that this is nothing more than an informal meeting at a regular coffee bar. It’s not a conference or seminar, there are no speakers or workshops.

It would be great if you could make it, but please keep in mind that there will be nothing more to it than buying a cup of coffe and having a good chat about Rails.

Will it be easy to park my car there?

No, parking in Amsterdam is never easy. See bereikbaar amsterdam for more information on where and how to park your car.

How do I get there from the central station?

Take tram 4, 9, 16, 24 or 25 and get out at the Muntplein. Cross the bridge to hotel de l’Europe. You’re now on the nieuwe Doelenstraat where you’ll find the Coffee Company after 100 meters on the right side.

In the last few months we found that there are more and more Dutch people working with Ruby on Rails. So far we’ve kept in touch by email and instant messaging, but now we’d like to meet up in person. Our goal is to have a good chat about our experiences with Rails, and of course a strong cup of coffee is a precondition for such a thing.

When: Thursday, March 30th, 2006, 9:30 AM

Where: The Coffee Company on the corner of the Nieuwe Doelenstraat and the Kloveniersburgwal in Amsterdam

This is an informal meeting intended for people working with Rails, developers and designers who want to get started, and everyone wondering if Rails might be a good fit for their project.

Please leave a comment to tell us you’ll be there or if you have any questions.

Update: We’ve answered some of the questions that keep coming up in this post.