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Rails for All presents Acts As Conference

Orlando, Florida February 8th and 9th 2008

Charity Session

Keynoters

Obie Fernandez

Obie Fernandez is CTO of HashRocket, a boutique web consultancy and product shop based in Jacksonville Beach, FL, and has more than 12 years of experience as a software developer. As a senior consultant at ThoughtWorks, Obie specialized in complex custom enterprise software projects. A pioneer in Ruby on Rails development, he writes a popular blog, is a regular contributor to the Ruby on Rails podcast, and is the Ruby community editor at InfoQ.com, one of the world's premier technology portals.

Dan Benjamin

Dan Benjamin is the CTO of Helium Report, an independent new media venture for affluent consumers. He co-founded Cork'd, the web’s first social network and reviewing application for wine aficionados, which was later acquired by WLTV. He also developed a Ruby on Rails content management system for web design magazine, A List Apart, and built software for companies including MCI, Capgemini, Vitalsource, and Tupperware. Dan publishes technology articles and tutorials on his popular software development website, Hivelogic, and has been a featured speaker at the programming conference, RailsConf. Dan holds a B.A. in Technical Writing with a Computer Science focus from the University of Central Florida, and has over 15 years of software development experience.

Speakers

Peter Armstrong

Peter Armstrong is the author of the upcoming Manning book Flexible Rails: Flex 3 on Rails 2, which was previously a bestselling PDF-only book on Lulu with a sales rank of #73 all-time. Peter has been developing rich client applications for over 7 years. He has worked with Flex full-time since July 2004 (since Flex 1.0), including working from July 2004 to October 2007 for a Silicon Valley mortgage industry startup and being part of the team that won the 2006 Adobe MAX Award for RIA/Web Development. Before that, he was a Java Swing developer for over 4 years for a Silicon Valley BPM startup. On the Rails side, Peter has been tracking Ruby on Rails since mid-2005 (since before Rails 1.0) and is the organizer of The Vancouver Ruby/Rails Meetup group. Peter is also a frequent speaker on using Flex and Rails together, including presentations at The Vancouver Flash/Flex Meetup, a RailsConf 2007 BOF, The Vancouver RIA Developer Camp and Rails to Italy in Pisa. Peter lives in the Vancouver, BC area and works as an independent consultant doing Flex, AIR and Rails development, training and workshops through his company Ruboss Technology Corporation. Peter's talk is titled Rails on AIR.

Anthony Eden

Anthony Eden is a software developer and technical manager with over 12 years of development experience, including 2 years of Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Anthony has spoken at RailsConf 2007, RailsConf Europe 2007, eRubycon 2007 as well as numerous ORUG and Honolulu Coders user group meetings. Anthony currently manages a team of software developers creating applications for the US Department of Defense. Anthony's talk is titled Shining a Light on the Dark Magic of ActiveRecord

Neal Ford

Neal Ford is a senior application architect at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. He is the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, courseware, video/DVD presentations, author of 3 books, including Art of Java Web Development (Manning 2003), and editor/contributor for the 2006 and 2007 editions of the No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology (Pragmatic Press). He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at numerous developers' conferences worldwide. Check out his web site at www.nealford.com. Neal's talk is titled Advanced DSLs in Ruby

Luke Francl

Luke Francl is a Rails developer at Slantwise Design, where he's worked on projects both big and small. Prior to coming to Rails he was the lead developer for an enterprise digital asset management system written in Java. Luke is a frequent presenter at the Ruby Users of Minnesota, and has also presented at CodeCon 2002, the Twin Cities Code Camp, MinneBar, and Ostrava on Rails. He blogs at Rail Spikes. Luke's talk is titled Working with others: Best Practices for Rails Teams

Bryan Liles

Bryan Liles is a Ruby on Rails developer working on Revolution Health Group's portal. Bryan also is working on his own line of smarticasts (screencasts) and a book under the name of the Smarticus University. The focus of Smarticus University is to allow understanding of programming topics by building a solid foundation of knowledge and adding more knowledge through example. Bryan can be found online at http://smartic.us. Bryan's talk is titled Smarticus University: BDD With RSpec.

Dave Naffis

Dave is an Architect at Intridea and has experience with launching large, high-volume, Rails web applications. He is an active member of the Rails community and the author of numerous plug-ins. Dave brings years of web application development experience using a broad range of technologies. He is the main architect for MediaPlug, a white-label plug-and-play solution for effortlessly adding media to any web application. Dave is co-presenting Adding Media to Your Rails Application with Josh Owens.

Josh Owens

Josh is an Architect at Intridea. Josh is the winner of 2007 Rails Rumble competition, where he developed the TastyPlanner web application in 48 hours with couple of his friends. He is a Rails Core Contributor and a podcaster and producer of the Web 2.0 show. Josh is co-presenting Adding Media to Your Rails Application with Dave Naffis.

Charles Brian Quinn

Charles Brian Quinn is a Partner at Highgroove Studios -- a firm providing custom web 2.0 development, and Ruby on Rails consulting. He is also a founder of Slingshot Hosting for Ruby on Rails business hosting, and an instructor for the Ruby on Rails Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch. He previously taught as an Instructor for an enterprise-grade, service-enabled, integration software and load testing/balancing suite to various Fortune 500 organizations and as a Teaching Assistant at Georgia Tech for Introductory Computer Science. He holds a BS degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Charles' talk is titled Lessons from the Trenches – Learning from the Rails Bootcamp