Yay!  I'm starting a Ruby on Rails class, and yes, I am a huge dork.  I couldn't find a Ruby class anywhere that wasn't full, and I had no luck learning on my own from a book and the occasional meetup or lecture.  Since doing something new is no fun on your own, I've managed to link up with a bunch of great people to teach, help, sponsor, donate, video, etc...Description and registration below...

Come learn Ruby on Rails from SF Ruby Meetup's famous Sarah Allen- one of the two Sarah's behind the Ruby Workshops for Women.  This is a great class for anyone interested in continuing where the Workshop for Women left off, or anyone techy who'd like to learn Ruby.You will learn how to create data-driven web applications with Ruby on Rails. Through test-driven and exploratory development, you will become familiar with ActiveRecord, including associations. You will gain an understanding of the SQL implicitly written through your Ruby code. You will learn about customizing views, view helpers, routes and controller actions. At the end of this class, the "generate scaffold" command will hold no magic. There will be short assignments that you will be expected to accomplish between classes. Class size is limited to 12 and expected to sell out; if the class is full you can join the wait list for priority registration in the next class.  And thank you to all of the SF Ruby people who have volunteered to help with this effort!

The SF Ruby Meetup group is holding an optional Install Fest on Monday, August 24th at 6pm - 8pm at the JCC. Drop by with your laptop and get help installing everything you need to get started!

Ruby on Rails Fundamentals Class
Tuesdays 8/25 - 9/29 6:30-8:30pm
Jewish Community Center
3200 California Street, SF, CA
Cost: $190 for JCC members, $200 public

Register here:
http://www.jccsf.org/content_main.aspx?catid=686

Off to my 1st golf lesson in SF soon!  Hopefully I won't destroy a $500 club this time.  I opted to drink with coworkers yesterday and then couldn't catch a muni bus downtown to hunt for genderless khakis or boyscout shorts for today's lesson, so 'm wearing jeans. Hopefully I don't get kicked out.  Anyone up for beginners golf in a few weeks?

After golf I'm off to Santa Cruz to Frisbee golf, which I'm actually worse at than regular golf.  Apparently, today is all about embracing ineptitude for me.

Where area all the Ruby people??

I manage Info Systems at a big non-profit in SF  and am working with our programming staff to start new, 'current' tech classes. Our old classes were pretty terrible (Create a website in Dreamweaver!  Learn to word process!) I've also started learning Ruby so I'm interested in offering a 6 week Intro to Ruby on Rails class.  I'm looking for an instructor for at least one session starting in late August.  And it's HARD!  I have TONS of people that are dying to teach a PHP class- even offering to do it unpaid- but I can't find anyone to teach Ruby.  Is this simply a numbers game- with so many more PHP programmers than Rubyists- or is something else at play here?

In terms of a teacher, I'm looking for someone that's an advanced- level Ruby programmer (in case students run into problems) but able to dumb things down effectively for beginners, someone personable enough to hold everyone's attention, and enough of a self-starter to come up with a syllabus and training materials- although I actually have a lot of materials and am willing to help with that.  Prior teaching experience is great, but I'm open to someone that wants to gain experience or see what teaching is like, which was a big sell in the PHP community.

Class will be once a week around 2 hours (6:30-8:30ish)  exact dates are below.  I'll be asking registrants to bring their own laptops and we'll supply either wireless and/or network cables and power.  Instructor would also need their own laptop to plug into our projector.  We've got a very nice facility and I'll be making sure that we have all the other hardware we need.

This will start as a PAID contract position, but if someone stays with us for a bit we can also offer this as a PT benefited position, which comes with standard benefits and a nice discount on our gym and other classes.

If you're interested, please email me at ruby@jobtrajectory.com, or comment here.  And please let your Ruby friends know too...

Possible dates:
Thursday 8/20-9/24
Tuesday 10/20-11/24

D and I are in bed, happy to be reunited, talking about interaction design.  Who would have thought? 

Seriously, this IS easy to use, although I'm still discovering new features.  I think today I'm going to focus on uploading some photos of recent projects and vacations and then figure out how to share that with my friends and family.  Then my mom doesn't have to keep track of pics I send her in 100 different e-mail attachments and I can share some of my awesome creative ventures with the world!  Prepare to be amazed....

Wow- this is so easy!  Deceptively easy?  We'll see...