[Vit-discuss] User Groups Page

[James Britt]

pat eyler wrote:

> 3) you might want to point out that most Ruby brigades/groups at least
> dabble in Rails too.  I'd hate for Railz0rs to go off and start their own
> group when there's a perfectly good .rb in town.  (I've spent a year
> fighting this tendency on mailing lists already.)

I started (or re-started) the Phoenix Ruby Users Group last year, and 
attendance was a mix of general Ruby hackers with decent programming 
experience, and Rails-centric coders who tended more towards One Big PHP 
File coding skills.  The latter were, I think, the majority.

Someone went and started a Rails group (motivated in part, I think, by 
the way-north meeting place selected for the Ruby group), and while I 
was concerned that the Ruby group would return to the "six guys who hang 
out" format, so far it seems that the same people (modulo travel 
restraints) attend both meetings.  So we have two Ruby meetings each 
month, in different sections of the Valley, with ~25 people each time.

The nice thing is now I feel far less compelled to cover Rails stuff at 
the Ruby meeting, so overall I think this is working out better for all 
involved since there's more variety for those who want it.

(I like the separation, both in groups and in lists, because 
app-specific discussions most often devolve into API quirks and trivia, 
as opposed to Ruby coding itself.)


-- 
James Britt