austinpreneur

Forbes says Austin is the best Bang for the Buck!

Forbes magazine ranked Austin the best Bang for the Buck in the country, with San Antonio number 2 and both Dallas and Houston in the top 10. With a low cost of living, strong job market and low inflation, Texas is looking very attractive!

Not only that, but Austin is also the city with the highest percentage of bloggers and digeratti.

If you're living in the bay area or NYC you might want to take a look at opportunities in Austin!

Come hear about OtherInbox at Amazon Web Services Start-Up Tour next Thursday

Next Thursday, September 11 I'll be presenting OtherInbox at the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Tour at the Austin Music Hall. Register for the event and be one of the first to hear about OtherInbox!

Come learn Ruby on Rails on August 2nd

If you've been hearing about Ruby on Rails and wondering what all the fuss is about, come spend a Saturday learning Ruby on Rails with a group of experienced Rails developers as your guide. The program will outline the major pieces of Rails and dellve into the practial aspects of building web applications with the framework. Hands-on work on your own laptop will be encouraged during the work session.

Major topics will include:

• Some Ruby Basics
  
• Broad Rails Overview
  
• Building a Rails Application From the Ground Up
  
• Active Record Models and Database Migrations
  
• Views, Controllers, and Helpers: A Guided Tour
  
• Application Deployment with Capistrano 2
  
• App Lab

We'll be hosting the event on August 2nd from 10am to 5pm at the Datran Media and OtherInbox offices. Space is limited so reserve your spot today!

Austin on Rails meeting Tuesday July 22nd

On Tuesday, July 22nd we'll be hosting the Austin On Rails monthly meeting at the Datran Media and OtherInbox offices (fourth Tuesday of every month, 8th floor of the Omni Hotel at 7th and Brazos downtown). The meeting runs from 7pm - 9pm and then everyone heads to a bar for drinks after. Datran Media provides free drinks and pizza!

Topics for this month include...

Lightning Talks!
For our first segment this month, we are going to open up the floor for lightning talks, so please start thinking about what you would like to share now. We'll allow for 5 minutes or so per speaker, but no more than 10, and we'll fit in as many as we can. Good ideas for a talk might be a tool or technique you've learned recently, a new Rails project you've developed, a brief tutorial on a process or library you've found helpful. Etc! Should be fun.

Merb: The "Came for Rails, Stayed for Ruby" Framework
Merb is the pocket rocket framework that's creating buzz in the Rails community. Merb is fast. Merb is modular. Merb is efficient. And Merb might be the best choice for your next project. And it might not.

This presentation will provide an overview of the philosophy behind Merb, the 0.9 rewrite, where Merb is headed, and how it can compliment Rails. We will quickly dive into checking out Merb's internals, a few Merb plugins, and how you can get involved in the Merb project. Merb is a great example of a ruby project done right, and we'll highlight a few features that Merb knocks out of the park while helping your determine if merb is right for you.

Brian & Ben are partners in software consultancy specializing in Django, Rails, and Merb development. The team has closely followed the progress of both Merb and DataMapper since their respective 0.9 rewrites, contributing to the projects whenever possible. Since April 2008, they have been using Merb + DataMapper on new client applications.

Also, OtherInbox is hiring Ruby on Rails developers, so if you're interested in learning more please come to the meeting and find me!

The Windows Disadvantage

It used to be that having Windows expertise was an advantage and being a Mac user put you in a severe minority. It was hard to find a job where you were allowed to use a Mac never mind where you got to be surrounded by other Mac users.

But oh how the times have changed. Macs are more popular than PCs at universities, at many technical conferences, with celebrities, even with newscasters on CNN. If you are giving a presentation at an O'Reilly conference, you can expect to see an army of Apple logos staring back at you.

Have we crossed the cusp? Is it a disadvantage for a technical person who doesn't know Mac? Are your job options significantly wider if you are comfortable on both Mac and Windows?

Austin on Rails meeting Tuesday May 27th

On Tuesday, May 27th we'll be hosting the Austin On Rails monthly meeting at the Datran Media and OtherInbox offices (fourth Tuesday of every month, 8th floor of the Omni Hotel at 7th and Brazos downtown). The meeting runs from 7pm - 9pm and then everyone heads to a bar for drinks after. Datran Media provides free drinks and pizza!

Topics for this month include...

ORM Deathmatch!
by Mike Perham
ActiveRecord isn't the only game in town when it comes time to access your database with Ruby. We'll take ActiveRecord, DataMapper and Sequel, put them in a steel cage match to the death and see who emerges victorious. Attendees in the first three rows might get bloody so bring a poncho.

Sinatra - a Tiny Ruby Web Framework
by Damon Clinkscales
There are times when Rails seems like massive overkill, but you would still like to use Ruby goodness. This is especially true when your entire web site idea can be contained inside one file. We'll take a look at the features of Sinatra and play around with a sample application based upon it.

Also, OtherInbox is hiring Ruby on Rails developers, so if you're interested in learning more please come to the meeting and find me!

I'm hosting the Austin Social Media Club meeting at Datran Media on Thursday, May 15

On Thursday May 15 I'm hosting the Austin Social Media Club meeting at the Datran Media and OtherInbox offices (fourth Tuesday third Thursday of every month, 8th floor of the Omni Hotel at 7th and Brazos downtown).

We'll have free pizza (thanks Datran!) at 6pm and things will officially start at 6:30pm and wrap up at 8pm.

Jon Lebkowsky and David Armistead from Social Web Strategies will be talking about The Headless Organization:

Throughout the history of the Internet, we’ve seen an explosion of new, relatively frictionless communication channels, broad access to the means of media production, and a blurring of the distinctions between professional and personal media. We’ve seen an ascendance of many-to-many communications resulting in “out of control” communications, flatter hierarchies, and the emergence of new, agile forms of social and political organization. The rise of networked communications and the appearance of robust platforms for social networking has been accompanied by an increasing tendency for groups to self-organize — and the proliferation of entities referred to as leaderless or “headless” organizations. In May’s SMC presentation, we’ll consider how these headless organizations have evolved, discuss some examples, and talk about challenges, limits, and potential future developments.

I'm looking to hire a product manager in the social media space for Datran Media as well as Facebook app developers for Datran Media and OtherInbox. If you know of anyone who might be a good fit, please encourage them to register for the meeting and introduce themselves to me.

Hiring Developers - ROR / Java / .NET / Facebook / OpenSocial

My new startup, OtherInbox is looking for experienced Ruby On Rails developers. We're a small team working in an Agile environment on an innovative consumer service. Our development team is led by Steven Smith, founder of FiveRuns. If you know of someone to recommend, please email jobs@otherinbox.com - we'll pay you $1,000 if we hire your referral!

We also need help with web browser toolbar extensions for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. We'd love to find one person who can do all three but it seems more likely that we'll find a specialist for each browser. There will be a big project up front and then ongoing maintenance.

Datran Media is looking for developers who are excited about building social networking apps of all types. We need Java and .NET developers to work on our StormPost Social Connector platform as well as standalone Facebook applications. Email joshua.baer@datranmedia.com if you know someone!