Derek’s Diary

Last weekend, I attended BarCamp Montreal where a mix of tech-savvy Montrealers gave informative and entertaining presentations on diverse topics that included:

• Art collection
• Artistic games
• Network Journalism
• Public domain audio books
• Electoral systems
• Project scheduling
• How ASPs are killing free software
• Wiki travel guide

A common theme of the presentations was harnessing the potential of the Web for conversation, collaboration, and group participation. I went to BarCamp to listen, to learn, to discuss, to question, to be inspired, and to network, and I was not disappointed. After attending the conference, I realized that the technology community in Montreal is alive and well, but perhaps more artistic and media-oriented than the tech communities in Ottawa and Silicon Valley.

Did you know that Grande Bibliothèque (BAnQ) provides Québec residents with free access to Safari Books Online? This service lists books for online reading from publishers such as Addison-Wesley, No Starch, O’Reilly, Peachpit, Prentice Hall PTR, Que, and Sams. I found a few Ruby related O’Reilly titles that I recognized:

• RJS Templates for Rails
• Ruby Cookbook
• Ruby on Rails: Up and Running
• Web Services on Rails

Though the Grande Bibliothèque Safari subscription allows you to search all books and read any book online, unlike a regular Safari subscription, it does not allow you to download individual book chapters for offline reading.

Last night, a small group of Ruby Montreal members met for the second Ruby Montreal Minga. Though there were just three of us in attendence compared with the eight who attended the first meeting, it was a more personal and focused meeting. We reviewed chapter 4 of the book Agile Web Development with Rails, Second Edition and started chapter 5. We plan to meet again in about two weeks to continue where we left off.

In case you don’t know, Ruby Minga is group of Ruby enthusiasts in Montreal who meet regularly to study Ruby programming related topics.

On Sunday, Desiree and I enjoyed a sunny day of apple picking with two school bus loads of Flipinos at Les Vergers Petch along Le Circuit du Paysan in Hemmingford, Quebec. We also stopped to buy meat at Boucherie Viau, a popular Montérégie butcher, and at Vignoble du Marathonien for wine tasting.

Further reading:

• Quebec’s cider houses rule