LRUG Podcast El Rug

In this episode I'm joined by Abdel Saleh of said.fm a Radio and Podcast recommendation and curation startup. Abdel has been involved in the London Ruby community for many years and we cover a lot of ground in this interview - from transitioning from Java to Ruby in Finance, through Machine Learning and computation on AWS clusters to the ins- and outs of getting a startup off the ground both here and in Silicon Valley.


Here's some links to things Abdel talked about during the interview:



Research Papers
On the uselessness of content for recommendations
Recommendation algorithm wants to show you something new
Latent Semantic Analysis In Ruby
Non-negative Matrix Factorization for Ruby
A Clear Signal Through the Noise
Designing Happiness
The Future of UX is Play: The 4 Keys to Fun, Emotion and User Engagement


Before the interview I mentioned that Malcolm Arnold of Ruby Nuby is looking for donated laptops to take to a program in Uganda and Kenya to teach Ruby, technology and entrepreneurial skills. If you have some equipment to donate contact Malcolm or find out more at the Ruby Nuby meetup.

In this episode I'm joined by Alex MacCaw. Alex is a prolific Ruby and JavaScript developer. With an entrepreneurial spirit he's also the creator of Taskforce and has spent time in the San Francisco start-up community.


In this episode we talk about all of these things as well as the state of Ruby on the desktop and the future of web applications.


If you enjoyed this episode of the LRUG podcast, I'd love to hear your opinions. Please contact me, Chris Lowis via Twitter (@chrislowis) with your comments. You can also help the podcast by leaving a rating on iTunes.

In this episode I'm joined by Murray Steele. Murray is a Ruby developer for Unboxed Consulting, organises our very own LRUG meetings and is one of the kingpins behind the successful Ruby Manor conference. Murray joined me a few days after his June LRUG talk to chat about the first Ruby code he ever wrote. We also discussed what it takes to run a successful tech user group, and the advantages of community-run conferences compared to big, corporate ones.


If you enjoyed this episode of the LRUG podcast, I'd love to hear your opinions. Please contact me, Chris Lowis via Twitter (@chrislowis) with your comments. You can also help the podcast by leaving a rating on iTunes.

In this episode I was joined by Seth Edwards. Seth is a software developer who works with C# and Ruby and contributes to the C# bindings for MongoDB.


Seth gave a talk to LRUG about MongoDB and in this interview we talk some more about that, and also what Ruby developers can learn from C# and vice-versa. You can watch Seth's talk over on the Skills Matter website.

Welcome to the first ever LRUG podcast!


At the March meeting Chris Parsons from Eden Development and Software Journeyman Corey Haines gave talks on software craftsmanship, what it means to Rubyists and how to continuously improve in your craft.


After their talks (videos available from our meeting hosts Skills Matter), Chris Lowis sat down with Corey and Chris to find out what it means to be a Software Craftsman.


Thanks to Skills Matter for providing the space for the talks and the recording of the interview