News & Notes

Spring Schedule & The Hashrocket Way

Tonight we’ve updated the schedule for spring and early summer 2010. Three new classes will be debuting this season including:

Flex Jumpstart

Flex is a framework for creating advanced user interfaces and animation based on Adobe’s Flash technology. Jae Hess, a professional Flex developer, will be joining us to lead the class. More details about this class will be posted in the next week.

Ruby on Rails — Level 2

The introductory Rails class has been our most popular class to date. Now it’s time for level two. In this class you’ll learn about Behavior Driven Development (BDD) with RSpec and Cucumber, using Git for source control, building views with HAML & SASS, building forms with Formtastic, and more advanced ActiveRecord features (Single-Table Inheritance, custom validations, callbacks, and more). As usual, this class will be taught in the context of a project that integrates all the topics in a real-world scenario.

The curriculum is written for people already familiar with Rails basics, like hobbyists who have created a few projects or professionals who have worked with Rails for a few months. The class is being beta tested privately, so the May session promises to be great.

The Hashrocket Way

We’re very excited to announce a partnership with Hashrocket, one of the world’s preeminent Ruby/Rails development shops. Hashrocket pushes the envelope with their tools and process, now they want to bring those techniques to you. This one day workshop will walk you through the full development life cycle from gathering requirements with story-carding, following progress with Pivotal Tracker, developing with Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and agile pairing, all the way through client acceptance.

This session is designed for professional Rails programmers or team managers who are looking to sharpen their practice. The session will be held in Baltimore the day before RailsConf 2010 and is just 3 blocks from the convention center. Read more about it on the Hashrocket website.

New Classes in March and April

I’m excited to announce that March 20th and 21st we’ll have our first Flex Jumpstart class. Jae Hess, an experienced Flex developer, will be coming out from Cincinati to teach the course. We’re working on the curriculum now, so look for a proper outline in the coming days.

In April we’re planning the first SQL Jumsptart class. If you want to step up your database knowledge, this is the way to do it! If you’re building Rails applications, this knowledge is essential for properly designing your data layer.

Also in April we’re trying to organize another Javascript Jumpstart pro-level class with Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs. They taught this class here in September and it was a big hit. They’ve further refined the curriculum at sessions across Europe and in Philadelphia, now they’re bringing it back to DC. The exact date should be decided and tickets made available in the next two weeks.

JSL Organizes CrisisCamp:Haiti GIS Project

On January 16th and 17th, just days after the disaster in Haiti, a group of 200 nerds got together for CrisisCamp:Haiti. JumpstartLab was privileged to be involved along with many friends from the Sunlight Foundation, Intridea, CodeSherpas, and others in the DC area.

We hosted and helped manage the GIS project building maps for the OpenStreetMap initiative. Companies and governments donated high-resolution satellite imagery on Haiti after the disaster, then it was our job to trace the images marking roads, highways, and waterways. Some people even went through images of Port-au-Prince and marked downed buildings, blocked roads, and other notable obstacles.

Here are two images showing the BEFORE and AFTER high-level maps of Port-au-Prince:

People around the world contributed to this effort and made a difference. This from the CrisisCommons wiki days later from a member of the Fairfax County Search & Rescue team working in Haiti:

I am currently in Port Au Prince with the Fairfax County Urban Search & Rescue Team (USA-1) out of Fairfax, VA, USA. I wish there was a way that I can express to you properly how important your OSM files were to us. Most of our team members own their own Garmin Rino and 60CSx units on top of the units we already have in the cache. Having these detailed maps on our GPS units is a big deal. Shortly after discovering your work I quickly spread the word and transferred the street level maps onto as many Garmin units as we could before sending the American rescue teams on the streets.

The team members are thrilled to have this resource you have created. I wish you could see their faces ‘light up’ when I take their GPS unit and tell them that I’m going to give them street level detail maps. They have been working VERY hard and anything that can help them in every aspect of their mission here is greatly appreciated. I am spreading the word about this work to all rescue and humanitarian teams on the ground here in Haiti. Please be assured that we are using your data – I just wish we knew about this earlier. THANK YOU!

It doesn’t get any better than that!

“Code of Art” Presentation

In November I gave a presentation at RubyConf entitled Code of Art that’s now online. It is a short introduction to generating visualizations and interaction using ruby-processing.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, I’ll deliver a revised edition of the presentation at the B’More on Rails group in Baltimore.

If you’re interested, the presentation and all materials are available on my GitHub page.

First “Rails – Level 2” Class Posted

I’ve just setup the first Rails Level 2 class for the end of February. You can check out the brief description here. I’m still formulating the content, so if there’s something you’d love to see included please let me know.

Website Redesigned, 2010 Calendar in the Works

After a few weeks of brainstorming, I finally sat down tonight and redesigned the website. There are some minor stylistic issues that need to be fixed up, but overall I’m happy with it. If you have some constructive criticism or see something that looks messed up, please let me know in the comments.

I’ve also put together a preliminary calendar for the first half of 2010. Eventbrite events will be created soon so that tickets can be purchased. In the meantime, you can check out the Calendar page which has more information.

WebDev Rescheduled, Ruby Class Added

Unfortunately the WebDev Jumpstart class for last weekend, 10/9-10/10, had to be rescheduled to December. Tickets for the original class have either been transferred or refunded (110%) based on attendee preference. Because the December class will now be the first WebDev session, I’ve updated it with the [BETA] label and lowered the ticket prices accordingly.

Also, I had a few people ask about the next Ruby class. I didn’t have one scheduled before the end of the year, but I’ve decided to fit it in the weekend of December 12/13. Check out the details here: Ruby Jumpstart

The Robotics Jumpstart originally scheduled for 12/13 will get pushed back one week to 12/20.

What’s New?

I’m not a good blogger — four weeks and no updates?

The Javascript Jumpstart class with Amy & Thomas is sold out — thanks to all of you who helped publicize and especially those who, ya know, actually bought tickets. It promises to be a really great day!

If you’re still in town on Sunday the 13th, consider coming to our first Robotics Jumpstart. We’ll play around with Lego Mindstorms NXT kits building and programming some simple robots. It’s just $30/pair. Kid/adult or adult/adult pairs are welcome, maybe it’d be a good geek date?

Ruby Jumpstart at the end of September is also coming up quickly. This class is going to be capped at just 10 people. From there the first WebDev Jumpstart will take place in October. In the long term, I’m working on an Arduino Jumpstart in the middle of December and a Scala Jumpstart class right before Christmas. If there are classes you’re just dying to take, leave a comment or send an email to contact@jumpstartlab.com. Thanks!

Ruby Jumpstart Tutorials & Diversity Statement Posted

The wrapup is complete from last week’s session. I’ve made a few tweaks to the tutorials and posted them in the Resources section. If you’re interested in learning Ruby, check them out!

You can start with Ruby in 100 Minutes which is a super-brief introduction to just what you need to know about Ruby to get working on the projects. You’ll learn about basic method calls, data structures, conditional branching, and the other essentials.

Once you have a little familiarity with Ruby you can jump into JSAttend which builds a program to work with CSV attendee data from a conference. You’ll learn about string manipulation, working with CSV files, creating form letters, and accessing an API from the Sunlight Foundation.

In the second project from the course, JSTwitter, you’ll build a simple Twitter client and use it to post tweets, send direct messages, and do some interesting things like mass DM-ing and finding the last tweet from each of your friends. If you’re interested in automating Twitter, this is a good way to get started.

Finally, there has been good discussion this year about diversity in the programming community. Kirrily Robert gave a great talk at OSCON last week that had me thinking about diversity issues and motivated me to put together a diversity statement. This is a subject that is really important to me, so if you have any thoughts or comments I’d love to hear there here or over email.

First Ruby Jumpstart Complete!

The first Ruby Jumpstart course took place this weekend and was a big success!

On Saturday we built a project that manipulated and cleaned CSV data from a conference registration. On Sunday morning we took it a step further and used the API from the Sunlight Foundation to lookup congressional representative information for our CSV attendees. Sunday afternoon we built a simple Twitter client that posted tweets, sent direct messages, and mass-messaged lists of people.

More details and feedback about the event will be posted in the coming days.

All attention is now shifted to the first Rails Jumpstart in just two weeks!

Robotics Jumpstart Posted

On Sunday, September 13th, we’ll have our first “community workshop”…

Robotics are an amazing way to introduce people, especially young people, to hands-on science and engineering. Robotics Jumpstart is the first of our community workshops: a one-day event where we can get together and goof around with some fun technology. We’ll use Lego Mindstorms NXT kits along with some activities created by Lego, Carnagie Melon, and our own. Attendees will learn to build simple robots, write computer programs to control the robot functionality through multiple input sensors, and make it all work.

There are only spots for 15 pairs of attendees. Adult/young-person pairs are strongly encouraged. If you’d like to bring your own NXT kit let me know and I will increase the number of available tickets. Registration is just $30/pair to cover costs. Let me know if you have any questions!

9 days until the first Ruby Jumpstart

The first Ruby Jumpstart is just nine days away. There are still tickets available here. I am excited that the conference facility space has worked out even better than anticipated, the curriculum is coming along well, and all preparations are falling into place.

I know that summer weekends are a valuable commodity to all of us, so I appreciate those of you who have signed up. If you’re still thinking it over let me know what questions are on your mind, in the comments here or by email at jeff@jumpstartlab.com.

Great, Guaranteed

I’ve put together a little page describing my guarantee. There are plenty of companies out there doing technical training. We’re different.

Almost everyone doing training is a technical person trying to become a teacher. It’s just not that easy. In sports, you don’t see superstars become coaches because what makes a good players is fundamentally different from what makes a good coach.

Google Group (Mailing List) Launched

I’ve created a Google Group to facilitate email communication. If your interested in upcoming workshops or have already signed up for one, please join the group! It can be found here: http://groups.google.com/group/jumpstart-lab

Updates & Clarifications

I’ve received a few questions about “requirements” for the workshop, especially about age and technology. I put together a little resource page with the answers here:

Requirements to Participate

If there are any other questions, feel free to leave a comment here or shoot me an email.

Jumpstart Lab Lives!

The website is live, the space is reserved, and the tickets are available! The first Jumpstart Lab course, Ruby Jumpstart, will take place on August 1st & 2nd. Since it is a first go, this class is offered at a discounted “BETA” rate, 25% off the full price. Enroll now for just $300 per person.

And there’s something a little special about this workshop.

Hello, World!

Hi. This is the first post of the new site!