The Highgroove blog. Sit pit-side with us to learn how we work. Sometimes technical, sometimes business-oriented, but always focused on simple solutions.
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by stafford
The Global Day of Code Retreat is a daylong event where developers from around the world gather in small groups to practice their craft. It's an intense day of coding where we get to pair program with others, learn new skills and focus 100% on doing it right.
Already sold? Sign up here to join us on December 8, or keep reading below to find out more—but read fast, because these events fill up quickly.
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by charlie
I love our Wolfbrain logo, but I must admit that when I started at Highgroove it was a bit of an enigma to me. It's a wolf? With a green brain that I can see? And we are hyper-specialists in Rails? I think I see.... Nope. I don't.
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by david
I've written before about Highgroove's "any conference you want, every year, on us" policy. This year, I chose to attend two events, with a cycling adventure between.
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by chris
Highgroove requires everyone to attend a conference every year, and begrudgingly I agreed to head to Hawaii for Aloha Ruby. The flight was long but well worth it, the weather was amazing, and the conference was packed with useful information.
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by jon
At Highgroove, we're no surgeons, but the folks at Hope Builds are. Though we aren't trained to use scalpels, we're really good at writing Rails applications, and that's just what they needed to make their surgical work more effective.
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by pamela
Last weekend, I participated in Rails Girls, an event that introduces women to development in Ruby on Rails. This particular event was held in Washington D.C., a hotbed for the tech industry.
As a Rails Girls DC coach, I cheered on the girls as they worked through building a web application, and lent a hand when a little help was needed. There were several other coaches, and more significantly, several other female coaches. While I anticipated enjoying Rails Girls DC, I didn't expect that I would be so encouraged and excited by working with others at the event.
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by tasha
Each month, we open our doors for a Hack Night, inviting others to join us as we experiment with and work on various technologies.
For the August Hack Night, we sharpened our focus and added a little more structure. For the first time, we posed a challenge to those attending: Could they hack our RFID door reader to allow our chat robot to open the front door of our office?
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by stafford
This past Saturday, I attended the Atlanta Code Retreat at the Highgroove office. I hadn't been to a code retreat before this one, and I really didn't know what to expect. What I got a was a challenging but fun day of pairing with five different developers, and writing in four different languages.
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At Highgroove, we love working with the community, whether it's hosting hack nights, organizing ATLRUG, or contributing to open-source software. One of our key contributions involves auditing those ruby gems upon which we most rely, or the ones that present the most perceived risk. Ernie Miller's Squeel definitely piqued our security interest. Read on to hear about the results of our audit and how we worked with Mr. Miller to validate our results.
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by jonathan
Hey, have you heard about the first Highgroove-hosted Code Retreat? We're polishing our silverware and painting the walls in preparation[1] for helping developers to level-up their skills.
Read on to find out more.
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by andy
Staying on top of the new technologies and features in web development can be difficult. The volume of information being generated is vast, and I have found myself becoming discouraged when I can't seem to keep up.
The primary ways I stay on top of the community are Twitter, selected newsletters (e.g., Ruby Weekly), and blogs.
Blogs are great, but they pile up quickly. However, I've found a compromise that works for me: my Blog A-List.
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One of the most amazing benefits of working at Highgroove is the yearly conference requirement. You are required to go to a conference of your choosing—on the company's dime—and report back with what you learned. What's even more amazing is that the conference you choose doesn't have to be something Ruby-centric or Railsy (though we do love those conferences too). Read on to see how I conned the company into letting me attend two conferences during my yearly outing in NYC.
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by briang
My first week at Highgroove Studios has flown by faster that I thought possible. It was a flurry of activity that varied from learning about the Highgroove way of developing software, to reading Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It in order to better understand the aspects of a ROWE, to pairing with all of the other developers in order to learn a little bit about their personal work flows. This gave me a brief introduction to the various projects all of the Highgroovers are working on, as well as the various developer tools that they use to be more productive. I now feel like a real part of the team, and I am excited to get started on a project myself.
Read on for more insight into my first week.
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by chris
This past weekend, Highgroove and Mailchimp helped Collective Idea bring Finish Weekend to Atlanta.
Instead of a 'Startup Weekend' which is a pretty common occurrence where people bring ideas to start something with, everyone showed up with projects-in-progress and the goal of launching something by the end of the weekend. For me, this meant a big backlog of updates to a rack of servers and updates to some Rails and Drupal sites (as well as pairing with someone else here to beat Diablo III on Normal difficulty), but for other people it meant everything from a brand new company website, to migrating old PHP code to a new Ruby on Rails backed site, to a minimum viable product release of hydrogen: a command line tool for managing WordPress installations.
Read on for more of what we did and what we learned.
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by jonathan
As rubyists, we do not suffer for a lack of conferences. Nor for Rails events. Each and every one of these conferences allows us to showcase one of the foundational strengths of ruby, our community.
To be an awesome conference attendee, an amazing community member, and get the most out of any conference, follow our super easy guide to being awesome at a conference. Or, alternatively, what I did wrong at RailsConf 2012.
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by chris
Highgroove Studios is proud to be helping Collective Idea bring Finish Weekend to Atlanta this June:
We've all heard of startup weekends. Many of us have participated in one. Coming up with a new idea is easy, so is getting started. Finishing is hard. Finish Weekend helps you get it done. Come finish those projects you've put off to the side. Maybe you just need a bit of web help, a logo, or some code written. We'll help you finish.
Head on over to finishweekend.com to register, and then come join us the first weekend of June to get your project launched.
by mike
Highgroove sent me, Jonathan, and Patrick to RailsConf 2012. I've been learning a lot by going to some great talks and enjoying talking to my fellow Rails developers. If you see any of us, feel free to say hello!
There's a big push to make this the most public RailsConf ever, so all talks are being recorded. On top of that, I have also been trying to take notes and make them public.
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Startup Weekend in Atlanta kicked off last night with over 116 participants, and 48 pitches, eventually forming into 18 teams. The concept behind Startup Weekend is to start something up -- a concept, business, or idea, over the weekend. It's centered around technology, with people dividing themselves into categories like: "business folk", "designers", "developers", and other niches. Yup, there was a technology lawyer, there too.
What kinds of ideas are being worked on right now?
→ Read MoreThe Beltline Bikeshop App, Bike Spot, is LIVE and available to install on your iOS device!
If you know us, you know we love bikes here at Highgroove. Any cyclist in Atlanta has encountered the 'parking' headache of looking for a spot, much less a rack to lock to while getting around on two wheels. Bike Spot is a bike rack locator designed to track, record, and locate bike racks around town.
Sounds awesome, right? "But how can I use it?" you ask.
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by pamela
Last night at the Highgroove Studios office, we held the March edition of Hack Night, our monthly social coding gathering. We focused on starting, polishing, and/or discussing open source projects ranging from the super useful to the super silly (beer is always provided at our hack nights...)
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by stafford
Last month I had the privilege of attending the very first SpreeConf in New York City. If you aren't familiar with Spree, it is an awesome Rails e-commerce engine you can use to build a full-featured online store. The conference was held over two days; the first day featured several training sessions. The sessions covered a range of topics including theming, configuring, and testing Spree. The second day was filled not only with talks related to Spree, but to e-commerce and Open Source in general.
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Last Wednesday CBQ and I attended Startup Riot on behalf of Highgroove. We heard 3 minute pitches (and 3 minutes of questions from an expert panel) from 25 startups. This is easily the biggest event in the Atlanta startup community; missing it is not an option and sponsoring was a no brainer for us. We love working with startups, since we used to be one. Read more to learn about how we sponsored this event, and what we got out of it.
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At Highgroove, we have a personal trainer, Cherri, on-staff and on-site, available twice a week to us, scheduled via appointment slots using Google Calendar. Our personal trainer has been with us since December of last year, and we just added more sessions. We have been delighted at the opportunity to get in shape (although, perhaps, temporarily less thrilled when "core day" came around). Personally, having someone motivate us to exercise -- someone who thoroughly knows what they are doing was exactly the motivation I needed to start working out again. But we've also realized getting a gym session in during the afternoon has benefits for developing software (along with developing sweet abs).
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by aubrey
While getting to know the very sweet Github Api v3, I ran into a little bug when trying to page though results coming back from the service. While it was frustrating at the time, Github's support and resolution blew me out of the water.
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by cbq
The StartupRiot MAKE event kicked off last night at ATDC with the help of Sanjay Parekh and some very awesome sponsors and teams.
We're happy to be a part of this awesome event. At 5 pm on Friday, teams started trickling in and sponsors started setting up displays. The food arrived and many people began networking and planning already.
At 6 pm, Sanjay announced the teams, and each team got up and spoke about what they were building, and what they needed -- be it a designer, some mobile development help, or back-end development.
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by jonathan
Waaaayyy back in December, I had the pleasure of attending a code retreat. In that post, I discussed what I learned.
This month, I had the pleasure of facilitating a code retreat a few weeks ago. Thanks to Highgroove, TapJoy, FourAthens, and my co-coordinator Travis Douce, the Athens Code Retreat was a resounding success.
Also, a special shout out to our Code Retreat homies in South Africa led by Corey Haines, who handed off the baton to us late in their day but early in ours.
Read on to find out how lessons learned from facilitating compares to attending, how the general "You" actually means "I" in the blog title, and how many times it takes (me) to learn the four rules of simple design.
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by will
Going in to my third week here at Highgroove, I already feel like my first couple weeks have been some of my best in any work environment, both in terms of my personal productivity and my happiness at work.
I'm still completing my undergraduate degree at Georgia Tech. As any student at Tech will be quick to tell you, the school is often very demanding of its students. This can often make a good balance between work and school difficult, and juggling the two over the past couple years of school has been challening.
Enter Highgroove, a ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment).
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by jonathan
In case you missed it, the awesome Globay Day of Coderetreat occurred on December 3rd. The amount of fun I experienced was unexpected and impressive! I learned some things too. Read on to find out what.
(Also, don't worry if you missed the code retreat, sad kitten has some good news for you at the end of this post.)
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by pamela
The first couple of weeks in a new position for a new company is usually peppered with stressful stretches of striving to become useful and relevant mixed with hours of boredom working on a project of little importance. At Highgroove, we are immediately thrown into the mix and are expected to perform.
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by jonathan
RubyConf, ahhh Rubyconf.
How was it this year you ask? To answer that question we must first address the question:
How was my first ruby conf?
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by jonathan
He may be too humble* to admit it but Andy Lindeman, one of our new(er) hires, is awesome.
He recently did a lightning presentation on Solr and Sunspot for the Huntsville Ruby Group. See the announcement over on his blog and give him some feedback!
* We only hire the humblest programmers. It is in the company charter.
by mtodd
April 9th and 10th in San Francisco was the first ever CodeConf. Read on for a recap on this incredibly insightful and wonderful conference.
by andy
If I simply wanted to learn the basics of Cucumber, RGeo, TorqueBox, or any number of other interesting open-source Ruby technologies, I could sit down at my desk and read documentation, check out the source code, or post to a mailing list if I ran across a problem.
But how much more could I benefit if I were able to speak face-to-face to an expert? Or sit at a table of Rubyists from many different backgrounds and spar about the pros and cons of these tools?
Documentation, source code, and mailing lists on their own simply cannot compete with a good technical conference.
I attended Magic Ruby 2011 in Orlando, FL this past weekend. I learned a lot, and additionally learned how much I still need to learn! I have highlighted a few talks that really stood out to me below, but you can check out the full list of talks and slides.
We’re still recovering from RubyConf (specifically the 10k, Jonathan’s first ever, has yet to release its iron grip on his calves), but we have had some time to reflect on what value we at Highgroove extracted from the conference.
by mtodd
“On your mark, get set, GO!” Nothing like the thrill of starting an intense race, whether it be a short hundred-meter dash or a long, grueling marathon.
by jonathan
I recently completed my first sprint triathlon. The feeling of accomplishment
was overwhleming and I almost cried crossing the finish line. For those not
familiar, a sprint triathlon consists of a 400m swim, a sixteen mile bike ride, and
a three mile run in that order. Numerous volunteers provide water, gatorade,
directions and most importantly, moral support and kind words along the
course. I’m unable to overstate how welcome and vital words of encouragement
are. “You can do it!” “Great job! Keep it up!”.
As overlwhelmed, exhausted, accomplished, and inspired as I felt crossing the
finish line, a more inspiring moment came later, much much later. And it also
helped me answer the question “Will I compete again?”
Jonathan Wallace has joined the Highgroove Team!
Jonathan joins us as a Ruby and Rails Developer, out of our Atlanta office. Jonathan blogs over at Two Minute Spates on Ruby, Rails, iPhone, git, and entrepreneurship.
His previous role had him telecommuting, so joining our Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) will be easy for him!
Now, if only we could find time to pull him away from all that awesome client work to fill out his bio for the Highgroove Team page….
Alanta’s (3rd?) Startup Weekend is on Nov 13 – Nov 15 at ATDC.
We’re big fans of Startup Weekend for a couple of reasons:
A very big thank you to our friends at The Kauffman Foundation, ATDC (and all the other sponsors) for their support of this Atlanta event.
by cbq
Highgroove is attending Startup Riot 2009 tomorrow. We’re excited to be attendees this year (last year we were presenters on Scout).
If you’re attending, be sure to say “hi!” to Matt and I!
Many critics are hailing Little Big Planet as the video game of the year. Its “flexible, fun, and powerful” level creator and sharing system has created an interactive platform never before seen in gaming.
But you don’t need to tell our James Edward Gray II about it – in March, at the MountainWest Ruby Conference" in Salt Lake City, he’ll be giving a featured speech on how Ruby programmers can learn from Little Big Planet’s creative problem solving and code reading. He’ll also be discussing some of the most creative Ruby projects out there, showing how their developers build servers, optimize code, and more.
A Playstation 3 and advanced knowledge of Super Mario Brothers Level 1-1 is optional but encouraged for attendees of this talk.
by cbq
MerbCamp is the first official gathering for the Merb community.
Our own Matt Todd is speaking on “Going Beyond Web Sites with Merb” — where he’ll talk about using Merb to do things other than just your run-of-the-mill web-sites — things like APIs, Web Services, lightweight protocols, and making your grass greener. Well, maybe not that last one.
You can Register at:
Come see us talk about Scout Server Monitoring and Reporting at StartupRiot on May 19, 2008, and watch all the other startups present their wares. This looks to be a really great event.
See ya there!
Recently I’ve been reading Obie Fernandez’s book, The Rails Way.
I made an appearance in one of the chapters, but the real credit goes to Obie for pulling together an exhaustive 850-page book.
It’s not for beginners, but if you’ve taken one of my Rails training classes, it’s a great reference book and next step.
Reviews of the Rails Way:
Just a quick note that I’ll be speaking on "Lessons from the Trenches “ Learning from the Rails Bootcamp at the regional Ruby on Rails Conference dubbed acts_as_conference (a play on the Rails way of introducing behavior through code) in Orlando, Florida, on Feb 8-9.
If you’re interested in how to effectively teach your friends, colleagues, bosses, and maybe even your mom about Ruby on Rails, registration is now open to the public. Looks to be a great conference line-up, with keynoters Obie Fernandez and Dan Benjamin, and plenty of great talks.
by james
I’ll be representing Highgroove at the Lone Star Rubyconf this weekend. I’ll give two talks, one for the charity event the night before and another at the main conference.
At the charity event I’m going to go over Ruby’s block syntax. I’ll cover what blocks are, how they are used, and give a lot of great examples. This is a good talk to sit in on if you’re new to Ruby and it’s even for a good cause.
For the conference I’m going to talk about heroes and super powers. I’m sure I’ll manage to sneak a little Ruby in there too, for those that enjoy that. This talk takes an in depth look at glue code and Ruby’s features supporting such. It’ll be fun stuff that doesn’t get talked about enough.
If you are attending the conference, do flag me down and say hello. I’m always interested in meeting fellow Rubyists.
Hope to see you there!
Highgroove Studios, along with the Atlanta Ruby User Group, the Birmingham Ruby User Group, and several other organizations, is happy to announce that planning and organizing for the Southeast Ruby Conference is underway.
Our first official planning meeting will be held at the September Atlanta Ruby User Group meeting, on September 5, 2006.
With the excitement and pledging of support so far, this is shaping up to be a standout conference.
If you are interested in planning, sponsoring, or just pledging support, contact me (Charles Brian Quinn).
by james
About half of the geeks of the world prefer newsgroups for communication and the other half swears by mailing lists. (A tiny percentage prefer web forum or pigeon, but clearly these people suffer from insanity.) The Ruby community has long had both: the comp.lang.ruby newsgroup and the Ruby-Talk mailing list.
In 2001, a band of clever adventurers and Rubyists united the two communities with heroic feats of hacking. A “gateway” script was installed that dutifully ferried all messages from one group to the other and visa versa. This was a blessing, because both sides now shared the collective Ruby knowledge. A golden age began.
Unfortunately, a few months back, the evil server hosting monster struck and slew the gateway with a single stoke! (In all fairness, the hosting provided to the gateway over the last five years was more than generous, but that just doesn’t make for as good a story and I’m telling this one!) The golden age ended, the community shattered into two halves…
At HighGroove, we couldn’t stand for that.
Knowing the peril involved, I enlisted the help of the brave HighGroove SysWizard Charles and we went in search of a gateway in need of rescue. It was a long journey and we suffered a minor defeat along the way, but good always triumphs over evil and we cannot be stopped easily!
I’m happy to bring the good news to all the peoples of the Ruby kingdom: the gateway has been resurrected. The golden age has come again.
Please join me thanking all those patrons who sponsored our quest:
Thanks to these brave men, the knowledge is again shared by all! Use it wisely my fellow adventurers…
