Benjamin Oakes

Hi, I’m Mike. I’m here with Benjamin at the Windy City Rails Conference in Chicago. And Benjamin is involved with the New Haven Ruby community and the Iowa City Ruby community. Right now you’re in Iowa. Can you tell me a little bit about what you’re doing now and maybe also how that compared to what you were doing in Connecticut? Sure. Well, I helped start the Iowa City Ruby community about four years ago with some other great people. And I moved to New Haven, and I’m just now coming back. So I got a lot of experience while I was in New Haven running a group. There was one that kind of died off. And we’re bringing in some of the same experience we had there, like having a site and using Meetup, which is actually very, very helpful for us versus just having a mailing list. We’ve done a lot to get more jobs and stuff listed on our site and have that be a place people actually go and talk. And I don’t know, for the most part. But we’ve gotten really consistent where we have a Meetup every two weeks. And I’m really hoping to bring a lot of that same stuff over to the Iowa City group because right now it’s definitely a lot smaller because it’s a smaller area. And, you know, Connecticut is right next to New York. We’d have people come up for that. I mean, Iowa City is close enough to Chicago that sometimes maybe people would come over, maybe yourself. But, you know, maybe, maybe not. Closest is a relative term. Yeah, right, right. I mean, it’s not a term. It’s not a way yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, no, for the most part, like New Haven isn’t incredibly technical. I mean, Iowa City is actually around the same level, believe it or not. Really? But, yeah, it’s really just kind of about, you know, you have these communities just to bring people together. Yeah. And that makes a big difference just being around other people, like at a conference like this, you know, just being able to talk to somebody and get experience. How long have you been running the group in Iowa again? I started about four years ago. Okay. That’s now at Twitter. Oh, okay. But that was, you’re in Iowa now, but you were in Connecticut before. So you’ve been running a group for about four years. Yeah. Some other great people, one was Denny. He’s at the university. And then a guy by the name of Wesley Berry, he works at Heroku right now. He’s taken on a lot of it. And then I’m stepping back in and helping him out and growing up. So what, I mean, you were saying that the technical levels of the two communities seem to be on par. Similar, yeah. Was there a major cultural shift between Connecticut versus Iowa City? Yeah, I mean, Iowa City is a little more kind of like, I mean, there’s definitely a personality difference. There’s really, I mean, people, Rubius all over are really kind of similar. Really? You know, like, which is nice because, like, they’re mostly nice. And, you know, there’s kind of a stereotype that’s sometimes true that Connecticut or Connecticuters are sometimes like, I’m going to get out of my way, I’m driving here or something. But no, if you sit down with people, like, they’re all awesome. Yeah. I always like talking to new Rubius. Yeah, yeah. No, it’s, the Ruby community for me has also been very, very positive. But as far as getting people to come out to the meetings, you know, I’ve noticed between being in the suburbs and being in the city, and I’ve heard between just different cities. Yeah, like in Iowa City, they don’t use Twitter as much, I’ve noticed, which was a big thing for us. So communication has had to have been a little different. And also, as far as, not the technical skill, but the industries that the people are coming out of or working in, I mean, how is there a different, like, almost comparing a Java group to a Ruby group? There’s got to be, like, are they working in the same kind of industry? Do you have a lot of people that are, like, startups maybe in Connecticut? Yeah, there are definitely some more startups. I mean, I still work for a startup in Connecticut. They let me take my job along with me, which is really nice. In Iowa City, there’s more, like, education stuff, like Pearson’s there, Pearson textbook company and stuff like that. And they have some Ruby involvement. And, yeah, but, yeah, definitely more startups, I’d say, in Connecticut. Okay. But they’re starting to change in Iowa, which is exciting for me, and that’s something I want to help build out. Yeah. And you do a biweekly meeting, you said? In New Haven, we do. Okay. In Iowa City. In Iowa City, it’s right now every three weeks, which is a little confusing. Yeah. Yeah, it’s the beginning of the month or the end of the month this time. Yeah, right. And I still have really close ties to everybody in New Haven, and I really want us to, like, be able to collaborate. We’ve done some by, or, like, we’ve gotten together for Google Hangouts before. So we had the guy that wrote Design Patterns in Ruby, his name’s escaping me right now. I know which book you’re talking about. Yeah, so he came. And he did a Google Hangout with us in the Ruby’s, Iowa City Ruby group, and then the New Haven group. And so we’re trying to kind of keep the same schedule. Wait, you did that as, like, a joint meeting? Mm-hmm. Yep. So, I mean, there’s a few hours difference there. Oh, just an hour. Oh, just an hour? Yeah. Yeah. So. Eastern time versus central time. Yeah, so it’s only one hour. Yeah. And it was cool. So, like, we read the book, and then we talked about it, and the author was there, and he took some questions. And, you know, we want to keep doing stuff like that and collaborate, because running a user group is hard, and it’s hard to keep up with that. Yeah. But we want to keep the momentum, and if we can work together, it’s a lot easier. Have you worked out, has there been a difference in approaching sponsors? I mean, some different communities, I’ve heard, have different levels of receptiveness to sponsoring. Do you work with? So, in New Haven, there were some very vocal members that were against even having job postings, which I think is a vital thing, because if we’re going to have a Ruby community, we have to have people that can survive. Yes. Yes. Rubyists. Yeah. So, that was a point of contention a few times until we finally just made it official, no, you can have job postings. But, really, as far as sponsors have ever gone, I mean, we’ve done O’Reilly books, those are easy to get. But, for the most part, it’s just, like, different companies, they want to help build the local Ruby community, and they help push it forward. And that’s why the groups are around, because it’s really about the members. That’s great. Well, thank you. for taking the time to talk with me, Ben.

• Definitely.
• Appreciate it.