Ray Hightower on ChicagoRuby | SCNA 2011
Mike Hall sits down with Ray Hightower at SCNA 2011 to discuss the governance and operational playbook of ChicagoRuby. Ray details their 'Consistency First' scheduling rule, the multi-venue ecosystem spanning downtown ThoughtWorks keynotes, hack nights at Enova Financial, and suburban Saturday workshops in Elmhurst, alongside grassroots team delegation to organizers like Matt Polito, Ginny Hendry, and Dave Giunta.
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Hi, I'm here with Ray Hightower from ChicagoRuby, also the lead organizer for the WindyCityRails conference. But we're going to be talking about ChicagoRuby right now. Ray, can you tell us a little bit about ChicagoRuby and what kind of meetings you have?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Sure. Oh, about ChicagoRuby? Well, ChicagoRuby is a user group. Our motto is: when smart people challenge each other to grow, great things happen. So we get together and we share ideas. We have three events every month, three meetings each month: one downtown that ThoughtWorks sponsors every month, a second one, a hack night downtown that is typically sponsored by Enova Financial, and in the western suburbs in Elmhurst, the DeForest Group gives us a space there where we meet on the third Saturday of every month. So we have three meetings every month.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
What kind of numbers do you usually see? What kind of audience do you usually bring? Do you bring in designers, developers, more people working with Rails, more people working on other groups?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Yeah, we've done surveys to determine who comes out to our meetings. We've got really four groups: developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and investors. Roughly 90% self-select as developers, 40% designers. You see there's some overlap if you draw a Venn diagram.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
And then... so there's devs and designers. And then entrepreneurs and investors together make up about 5% of the people who identify in one of those four groups.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Now, that's really interesting that you have people coming out that identify themselves as entrepreneurs and investors. Do you mean like actual people that aren't doing Ruby development that are coming out to meet Ruby devs at the group?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Yeah, there are a handful of people. At every meeting we get a few people who come out and say, "Hey, I'm looking for devs or designers. I've got this idea and I want to build a team to do this." So we get a few people coming out who want to meet people to do that. But mostly because of the content of our meetings, the lion's share of the people at our meetings are developers or designers.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Because that's who we want to please. You know, when we say when smart people...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
That's your audience.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
That's our primary audience. And so the other people are there because they're attracted by the primary audience.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah, that's an interesting dynamic. Now, a typical meeting, is it usually a presentation format or do you do hands-on labs or is it...
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
It depends. The downtown meetings are always a presentation, followed by Q&A, followed by a visit to a bar after, where we engage in adult beverages and brainstorming. So that's what we do downtown. That's on the first Tuesday of every month. We max out at 100 on the RSVPs there. So we typically get about 50. Sometimes we'll get 70 or 80 in there, depending on the topic.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Have you ever had a meeting where if you max out at 100, have you ever exceeded that?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Yeah. What we find is we've gone beyond the 100 in RSVPs, but if it's a really nice day outside...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
You might get 120 RSVPs, but a bunch of people go to the beach because we're at the Aon Center, which isn't too far from the lake.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
So some people on the way to the meeting, I imagine some people just hop on their bikes and go to the lake. Like, you never know.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah. Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
But you know, it's cool. We have to live balanced lives and all that stuff. But we find that when we get 100 RSVPs, typically we'll have about 70 or 80 at the meeting.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Our average at the downtown meetings is probably about 50. Our hack nights... just recently, we had a hack night last week that did 50 plus. I don't know what the exact number was there, but I know it was more than 50.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Out in the suburbs, we'll get anywhere from 5 to 20 somewhere in there, because that's a Saturday morning.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right. That's what I wanted to ask you about is your schedule, because you have a unique dynamic. You're not just doing one group, it's like a system of groups. You have the hack nights, you have the downtown meetings, and you also have the Elmhurst meetings. How do you coordinate those? And do you have a team of people that you work with?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Oh, yes. We absolutely have a team. If you go to our GitHub repo at github.com/ChicagoRuby, you'll see a directory within our repo called "How ChicagoRuby Works". In there is the organization of how we build it.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Oh, okay. I'm going to definitely link to that.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
So I would take a look at that. And that evolved over time. We actually started off in Franklin Park. We were five guys meeting in a library in Franklin Park when I became the organizer. And when I became organizer, I said, "I'm not going to do it by myself. I want other people to work with me." One of the other guys in that room was Matt Polito, whom you know. Matt became an organizer then. Victor Hong, Will Chung. If you go to ChicagoRuby.org, we maintain a list of organizers and alums, people who have been part of the organizer team over time.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Oh, wow.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
The way we manage the three groups is... well, the hack night, for example. Ginny Hendry came up to me at one meeting and said, "Hey, Ray, we should do hack nights." And I said, "Yeah, Ginny, you should organize." So, that's how Ginny became an organizer.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right. So when people came to work with you, you gave them support and help to...
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
All the support in the world. Because they've got great ideas. Ginny had a great idea for doing hack nights. Dave Giunta came to us one day and said, "Hey, we should do coding dojos." I said, "Okay, Dave, you can run it." Dave Giunta was an organizer of ChicagoRuby for a couple of years. And he brought a lot of good ideas to us, and to WindyCityRails as well.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
So you're kind of a veteran in the field of running user groups. If somebody is looking to start up a user group now, is there any kind of sage wisdom you might want to share?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Sage wisdom? How about some just random stuff off the top of my head?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Sage wisdom, whatever.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
You know what has worked well for us? One of the first things that we did when I first became an organizer was make sure we have consistency. Because we want people to know that they can put on their calendar a ChicagoRuby meeting a year in advance. They won't necessarily know the topic, we won't know the topic, but we'll know the date, the time, and the place. So with that consistency, everybody can plan around that. And then once you have that, then you want to get good speakers. And the speakers really draw people in. You want a location that's accessible. One of the problems we had when I first became an organizer, we had to pay $5 apiece per meeting to pay for the library room.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Oh, yes. You know how that works.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
For this library in the western suburbs. We were fortunate that Lee DeForest, who owns a building in Elmhurst, had a place for us to meet. Lee said to us, "Hey, you can meet in the basement of my building. It's a great spot. It's like a clubhouse."
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Like, remember the Our Gang comedies with Spanky and Alfalfa?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Yeah, yeah. It's like a clubhouse. And Lee set us up. But no "No Girls Allowed" sign. We are very friendly to women and Black people. Very friendly across the board. And just the Ruby community in general is very open to people, I find. I was immediately accepted when I didn't know anybody. You know that from your experience.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah. You go into new groups not knowing anybody.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Usually most groups are pretty welcoming because if people are willing to get together to spend their time talking about tech, there's always one more person to talk to.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Well, thank you very much, Ray. This is Ray Hightower from ChicagoRuby. Thank you very much for talking with us.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
▶ Speaking
Thank you, Mike. Thank you for having me.