Chicagoruby: Mike Hall Interviews Ray Hightower | SCNA 2011
Chicagoruby: Mike Hall Interviews Ray Hightower | SCNA 2011
Meet Ray Hightower, the lead organizer of ChicagoRuby, a user group with three monthly meetings in downtown Chicago, Elmhurst, and western suburbs. Learn about the diverse audience, decentralized structure, and adaptability of this vibrant community. Don't miss out! #ChicagoRuby #TechCommunity #SoftwareCraftsmanship #NorthAmerica #RayHightower
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, I'm here with Ray Hightower from ChicagoRuby, also the lead organizer for 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? Sure. Oh, about ChicagoRuby?
Ray Hightower
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 hat night downtown that is typically sponsored by Enova Financial. And in the western suburbs in the Elmhurst, the Forest 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
What kind of numbers do you usually see? What kind of audience do you usually bring? Do you bring designers, developers, more people work with Rails, more people work on other groups?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
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
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
And then... So there's dev designers. Yeah, devs and designers. And then entrepreneurs and investors together make up about 5% of the people who identify in one of those four groups. Now, that's really interesting that you have people coming out that identify themselves as entrepreneurs and investors. Now, do you mean like actual people that aren't doing Ruby dev that are coming out to meet Ruby devs at the group? Yeah, there are a handful of people. You know, 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 some 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
Right.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Because that's who we want to please. You know, when we say when smart people... That's your audience. That's our audience. That's our primary audience.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
And so the other people are there because they're attracted by the primary audience. 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... It depends. It depends. The downtown meetings are always... There's 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, 80 in there, depending on the topic.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Have you ever had a meeting where if you're max out at 100, have you ever exceeded that?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Have you ever...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
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
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
You might get 120 RSVPs, but a bunch of people go to the beach because we're at the Aon building, which isn't too far from the lake.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
So some people on the way to the meeting, I imagine some people just hop on their bikes and go to the lake.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Like, you never know.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
But you know, it's cool. You know, we have to live balanced lives and all that stuff. So it's funny. But, you know, we find that when we get 100 RSVPs, typically we'll have about 70 or 80 at the meeting.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
But our average at the downtown meetings is probably about 50. Our hat nights... Well, just recently, we had a hat night last week that did 50 plus. I don't know what the exact number was there, but I know it was 150.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Out in these suburbs, we'll get anywhere from 5 to 20.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Somewhere in there. Because that's a Saturday morning.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
That's what I wanted to ask you about is your schedule.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Because you have a unique dynamic. You're not just doing one group. It's like a chain of groups. Yes. The system of groups that you have the hat nights. Yes. You have the downtown meetings. Yes. And you also have the Elmhurst meetings.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. Right. How do you coordinate those? And do you have a team of people that you work with?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Oh, yes. We absolutely have a team. If you go to our GitHub repo at github. com/ChicagoRuby, you'll see a repo within our repo, a directory within our repo called How ChicagoRuby Works. Oh, okay. And in there is the organization of how we build it. All right. I'm going to definitely link to that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
So, I would take a look at that. And that evolved over time. We actually started off in Elmhurst. We 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 Pomido, whom you know. Yes. Matt became an organizer then. Victor Hong, Will Chung. If you go to ChicagoRuby. org, we maintain a list of organizer and alums, people who have been part of the organizer team over time. Oh, wow. The way we matter to three groups is, well, the hack night, for example. Jenny Hendry came up to me at one meeting and said, "Hey, Ray, we should do hack nights. " And I said, "Yeah, Jenny, you should organize. " So, that's how Jenny became an organizer.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
You know, part of an organizer. So, when people came to work with you, you gave them, like, some support and help to... Oh, yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
All the support in the world. And we, yeah. Because they put great ideas. Jenny had a great idea for doing hack nights. Dave Junta came to us one day and said, "Hey, we should do coding don't. " I said, "Okay, Dave, you can run. " Dave Junta 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
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
So, you know, having... 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...
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Sage wisdom? Yeah. How about some just random stuff off the top of my head? Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Sage wisdom, whatever.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
You know what has worked well for us?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
One of the first things that we did when I first became an organizer was... First thing I want to do is make sure we have consistency. Because we want people to know that they can put on their calendar or 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. Oh, yes. I said, that's crazy. Yeah, you know how that works.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
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
Like, remember the Our Gang comedies?
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Yeah, yeah. It's like a clubhouse. And, you know, Lee set us up. But no, no girl sign. Oh, yeah. We have, yeah, we are very friendly to women and, you know, black people. Yes. Very friendly across. And, you know, just the Ruby community in general is very open to people, I find. You know, I was, you know, immediately accepted when I didn't know anybody. You know that. You know that from.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
You've gone into new groups. Yes. Not known anybody.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
But usually most groups are pretty welcoming because if people are willing to get together to spend their time to talk about, there's always one more person to talk to. Yes. Yes.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Ray Hightower
ChicagoRuby
Yes. That's my group. Well, thank you very much, Ray. Thank you. This is Ray from ChicagoRuby. Thank you very much for talking with us. Thank you, Mike. Thank you for having me.