Dr. Nic Williams

Dr Nic Williams is known for his exciting blend of software development, entertaining education, and thorough training.

He picked up Ruby on Rails in 2005, he has released successful websites, such as MyConfPlan, and a growing collection of open source projects that are used throughout the Ruby on Rails community - New Gem Generator, Composite Primary Keys, and his quirkily famous "Magic Models", plus more.

For the last two years, Dr Nic has lived and worked in India, Sweden, Netherlands and Australia; and has worked for telcos and for several startup web companies.

Presentation: "Rails 2.0"

Track: The Rise of Ruby

Time: Friday 14:30 - 15:30

Location: Abbey Room

Abstract:

Rails 2.0 was released in December 2007, 7 months after the previous major release (1.2.3). With 2.0 comes thousands of changes, contributed by hundreds of developers. Which is nice.

Should you use it? Should you upgrade? Is there anything really useful in Rails since 2.0? Like what, and how do I upgrade?

Answers: yes; yes; yes; 45 minutes should be enough to answer that question.

Presentation: "Panel: When is Rails an appropriate choice?"

Track: The Rise of Ruby

Time: Friday 16:00 - 17:00

Location: Abbey Room

Abstract: Rails has taken the development world by storm, being compared to Java in the skills parade of recent job adverts. But is Rails the right choice? This panel of experts will discuss the reasons for picking the framework over other platform options, exploring topics such as choosing the platform for prototyping, scalability and ease of management. Join us to get involved with the Q & A and decide for yourself if switching to Rails is the path for you.

Tutorial: "Rails"

Track: Tutorial

Time: Monday 13:00 - 16:00

Location: Guild Room

Abstract:

Getting started with Ruby on Rails can take one afternoon.

After this tutorial, you'll be able to create and extend basic Rails applications; you'll learn about the Ruby programming language that has become very popular over the last two years; and you'll have access to additional resources to learn more about different aspects of developing Ruby on Rails applications.