Vienna.rb is always quite a fun evening. The first time I (Shelly) went, I went alone and promptly squirrelled myself away in a corner to listen to the talks.
I needn’t have been so nervous! Everyone at vienna.rb is super friendly and welcoming. On this particular first night, Floor Drees (who has so very kindly offered to be our supervisor for RGSoC) came over and introduced me to Pilar. We started talking about how we both want to apply for summer of code, our goals, and I think the conversation also wandered towards favourite video games.

But, I digress. Flash forward to Vienna.rb #22. This came the day after Team Neko’s first meeting in Cafe Neko. As Pilar mentioned in the previous post, we were both excited to meet Luca Guidi to ask some questions about the Lotus project and to find out what is expected. Luca was very open to chat to us and we spoke over pizza in between some talks. It was a pleasure to meet Luca, and the chat with him only served to add to our motivation and excitement about what is (possibly) to come!

The talks that evening were, as always, quite interesting.

The first talk was by Stefan Haslinger. Mr. 100 000 Volts gift-wraps Rubies and Opals This talk was quite informative but I have to admit that it went a teeny bit over my head this time. Sometimes the level of information is just that teeny bit out of my grasp so I don’t fully follow things…YET. What I did follow was very interesting!

Next up was Pilar’s brother, Ramon. He presented his talk *How Teaching Kids Made Me a Better Developer” which he was due to present at concat() in Salzburg the following Saturday. I have written about this talk in my post about concat, which I have not yet posted.
Ramon’s talk was great. The subject matter is something that I identify quite a lot with, given my background of teaching kids, albeit teaching English rather than anything technical. It was wonderful to get some tips on how I can use one area to help the other.

Then, two wonderful ladies who are applying for summer of code got up to ask if anyone present would like to join our list of coaches for the duration of the programme. I mean their. Dangit, I’ve never been good at writing in the third person.
As a result of this, we have gotten the support of not just one more person, but a whole company! The folk of wirsing.io are really enthusiastic about helping us out over the summer. Added to our original list which already had a few people, we have a fantastically strong support network behind us if we are lucky enough to be accepted onto summer of code.

It’s quite humbling that so many people are not just willing, but eager to help and support us in this endeavor. It’s wonderful inspiration to pay it forward and again, more proof that I really should not have been at all nervous the first night I ventured to a vienna.rb!

Laura Gaetano was the last speaker of the evening, with a talk that opened the evening’s discussions. The topic was Github as a Project Management Tool. The talk explained the way in which Laura and her team use Github to track things, and the discussion broadened to include experience people have with Trello and Blossom. As a beginner in this industry, I found it really helpful to get an overview of how to effectively manage projects with some personal feedback thrown in.

This was a particularly encouraging edition of Vienna.rb. Excitement is building for our upcoming application!

Shelly