Speakers Part 1
When we opened our Call for Proposals using GitHub Pull Requests we were astounded by the response. Apart from the sheer number and quality of proposals, everyone seemed to love the transparency of using such an open and collaborative medium.
With the 1st of June fast approaching, and several other amazing conferences also releasing their speakers, we were running a little bit behind schedule. We are very sorry for the delay, but we hope to make up with some fantastic speakers!
So without further ado, here is the first lot of speakers for EuRuKo 2012!
(Please note, the second lot will be blogged about on Thursday.)
Key note speakers
It is with great pleasure to announce our two awesome Keynote speakers for this year : Yukuhiro Matsumoto (Matz) and Geoffrey Grosenbach.
Yukihiro Matsumoto - Ruby Chief Architect, Heroku
Matz needs no introduction. As the creator of the beautiful and elegant language we all love, we are honored to have Matz joining us for this year’s EuRuKo.
Although, did you expect anything less? ;)
Geoffrey Grosenbach - Peepcode
Geoffrey Grosenbach has been designing and developing web applications since 1997. You might recognize his soothing voice from the Peepcode screencasts, of which he is the founder. Or maybe you also know he is nuts about road cycling, a hobby and so much more!
Residing in Seattle, WA, the birthplace of grunge music, maybe try sharing your favorite coffee tip, or even mention the ‘amazing’ Starbucks ;)
Speakers
Brian Ford - Rubinius Developer, Engine Yard
Brian is probably best known for his role on the Rubinius team, where he has worked full-time for the past four years thanks to Engine Yard. He has also created the RubySpec project to improve the standards for high quality, consistent, and compliant Ruby implementations, and is focused on improving Ruby and thereby making the lives of developers even better.
Want to chat him up? FYI he enjoys whisky but will accept good wine in a pinch.
Charles Nutter - JRuby Architect, Engine Yard
Charles has been programming most of his life, as a Java developer for the past decade and as a JRuby developer for over six years. He co-leads the JRuby project, an effort to bring the beauty of Ruby and the power of the JVM together. Charles believes in open source and open standards and hopes his efforts on JRuby and other languages will ensure the JVM remains the preferred open-source managed runtime for many years to come.
Did you know Charles has an awesome beard? Maybe you might both bond over beard grooming advice!
Rick Olson - Alchemist, Github
Rick is a developer at GitHub, a self-diagnosed REST nerd, bleeding edge DB enthusiast, with an active OSS profile. Rick calls himself a gif artist and a crappy Looptastic DJ who enjoys reading comic books. But really, if you know Rick, he loves his Dubstep :)
Want to pick Ricks amazing mind? Quote some Dubstep lyrics! “hey Rick, I really love that song that goes ‘boom boom waap waap boom boom woosh woosh’”
Konstantin Haase - Berry Sparkle Lord, Travis CI
As current maintainer of Sinatra, Konstantin is an Open Source developer by heart. Ruby has become his language of choice since 2005, and with an open source addition, he regularly contributes to different projects of all shapes and forms like Rubinius, Rack, Travis, Rails and MRI. Konstantin is even rumored to be part machine!
Interested to know what goes on inside his head? Bring a toolset!
Roy Tomeij - 80beans
Roy has been a front-end specialist for almost a decade. As one of the co-founders of consultancy 80beans here in Amsterdam, he weaves HTML5 and CSS3 magic on an hourly basis. As well as being in love with front-end meta languages like haml, sass and coffeescript, he is all about a sweet mixture of function and form.
Fun Fact: We hear Roy loves a good vodka or 10 ;)
And last but not least!
Elise Huard
Living in the land of muscles, and Jean Claude Van Damme, Elise has been a software developer in Belgium for more than 10 years. She has used a variety of languages on a variety of environments, and has spoken at a variety of conferences all over the world.
We hate to admit it, but Belgium makes some awesome beers, let her know how much you love a Duvel or Chimay.
We are so excited to be welcoming these fantastic speakers to Amsterdam, but hold onto your seats because more will follow soon!
Big <3<3<3 from the EuRuKo Team!