---
title: We're at RailsConf 2013!
teaser:
tags: news,web
author: Prem Sichanugrist
published_on: 2013-04-30
---

Winter is finally over, spring is here, and thoughtbot folks have flown in from
Boston, San Francisco, Stockholm, and Boulder to be at [RailsConf
2013][railsconf]!

Do you have any questions about [our open source projects][opensource]? Do you
need some help setting up your project on [Trajectory][trajectory], or do you
want to [Learn][learn] something? We would love to chat with you!

We're also setting up a temporary studio for our [podcast][podcast] in room
D136. Feel free to stop by to say hi and watch us record live!

Adarsh Pandit, Ben Orenstein, George Brocklehurst, Harlow Ward, and Prem
Sichanugrist are giving talks:

Tuesday at 11:30am: [TDD Workshop: Outward-in Development, Unit Tests, and
Fixture Data][adarsh]

Tuesday at 12:20pm: [TDD Workshop: Mocking, Stubbing, and Faking External
Services][adarsh] with [Harlow Ward][@hrward] and [Adarsh Pandit][@adarshp]:

> thoughtbot are creators of the open-sourced testing tools FactoryBot and
> Shoulda Matchers.
>
> We recognize Test-Driven Development (TDD) can be difficult to practice as
> features increase in complexity. Testing is often skipped when developers feel
> uncomfortable with TDD or have not yet seen certain approaches in practice.
>
> We’ll describe specific techniques used in TDD which touch on: Integration
> testing with RSpec+Capybara, Model Associations and Data Validations,
> Asynchronous Jobs, Emails, 3rd Party Services, and JSON API endpoints.

Tuesday at 2:00pm: [Sleeping with the enemy][george] with [George
Brocklehurst][@georgebrock]:

> In this session we'll go off the Rails and take a look at what our Pythonista
> cousins are doing with Django.
>
> I'll start with some live coding: recreating DHH's infamous 15 minute blog
> demo using Django and explaining the building blocks of a Django app along the
> way. I'll then take that app and use it to look at some design decisions
> Django makes, and how they compare to Rails. You'll see convention over
> configuration in places you didn't expect it, why Django doesn't need
> attr\_accessible or strong parameters, and how the template method pattern
> could change your life.
>
> Why talk about Python at a Rails conference? Seeing another way of doing
> things forces us to think about what we're doing, challenges or validates the
> assumptions we make about our work, and inspires us to try new things.

Wednesday at 2:00pm: [Zero-downtime payment platforms][prem] with [Prem
Sichanugrist][@sikachu] and [Ryan Twomey][@rtwomey] (from [LevelUp][levelup]):

> When you're building a payment platform, you want to make sure that your
> system is always available to accept orders. However, the complexity of the
> platform introduces the potential for it to go down when any one of the moving
> parts fails. In this talk, I will show you the approaches that we've taken and
> the risks that we have to take to ensure that our platform will always be
> available for our customers. Even if you're not building a payment platform,
> these approaches can be applied to ensure a high availability for your
> platform or service as well.

Thursday at 10:30am: [How to Talk to Developers][ben] with [Ben
Orenstein][@r00k]:

> Nearly every developer will be asked to present to his or her peers at some
> point. Those that do it well will tend to have an outsized influence on their
> team, company, and community.
>
> This talk will demonstrate (mostly by example) the straightforward techniques
> for giving excellent presentations, from a veteran conference speaker and
> teacher.
>

Topics to cover include:

- Phrases that turn your audience against you.
- Basic body language tips that affect perception.
- How to be more interesting than the internet.
- The power of live coding and demos.
- Being funny without resorting to reddit memes.
- How to get plenty of questions during Q&A.
- How to get an unfair amount of talk acceptances (aka 'Bribing conference
  organizers').

[railsconf]: http://www.railsconf.com/2013
[opensource]: http://www.thoughtbot.com/community
[learn]: https://learn.thoughtbot.com
[podcast]: http://podcasts.thoughtbot.com
[trajectory]: https://www.apptrajectory.com/
[adarsh]: http://www.railsconf.com/2013/talks#talk-64
[george]: http://www.railsconf.com/2013/talks#talk-29
[prem]: http://www.railsconf.com/2013/talks#talk-44
[ben]: http://www.railsconf.com/2013/talks#talk-36
[levelup]: https://www.thelevelup.com
[@adarshp]: https://twitter.com/adarshp
[@hrward]: https://twitter.com/harlow_ward
[@georgebrock]: https://twitter.com/georgebrock
[@sikachu]: https://twitter.com/sikachu
[@rtwomey]: https://twitter.com/rtwomey
[@r00k]: https://twitter.com/r00k