A new coworker

20Jul10

While buying some stuff in a Puma store in Strasbourg, I asked brazenly if it was possible to buy those cute little pinguins they in had in the shopwindow. The shopgirl answered that, unfortunately, it was not possible to buy them. But! But, at the end of the season, in june or july, they will find new homestays for their penguins. We let our name, and voilà, 6 months later, a new coworker in the CPPlex !
A quick poll on twitter and Facebook help us find his name : welcome Pen Pen ! Thanks to @nmerouze who was the first one to suggest that name.

Obligatory geek reference.


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Alsace Digitale BBQ

13Jul10

Even though Alsace Digitale is just a few months old, we decided to organize our first Community BBQ.

It was a real success, thanks to our numerous sponsors who provided sausages, flammekueches, coke, lemonade and… tomatoes and watermelons (yes, we have girls too).

It was the first time I really discussed with Tom Brehm and his entrepreneurship adventure with Limonade Min’s (we met a few times before at the BarCampAlsace6.5 for example). Their business model is inspired by Jones Soda. They make traditional lemonade and when you order your bottles, you can provide some fancy logo or image and they will make a special sticker for you. Add to that the fancy QR code, and you have some limonade for geeks :)

And for the entrepreneurship adventure, they bought an old bottling machine from Austria and they moved it in a small village near Strasbourg !


Filed under: alsace, alsace digitale, entreprendre, entrepreneurship   |  2 Comments

About the smallness of the Ruby/Rails community in France

09Jul10

Some people have difficult experiences with Ruby on Rails in France. Imagine that : your cofounder is a Rails ninja. Of course he chooses Rails as the main tech for your startup. And then, after some times, he decides to left the company. And now, you have to look for Rails talent. And you now face the hard truth : the Ruby/Rails community in France is quite small. How do you look for Rails developpers in that case ? They are all already employed working on cool projects, or they can simply ignore you (I will let the reader jump to its own conclusions as to why they ignore you).

To answer quickly to the guy who had “problems” with his cofounder. It’s not Rails fault ! it could have happened with any cofounder, be it a Rails ninja or not ! Yeah ok, it doesn’t sooth the pain…

As for the initial question “How do you look for Rails developpers in that case ?”, maybe a better one is “How do you look for talented people ?”. Laurent already stated the obvious : poll your local tech community. There are plenty of tech events in Paris. And they are now easily founded because they really often happen in “La Cantine”, the famous parisian coworking space. And now, there are a lot of coworking spaces and other similar organizations popping everywhere in France, like Alsace Digitale, La Mêlée Numérique, Atlantic 2.0, etc.

But this question remains : will you spend some time looking for talented people ? Do you really want to hire talented people ?

And I will now imagine what would have happened if you didn’t go with Rails in the first place.

Imagine you go with Python (or Scala). Do you really think their community are bigger than the Ruby/Rails community ? And I’m really talking about web dev here (I know that the Python community is quite big outside web dev).

Or maybe you would have go with a more “standard” tech, like Java, C# or PHP. And then, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff ?

So, blaming Ruby/Rails is simple but the real questions remains. And they are not simple.

As for me ? I really enjoy the Ruby/Rails community because it’s full of tech oriented people who constantly test new technologies for the good of all.

PS : BTW, maybe one day all Rubyists will be Node.js developpers, and the important questions will still remain


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Retour sur MongoFR

22Jun10

Lundi 21 juin avait donc lieu à La Cantine à Paris la conférence MongoFR : toute une journée dédiée à la base de données MongoDB.

J’ai eu le plaisir d’être speaker en démarrant la journée en pole position pour présenter “Ruby et MongoDB dans la pratique”. En français donc, histoire de diffuser la bonne parole dans le monde francophone. Vous trouverez ci-dessous les slides de cette présentation.

Quelques mots sur la journée. 10gen, la boîte à l’origine de MongoDB, fait vraiment très très bien son travail pour favoriser l’adoption de leur produit (open source). La journée a été bien remplie, alternativement de sessions en français et en anglais (plusieurs employés de 10gen parlent d’ailleurs très bien le français). Il y en avait pour tout le monde : autant pour les devs que pour les admin sys. Et pour ceux qui se posaient la question, après une brève analyse, je pense que toutes les applications que l’on a développées chez Novelys ces 5 dernières années auraient pu se faire avec MongoDB. On est très content du produit (actuellement en prod ou préprod sur 2 projets) et il est clair que l’on utilisera MongoDB de plus en plus à l’avenir (notamment sur MasterSieve !).


Filed under: mongodb, nosql, rails, ruby   |  2 Comments

“Ruby et MongoDB dans la pratique” à MongoFR

14Jun10

This post is about the MongoFR conference, organized by 10gen, the 21st of june in Paris. As my talk will be in french, the rest of this post is in french.

10gen, la boîte derrière la base de données NoSQL MongoDB, organise une journée de formation/présentation autour de MongoDB le 21 juin à la Cantine.

J’aurais l’honneur d’y présenter “Ruby et MongoDB dans la pratique” qui sera surtout un retour d’expérience sur nos derniers travaux et découvertes en ce qui concerne l’implantation de MongoDB dans un projet Ruby (et surtout Rails), notamment dans le cadre du projet MasterSieve.


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Once again, this blog revives from ashes

13Jun10

And this time, I will try to write some articles in english, some others in french.

Long live the Strassblog !


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BarCampBodensee2010

07Jun10

P1020144

Originally uploaded by novelysfrance

The BarCampBodensee2010 took place on the 5th and 6th of june 2010.

I didn’t explore a lot of BarCamp in Germany (in fact this was just my second BarCamp in Germany, the first one was the BarCampBodensee2008), but I have to say that the organization was almost perfect: self service for drinks, self service for bikes, 3 meals per day, the wifi worked perfectly, etc.

And, thanks to one of the main figure behind this BarCamp, namely Oliver Gassner, it was an International Barcamp. The rule is plain simple : when you start your session, just ask if someone doesn’t understand your spoken language. This way, if a poor french guy that doesn’t speak german shows up in a “german session”, the session will continue in english (or any preferred language by all the participants in the session).

This is the list of the sessions I attended :

  • Day 1 Session 1 “Cross platform mobile development”
  • Day 1 Session 2 “Self management and Getting Things Done” and the book “Making it all work” http://amzn.to/12d5oC
  • Day 1 Session 3 “22 random hints for startups”
  • Day 1 Session 4 “Appstore and the android market”
  • Day 1 Session 5 “Coworking”, with a good introduction quote “Coworking is not about sharing space, it is about sharing time”
  • Day 1 Session 6 “Project Management SCRUM & RUP”
  • Day 2 Session 1 “How to be a social web ninja”
  • Day 2 Session 2 “Scrum & Patterns
  • Day 2 Session 3 “Future Companies – Cultural & Organizational Aspects”
  • Day 2 Session 4 “Android development”

My advice : don’t miss this amazing BarCamp next year !

PS : you can find more photos in this Flickr set.


Filed under: barcamp, barcampbodensee   |  2 Comments

BarCampAlsace6.5

09May10


P1010928

Originally uploaded by novelysfrance

The BarCampAlsace6.5, intermediate release between the BarCampAlsace6 and the BarCampAlsace7, and the first BarCamp ported by Alsace Digitale, took place the 8th may 2010 at the CPPlex. The CPPlex is the first alsatian coworking place, situated 17 rue des magasins, 67000 Strasbourg, France.

First, the number of attendees : 84. Nice score ! In progression compared to the BarCampAlsace6. The CPPlex was quite crowded.

Second, the number of sessions. With up to 5 sessions in parallel, the barcampers had choice.

Third, the logistic. As the 8th of may was public holiday in France, it was not really easy to setup the food for midday. Apart that, I think the things worked well.

Once again, I was very happy to organize a BarCampAlsace. I hope that another BarCampAlsace will take place S2 2010. And maybe this time with international guests !

PS : you can find more photos in this Flickr set.


Filed under: alsace, barcamp, barcampalsace, coworking, cpplex   |  Leave a Comment

Présentation NoSQL au CPPlex, dans le cadre des Last Thursday

25Feb10
Voic la petite présentation que j’ai faite hier soir dans le cadre des Last Thursday au CPPlex.
C’est quoi un Last Thursday ? Les Last Thursday sont des rencontres mensuelles, sur Strasbourg, où l’excuse est une conférence technique. Normalement, c’est le dernier jeudi de chaque mois (mais c’est rarement tombé le dernier jeudi…). C’est essentiellement un groupe Facebook que vous pouvez rejoindre.
Le nom du groupe c’est “Last Thursday” by Alsace Digitale.
C’est quoi Alsace Digitale ? C’est l’association que nous venons de créer avec quelques connaissances et qui veut fédérer les acteurs de l’IT en Alsace et porter un projet de type Cantine.
C’est quoi le CPPlex ? C’est l’espace de travail que nous partageons avec Creative Patterns, Cap Eco et Green Ivory. C’est, de facto, le premier espace de coworking de Alsace Digitale. Si vous êtes de passage sur Strasbourg, vous savez donc où venir trouver un espace de travail agréable, même si ce n’est que pour quelques heures.
Bref, voici enfin les slides :

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Ignite Strasbourg 2, même joueur joue encore

11Feb10

Après ma modeste prestation à Ignite Strasbourg #1, je me suis permis de refaire un tour de piste pour le 2ème Ignite Strasbourg qui s’est déroulé le 9 février 2010.

Ce “Dessine moi un développeur web (en 2010)” est un petit pied de nez à la façon dont le marché du développement web est actuellement structuré en France…

J’attends avec impatience la vidéo !


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