Ruby in France
The debate seems to be running in the mail group and on twitter : “RuLu vs ?”, “confs vs barcamps” etc. Rulu was nice, there is no doubt about that. And barcamps would be nice. The main question that was behind events, talks and RuLu was the fact that Ruby is a silent runner in France : we don’t know much about it, we don’t hear much about it and there is not much going on “apparently”.
As I said at RuLu there is probably more Ruby developpers in France than each of us think : there is a silent crowd out there using Ruby everyday or once a week without saying that they do. In Toulouse, I know there is, at least 25 people using Ruby on a day to day basis (I know 20 of them through a mail group, and 5 more are scattered in companies I’ve heard of). When we do Ruby meetups (once a month approx) we are about 5 to 8 people. Yes about 25 people, 5 to 8 turning up for a beer once a month in a 439 553 people city (according to wikipedia).
Mind that there is a different culture here (in France) than in UK, US or Australia (countries I’ve been in, or where I have several friends living) : we don’t go in pubs that much after work, meeting for a beer after work isn’t unheard of but I don’t think it’s something done on a regular basis. When I was working in Paris I had trouble to get such a thing going regularly with my coworkers … Difficult to have a good idea about it then.
So I think we just need do something (articles, conferences, *camps), what ever the size, everything is good to take right now, we will see what naturally get more people and more happy faces, make sure to have people know about it (reach out to the big crowds) and be happy. In the end it will help, or just be a reason to gather people to enjoy a couple of beers together (which is always nice).
