Hello,
My company has a policy which requires that at least one person
present a topic every week. The topic is unspecified and can range
from anything to salmon fishing in Newfoundland to The Beatles’ LSD
experience. I want to present Ruby. While a large section of the
audience consists of developers, the audience will also consist of non
technical people from depts such as HR, Accounting etc. I have to gear
my presentation so as to not alienate any single group and make it
interesting all the same.
Can you guys provide suggestions? As of now this is what I have. It is
meant to be an hour’s worth of presentation. I figured I’ll have 10
slides, 6 minutes on each slide along with code snippets. I also have
written solutions for several problems that some of the people in
accounting/hr face. The purpose of my demonstration is to prove that
Ruby, even for non programmers, can be used to solve small scale
problems in their lives.
Thank you,
Jayanth
Contrast Ruby for common problems and contrast it with perl and php 
To show non-programmers that ruby can be very nice, use something that
is a beautiful domain-specific language. I.e. it should be
understandable for non-programmers immediately
“order 2 pizza”
“shut down company”
“fire all programmers”
well, you get the idea…
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Marc H. [email protected]
wrote:
“fire all programmers”
Good idea. Know of any DSL that I don’t have to build from scratch? 
Thanks,
J
A presentation based around Why’s Poignant Guide To Ruby might be good
for a broad audience - it’s zaniness would probably interest not
technical people, and there are some snippets of very elegant,
concise, and useful Ruby therein.
2008/6/19 Srijayanth S. [email protected]:
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 11:08 AM, Srijayanth S.
[email protected] wrote:
Hello,
My company has a policy which requires that at least one person
present a topic every week. The topic is unspecified and can range
from anything to salmon fishing in Newfoundland to The Beatles’ LSD
experience.
This is a marvelous idea, we once implemented it informally amongst
colleagues taking lunch together.
accounting/hr face. The purpose of my demonstration is to prove that
Ruby, even for non programmers, can be used to solve small scale
problems in their lives.
The approach seems ok but maybe you can be more interactive, let
people play with irb or even on the
net interface.
If I guess the intentions of your company correctly, the most
important thing is to transport your enthusiasm
so be sure to really love what you will be doing.
HTH
Robert
–
http://ruby-smalltalk.blogspot.com/
Les mêmes questions qu’on se pose
On part vers où et vers qui
Et comme indice pas grand-chose
Des roses et des orties.
Francis Cabrel
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Bryan JJ Buckley [email protected]
wrote:
A presentation based around Why’s Poignant Guide To Ruby might be good
for a broad audience - it’s zaniness would probably interest not
technical people, and there are some snippets of very elegant,
concise, and useful Ruby therein.
I did consider it, and while it is hilarious and why the lucky stiff
is just an awesome thing overall, I am not sure too many in my company
might warm up to it. But a good suggestion to use the code therein.
Thank you,
Jayanth
The Beatle’s LSD experience sounds like a better topic 
The approach seems ok but maybe you can be more interactive, let
people play with irb or even on the
net interface.
If I guess the intentions of your company correctly, the most
important thing is to transport your enthusiasm
so be sure to really love what you will be doing.
HTH
Robert
Thank you Robert.
I do intend to use irb, and make it interactive. I plan to use irb for
roughly half the slides I am using.
J
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 12:38 PM, Ron F. [email protected] wrote:
The Beatle’s LSD experience sounds like a better topic 
I protest LSD is not even open source
R.
2008/6/19 Robert D. [email protected]:
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 12:38 PM, Ron F. [email protected] wrote:
The Beatle’s LSD experience sounds like a better topic
I protest LSD is not even open source
Isn’t it amazing that apparently they have people in their company
that can report on The Beatles’s LSD experience? Wow! This must be a
cool place to work.
On topic: you could use IRB as a simple desktop calculator. Maybe
simple math like plus and minus and then probably a bit more complex
like defining an array with all relevant values and then summing,
averaging etc. them.
Cheers
robert
I held an introductory presentation about Ruby a few month ago, which you
can find here:
http://www.ntecs.de/blog/articles/2008/02/09/ruby-the-way-back-to-productivity
And another one I gave 2003 is here:
http://www.ntecs.de/blog/articles/2003/05/25/ruby-talk-at-gpn2
I will take a look at this.
Thank you all so very much.
J
Srijayanth S. wrote:
My company has a policy which requires that at least one person
present a topic every week. The topic is unspecified and can range
from anything to salmon fishing in Newfoundland to The Beatles’ LSD
experience. I want to present Ruby.
Can you guys provide suggestions? As of now this is what I have. It is
meant to be an hour’s worth of presentation.
What about the classic ruby on rails demo?
Srijayanth S. wrote:
My company has a policy which requires that at least one person
present a topic every week. The topic is unspecified and can range
from anything to salmon fishing in Newfoundland to The Beatles’ LSD
experience.
I want to add that I think that this is a wonderful thing and wish that
we had it here.
Srijayanth S. wrote:
Can you guys provide suggestions? As of now this is what I have. It is
meant to be an hour’s worth of presentation. I figured I’ll have 10
slides, 6 minutes on each slide along with code snippets. I also have
written solutions for several problems that some of the people in
accounting/hr face. The purpose of my demonstration is to prove that
Ruby, even for non programmers, can be used to solve small scale
problems in their lives.
I held an introductory presentation about Ruby a few month ago, which
you can find here:
http://www.ntecs.de/blog/articles/2008/02/09/ruby-the-way-back-to-productivity
And another one I gave 2003 is here:
http://www.ntecs.de/blog/articles/2003/05/25/ruby-talk-at-gpn2
Regards,
Michael