Ruby User Group Meeting

Last night I attended my first Ruby user group meeting. I've been a member of a lot of user groups and so my expectations were (perhaps unreasonably) high. My initial impressions weren't that great and I left the meeting unsure whether or not I'd return the following month.

But then I started to think about it:

1. Here were a bunch of geeks (me included) getting together to talk about a nascent technology in a city largely dominated by Java and .NET. The fact that these people cared enough about fostering the growth of the language and framework to set all this up is commendable.
   
2. The presentation was actually quite good. I came out of there knowing something about Capistrano that I didn't know before I went in there. It inspired me enough to go looking at the Capistrano and Mongrel websites.
   
3. The group was roughly 20-25 people. Not bad when you consider very few of us are actually getting paid for writing Ruby.
   
4. There were door prizes (a couple books from O'Reilly and no, I didn't win). The people in charge are trying to entice people to come and learn and share.

So I reconsidered. I'll probably continue to attend and hope to see the technology and user group flourish. Only with growth (and perhaps some corporate sponsorship) can we eliminate poor first impressions like the one I had. In the interim, I'll continue to learn, make contacts, and maybe if I learn enough I'll be able to give a presentation one day too.