<p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: #1c1c1c; line-height: 19px;"> </span></p> <p><strong>Our (very strongly) suggested <em>minimum</em> donation is &pound;75. Remember it's a donation, though, and not a ticket when you come to the Gift Aid section :-)</strong></p> <p><strong><br /></strong></p> <p>This years main charity event is a full-day Ruby tutorial with Chad Fowler and Keavy McMinn. &nbsp;It's aimed at developers with some experience in Ruby &nbsp;and/or Rails developers who want to improve their understanding of the essence of Ruby. &nbsp;Frameworks like Rails, Rake, Capistrano, Sinatra, and others that have made Ruby popular and vibrant are all built on the same essential language features. &nbsp;Being well versed in these features is the fastest past to mastery of not only the language but of many of its most popular libraries.</p> <p>The day will be structured into steps of of lecture, sample code and writing your own code exercises, with our support.</p> <p>We will cover four key areas of the Ruby language:</p> <p>* Blocks and bindings</p> <p>* The Ruby object model</p> <p>* Meta-programming</p> <p>* Hooks, callbacks, and reflection</p> <p>In this one day tutorial, you will:</p> <p>* Gain confidence working with the Ruby language</p> <p>* Learn how to make your existing code cleaner and more mountable</p> <p>* Learn idioms which will help you understand how popular libraries and frameworks are constructed</p> <p>* Learn how to leverage the Ruby language for use in your daily work (including Rails development)</p> <p>* Become a better developer, with a deeper understanding of why and how your tools work</p> <p>In addition to the main tutorial, we're running a whole host of smaller BOFs and lightning sessions in the foyer. &nbsp;We're calling it a RubyFest.</p> <p>Each year, we request a <strong>minimum</strong> 75UKP donation to CHAS. That donation gets you attendance at Chad and Keavys talk, as well as the RubyFest in the foyer.</p> <p>Please make your donation before the day arrives so we have an accurate list of who&rsquo;s going to what. &nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p> <p>In 2008/09/10, the Scottish Ruby Conference ran bootcamp tutorials in advance of our Ruby conference. &nbsp;We paid for the venue, the speakers donated their time for free, and all the money paid for attendance went directly to charity. &nbsp;In 2010, we also had a 5K run to raise more money.</p> <p><strong>Together, we've raised more than FIFTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS</strong>for the Children's Hospice Association, which provides respite care for terminally ill children who will not live to adulthood, and support for their families.</p> <div></div> </p> <p>&nbsp;</p>