Well the arrangements have all been made for my trip down to St. Louis for the November Gateway JUG meeting. I'll be presenting the usual fare, JRuby and JRuby on Rails stuff, except this time there's a few twists.

Twist One: I'll be presenting for 2+ hours

Yes, this one has me just a bit nervous...not because I think I'll have a problem presenting for that long or because I don't think I'll have enough material, but because I want to keep people awake the whole time. I've been told I'm a pretty good presenter, but even the best presentations can drag on after a while. Which leads me to the second twist:

Twist Two: I'll do 80-90% of the presentation manually

Yes, that's right...I'm going to be using IRB, command-line tools, IDEs, browsers, etc for most of the presentation. I think I've got my typing speed up to a comfortable enough level to keep people interested, and it's quite a bit more fun to watch things happen live than to see pictures or read slides. Plus it will be a unique challenge to do what basically amounts to a two-hour demo. You know me and challenges.

So a few links to information:

Gateway JUG - The Gateway JUG home page
JRuby: Bringing Ruby to the Java Platform - Description of the talk, my bio-of-the-month, directions and other info

And a rough overview of the talk (yes, this is the short, short list. I've got two pages for the long list):

• Intro to Ruby and JRuby
• Interactive demo of Ruby's major features
• What JRuby adds
• Interactive demo of JRuby
• Break
• Intro to Ruby on Rails
• What JRuby adds
• Building a simple Rails app
• JRuby status and future
• Conclusion

If you're going to be in the area on November 7, come watch me battle demo gremlins for two solid hours. It should be rife with action and adventure, love and laughs, guts and glory. Or at least you'll get to see both a JRuby and a JRuby on Rails presentation in one fun-filled night for free. That's worth it, no?

Update: There's an event flyer now as well.