Asheville & Ruby

Last night I drove over the mountain to Asheville to meet up with a group of Ruby & Rails enthusiasts.   It is a small group initially held together by a Google Group , but more so now over Twitter .  All cool guys, doing cool things, and unless I'm forgetting something all were freelancers.

Doing that type of stuff freelance is something I have mounds of respect for when done right and is something I sort of long to do.

Anyways, here I'm trying to link up everyone I met with some things they have worked on after a bit of online snooping (in no particular order):

• Lance Ball (@lanceball) - A Shovelpunk who created greenthumbr.com using Rails.  Working on getting a co-working space setup in downtown Asheville.  Check out Locomotivity for more info on that.
• Lance Wig (@lancewig ) - Self described himself as a jack of all trades.  I think he started in on Ruby & Rails for a class project (?) but I might have heard wrong.  
• Tobias Crawley (@tcrawley) & Bruce Hauman (@bhauman) - Sometime collaborators and I believe creators of restaurantZite.  Also check out Hat Full of Names that Tobias just unleashed.  A 'Secret Santa' web app.  
• Mike Irwin (@mdi ) - Runs Manic Development .  Was sporting a CBGB shirt and a cool hat so I immediately liked him.  Big on testing which is something I need to get better at.
• Tony Kruse - The one guy I didn't get to talk to much.  But I think I remember him saying he had a background in Physics... didn't catch if he had a website or a twitter account and so far haven't been able to turn up anything.
• Rich Orris (@rorris) - Runs Strange Bird Labs and sounded like a Drupal guru (Eric... here is your guy).  Impressive portfolio over at SBL, especially since he is responsible for pitchfork.tv which is one of my favorite sites.  

Overall I had a great time.  I always forget how fun it is to sit in a space with people where I can babble on about ActiveRecord and not get stared at like I'm crazy.