Ruby Hero Awards: Nominate Your “Ruby Hero”
The Ruby Hero Awards is an attempt to reward and support members of the Ruby and Rails communities for the hard work they do. It was founded by the guys at Rails Envy (Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer) but has support behind the scenes from people like Robert Dempsey, Dave Thomas and Chad Fowler, and a pretty large panel who will help choose the winner. Dave Thomas has suggested that the Pragmatic Programmers will even pay for trophies! The winners (of which there will be six - in various categories) will be announced at a Rails conference Ruby Central and O'Reilly are putting on in the US in late May called Railsconf 2008.
Certainly don't vote for Ruby Inside (or me) as it will be a wasted vote. Firstly, I'm on the panel, so it wouldn't be right, but secondly, senior panel member Chad Fowler has stressed that he's only keen on "original, valuable content" rather than people behind "simple link blogs" and doesn't seem keen on "blogs with sponsorships" (which is, well, this one). I would like to give my own personal recommendations for nominations though, in case you're struggling for ideas:
Geoffrey Grosenbach (http://peepcode.com/) - Geoffrey is a hero amongst mere mortals in the Ruby and Rails communities. His publishing efforts with Peepcode and Nuby on Rails are incredible. Sure, he makes money at it, but he's inspired so many people and had a big part in promoting things like Rails 2.0 and Git.
Ryan Bates (http://railscasts.com/) - Ryan Bates is the publisher of Railscasts, a great free series of Rails related screencasts. Even though he has sponsors, it's not a blog, and it's very original and educational, so he certainly deserves plenty of nominations.
James Britt (http://ruby-doc.org/) - The work that James Britt has done for documentation for the Ruby community is beyond compare. For many years he has maintained the Ruby-Doc.org site we've all used at one time or another and been a familiar face on the various Ruby mailing lists. While rarely updated and primarily based on the work of others, Britt's site is a cornerstone of the Ruby documentation community and he deserves credit for keeping it available. He also maintains a really cool Cafepress shop where you can buy a ridiculous amount of Ruby-themed mugs, steins, stickers, t-shirts and tanktops.
Good luck to whoever wins! It will, of course, be reported here on Ruby Inside for those who can't make it to the Railsconf conference.
April 20, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Thanks for help spreading the word Peter. Just FYI, you make it sound like we'll be giving away a single award. We'll be giving away 6.
Also, Brandon Beacher played a big role putting the awards together, and coding together the website.
I sincerely hope you're not calling Ruby Inside a "Simple Link Blog", Ruby Inside has become an amazing source of Ruby / Rails news due mostly to your ability to find interesting stories and explain them in a concise and understandable way.
Keep up the great work.
April 20, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I've stressed the number of awards being given, as it did sound like there was just one, thanks :)
April 20, 2008 at 3:38 pm
"There are many people in the Ruby/Rails world who contribute to our community and rarely receive any recognition or payment for their work. "
That'd probably disqualify Geoffrey & Ryan :) As they both have any recognition imo.
And James Britt probably has problems accepting an award at a "Rails Conf" - http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/149927#661794
I think this award should be for awesome people others have *rarely* heard of. Probably, people like Nick Kallen, Nick DeMonner, Aaron Bedra, Ry Dahl, Russel Norris to name just a few.
April 20, 2008 at 3:38 pm
“There are many people in the Ruby/Rails world who contribute to our community and rarely receive any recognition or payment for their work. ”
That’d probably disqualify Geoffrey & Ryan :) As they both have enough recognition imo.
And James Britt probably has problems accepting an award at a “Rails Conf” - http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/149927#661794
I think this award should be for awesome people others have *rarely* heard of. Probably, people like Nick Kallen, Nick DeMonner, Aaron Bedra, Ry Dahl, Russel Norris to name just a few.
April 20, 2008 at 3:49 pm
James is our community's lovable curmudgeon. I don't think his disapproval of the awards being handed out at Railsconf has any bearing on his suitability for nomination. Heck, I nominated him.
I find it odd, however, that he uses ruby-talk participation as some criterion of participation. With the generally poor quality of discourse on there (I jumped ship when people were arguing about the name of the 'god' library - jeez!), I'd think participation (or lack of) on ruby-talk says very little generally. ruby-talk's really just a giant slagheap that some people love to slide down from time to time, but of little real value in judging community participation.
April 20, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Personally, I am not in glorification mood.
By the order of development there will be always a group of people that will lead the way at some time and that group will change over the time.
All of us that love Ruby and Ruby on Rails can have our opinions who are that group members and our heroes based on personal experience, domain of interest and idea recognition.
Hero by definition (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hero) is a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal.
IMHO all members of this extraordinary Ruby and Rails lovers that preach good programming practice, share their knowledge and ideas up to the last beginner that start to import our ideas and in a way kipping us in the right track can be acknowledge as a hero of some kind.
In a way, it is a community and we can not exist without one another. The community is the HERO that combined us in struggle to be even better tomorrow.
To put in one sentence: I love You all since you bring out the best of me.
April 20, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I think it's a great idea and support it 100%. While I agree with the comment above it's not the individuals in the community that are heros but the community as a whole. I think it's good to recognize those people who are leaders in the community.
For instance almost all of us have the ability to be fireman. Yet it's those special individuals that will rush the flames to save another life at the risk of his own that makes him a hero. Now I'm of course not comparing writing a tutorial to braving death to save a kitten but the relationship is similar. We all have the ability to be "heros" but then there are those certain people who go above and beyond to help others.
I personally nominated Ryan Bates. Not just for his excellent railscasts but the man also has over 6000 posts on the rails forum. Everything from answering questions, posting tutorials, to just joining into conversations. I believe that makes him a "hero" or role model for newcomers to the community. While I realize that he is not the only one, I do know that his railscasts and tutorials have been invaluable to me personally and helped me overcome quite a few obstacles that I have encountered. The greatest thing is he didn't spoon feed me the answers but instead gave me the tools to overcome them myself thus learning along the way.
April 20, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Ryan Bates is my HERO with all capital letters.
Just for the record.
April 20, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Somehow I feel like this is going to end up like Time's Person of the Year: "YOU". ;)
April 20, 2008 at 10:31 pm
@Peter : Pfft, don't be silly. You can't nominate because you're on the panel ;-)
April 20, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Oh well! JB's gunna have to make do with Ruby Inside's Person Of The Year Award instead.
April 29, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Peter, you say do not vote for you because of Ruby Inside. But for many, Ruby Inside is a valuable resource. Besides Ruby Inside, you wrote a freakin' book on how to get started with Ruby which should be considered a Bible for Ruby Newbies.
Or in short, I voted for you. Deal with it.
April 29, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Ed: That's very nice of you, but I can't win because I'm on the panel! Thanks anyway :)