Entry #2: Celebrating Wins and Embracing New Horizons!
Planet Argon
Helping you sustain, modernize, & future-proof your Ruby on Rails applications through the ever-changing tech landscape.
?? Message from the Captain
Hey there!
I just wanted to share how incredibly proud I am of our team and the fantastic work we've been doing for our clients. Seeing our satisfied clients excited to share their experiences makes my job of "selling" so much easier.
But let's not forget about the team. We're gearing up for an amazing second half of the year with summer interns, a new baby, fresh faces joining the team, and exciting new clients. It's always refreshing to have new perspectives around the virtual office!
Looking ahead to 2024, I was really looking forward to a busy year of international conferences. I've already had the opportunity to speak in S?o Paulo and Berlin, which has been amazing for strengthening our ties with the open-source community. Next up, I'll be speaking in Toronto at Rails World in late September 2024. I'll dive into a topic we're passionate about at Planet Argon: guiding Ruby on Rails applications out of technical debt.
If you'd like to talk shop about a challenge your team is facing, feel free to DM me.
?? Robby
?? Where Have We Been? Planet Argon at the 81st General Convention
In June, the Planet Argon team flew out to Louisville, KY, to support the 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church in person! Every three years, the Episcopal Church brings together thousands of bishops and staff to perform legislation for the church’s next period of operation, and quite a bit of that work happens on Rails applications. For this event, we sent Liz Pantalone as the Senior Technical Lead, Michael Kurt as the Senior Project Manager, and Gary Blessington as the Account Manager to ensure that all of the systems were operational and that any on-the-fly changes that were needed could be made safely and at the drop of a hat!
Now that they are back home safely, the team is happy to report that there were no big issues at the 81st General Convention. There were a few quick deployments and a few bug fixes here and there, but everything went very smoothly, and, in cooperation with the General Convention staff, there were no outages at all.
What’s Next? In the period between conventions, we are looking forward to upgrading the applications to Rails 7 (and then 8!?), exploring a few 3rd party services for some outdated parts of the application, and creating new features for the next big event!
We also received this exciting honor- 2nd year in a row!
?? Logbook Entries: Blog Highlights
Software Developer William Mena shares how to free up space and boost your Mac's performance with tips on storage cleanup and management. Say goodbye to clutter and hello to a smoother, more efficient machine!
?? Exploration Report: What We're reading
Tech-related
?? Pittsburgh Tech Beat- a monthly tech newsletter by a team member's colleague
领英推荐
For fun
?? New Team Members
We want to give a big welcome to our Digital Marketing Summer Intern, Sydni Johnson, who joins us remotely from New York!
We also want to welcome baby Kamila, the newest little Argonaut to join the team. Congratulations to William Mena and his family!
?? Signals from the Ethers: Podcast Highlights
Featured Appearance: Jared Norman , host of the Dead Code podcast, interviewed Robby Russell about the importance of understanding and managing different types of debt within teams. Robby advocates for building simpler, more maintainable systems, taking ownership of the codebase, and integrating maintenance work into regular workflows through effective communication and documentation. Tune in to the discussion. ??
Popular Episode on Maintainable Software Podcast: Does your team's software give you the warm fuzzies, or does it leave you filled with fear? On this episode of Maintainable, Scott Hanselman , VP of Developer Community at Microsoft, shared his take on the emotional and human side of well-maintained code, how teams can overcome the fear that leads to technical debt, and the importance of finding the balance between prep work and shipping.
?? The Survey is Closing Soon!
Time's almost up! In a few days, we'll close the?2024 Ruby on Rails Community Survey?to submissions. If you or any of your colleagues use Rails, we'd love to hear from you!