So, a while back we decided to start doing Rails-related consulting and RoR development in earnest — after all, you don’t often get the chance to find something that is a) very cool b) technically sound and c) commercially viable. The acceptance of RoR in Germany is still far, far behind compared to other countries, especially the US, though — s owe decided to something about that. “We” in this case means my colleague Phillip Ghadir and myself.

In addition to the commercial two-day Ruby on Rails courses (we did the first one on May 7/8 and have two more upcoming, one on 10/11 October in Cologne, the other one on 29/30 November in Frankfurt), we decided to offer half-day introductions for free at universities around Germany. Here are the upcoming dates:

• 21 May, 13:30-18:00, Uni Leipzig (PDF Flyer) (this one I’ll do myself)
• 22 May, 13:30-18:00, Uni Düsseldorf (Flyer) (Phillip and I together)
• 23 May, 15:15-19:15, Uni/FH Regensburg (Flyer) (Phillip alone)
• 24 May, 09:45-13:30, Uni Stuttgart (Flyer) (again, Phillip alone)
• 15 June, 13:30-17:15, HfT Stuttgart (Flyer) (myself)
• 26 June, 10:15-13:30, FH Dortmund (Flyer) (Phillip and I together)

In about 4 hours, we try to cover as much of the framework as possible — although covering everything is obviously impossible, we try to provide an overview of Ruby itself, an overview of Rails, build a complete Rails application in 7 steps, go into some detail about Action Pack (Action Controller and Action View) and Active Record, and at least scratch the surface of testing and Ajax support.

If you’re interested in having us do the tutorial at your university, let us know.