Collaborate on a Surrealist Rails App

Surrealism is an artistic practice in which mundane but dissimilar ideas are juxtaposed to create surprising or nonsensical ideas. This has interesting results when applied to startup culture. In this workshop, rather than finding a market niche which can be exploited for fame, revenue, or power, we will be using our skills as Rails developers to create products with no practical use whatsoever. We will use a variation of the surrealist game Exquisite Corpse to create collaborative Rails apps, then present them to one another in a mockery of venture capitalism.

Transcript

1. Let’s Make Some Surrealist Rails Apps Terian Koscik @spine_cone RailsConf 2016! www.pineconedoesthings.com/surreal
2. hello it’s me www.pineconedoesthings.com www.djangogirls.com/pycon www.twitter.com/spine_cone www.github.com/tpinecone
3. • What’s your name? • What’s your experience with Rails? • How do you like to be creative?
5. (www.stupidhackathon.com)
6. (www.stupidhackathon.com)
8. What we’ll be learning today: • What it’s like to work on an unfamiliar codebase • How to feel comfortable making mistakes • How to come up with and try out new ideas • How to ask for help fearlessly and help others kindly
9. What we won’t be learning today :( • How to make an efficient Rails app • How to make a useful Rails app • How to make a profitable Rails app
10. How often do you write software for fun?
11. How we’re supposed to practice programming: (http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ and https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Quicksort )
12. A more interesting way:
13. (http://arsonanthemkj.deviantart.com/art/Figure-drawing- Foot-study-337331202)
14. (http://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/the-red-model-1934)
15. (www.google.com)
16. I don't want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation is seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. -DADA MANIFESTO
17. Agenda: • Get into groups • Figure out the version of Ruby/Rails you want your group’ s apps to use • Work on an app for 30 minutes (backend) • BREAK (5 minutes) • Pass your app to the person next to you, work on your new app for 30 minutes (frontend) • Pass your app to the person next to you, work on your VC funding proposal (10 minutes) • Presentations!
21. CODE OF CONDUCT FOR TRADING USBS WITH PEOPLE Today we’ll be passing around USBs with our apps on them since we can’t rely on the internet being stable enough to use GitHub. Please be kind to your fellow attendees’ privacy and property.
27. Working On “Frontend” vs. working on “Backend” • Models and database schema are backend • HTML, CSS, and Javascript are frontend • Controllers and routes are ehhhhhh… Try not to obscure the original author’s intent too much, but if something looks clearly broken or unfinished go ahead and fix it.
28. How to be awesome (if you’re a beginner): • Ask questions! • Google is your best friend • It’s ok to cheat (steal ideas, steal code, copy and paste) • Be proud of your work.
29. How to be awesome (for experienced programmers): • Help each other out • Respect every question and person asking questions • Try something ridiculous (when life gives you lemons make a RESTful Lemons API) • If you know the right way to solve a problem, try the wrong way.
30. ANTI-GOALS • Creating something that could actually be useful or make money • Writing clean code • Doing things the way they’ve always been done • Criticizing other people’s work
31. ???????????????????????? ???????????????????????? Questions? ???????????????????????? ????????????????????????
32. TAKE A BREAK
33. When you’re ready to trade apps... • Put your repository on a USB (or git repo) • Pass it to the next pair in your group
34. When you’re ready to trade apps... • Help the next pair in your group set up your app on their machine so they can take screenshots. • Start the rails server. • Give them a tour of your app.
35. Your Startup Pitch Your app has been selected to be reviewed for funding! What is it going to disrupt? What is it going to be the Uber of? Tell us why your company deserves one billion dollars.
36. Presentations!