Dale Ragan

MonkeySpace Europe Postponed

2014-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Explanation

You asked for MonkeySpace to come to Europe and we brought our A game, a great venue in lovely Dublin and a list of speakers that any .NET conference would be proud of. The community and things that make MonkeySpace such a special and beloved experience by attendees and organizers alike in years past.

What happened next would become one of our worst nightmares!

Up until a month ago things were going great, but at that time we started noticing that the registration numbers weren’t quite where we wanted them to be and that it might be cause for concern.

The low numbers were a bit surprising to us, considering almost 200 people voted for possible venues for MonkeySpace Europe and had expressed interest in attending such an event.

Convinced that we could improve our numbers by raising further awareness of the conference. That our community simply didn’t know we were indeed holding the conference you had told us you wanted. After all it has been a busy year for the Open Source .NET community, and pleasantly so with good news from all directions.

We decided that the best course of action would be wait things out another month to see if increased attention and a bit more time would do the trick. However if the numbers didn’t improve, we were going to close registration and decide what to do next.

Sadly the numbers did not improve and we took the difficult decision to close registration on May 16, 2014. At that time, we had just 13 registrations. With only three weeks left until the conference, we knew that there wasn’t going to be any way we could meet the numbers that would be needed to throw a conference.

What’s Next

We are truly saddened that it came to this but rather than linger on the present, we want to focus on the future and what happens now.

As far as throwing a conference in Europe this year, we’re afraid that is simply not going to be possible.

Instead, we’re going to start planning a new MonkeySpace Europe 2015 from scratch and concentrate our immediate efforts on the MonkeySpace US conference we have held for years to high praises, which will return later this year as was always the plan.

It’s our sole mission and our great personal passion at MonkeySquare to spread the love of Open Source .NET. There is no better time to be involved in this community, we are stronger, more vibrant than ever and things have never looked brighter for our platform of choice.

We know from being asked to hold such a MonkeySpace Europe in past years in private, online and at MonkeySpace US that there is strong demand for a European conference for our community. Therefore we are asking you, our European friends and fellow .NET community members, to help us plan for an excellent 2015 conference in Europe, in whatever way you can.

We look forward to seeing you at our US event later this year.

Sincerely,
The MonkeySquare Board

The Conference Formerly Known As Monospace

2012-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

MonkeySpace

Last week, we announced that we changed the name of the Monospace conference to MonkeySpace. Some of you may be thinking, why change the name now? Well, one of our goals with Monkey Square is to educate and evangelize cross platform and open source development in .NET. We have a great tool with Monospace to help us with our mission, but we thought the name gave the conference a certain perception of only being about Mono. In order to change that perception, we decided to rename the conference to better reflect it’s mission. For the latest news about MonkeySpace and Monkey Square, make sure you’re following @MonkeySpaceConf and @MonkeySquareOrg on twitter. We’ll have other channels soon as well.

Schedule

We also announced the rest of the speakers and the schedule. The first two days are jam packed with sessions given by a great line up of speakers, old and new, speaking on topics from mobile development to developing sensor frameworks. The third day is an open space, where we turn the tables on you and allow you to come up with an agenda. We’ll also have a hackfest during this day where you can help and learn on how to contribute to open source software. Oh, we have an attendee party thrown in there as well, more on that soon!

.NET Rocks Road Trip

If that wasn’t enough, we’re allowing the .NET Rocks crew to crash the party during their road trip. After the first day of the conference, come watch Carl and Richard record a show with Don Syme. I’m sure they’ll have plenty of swag to pass out!

A Call to Arms

We’re doing our best to change the perception of doing development in .NET, but we can’t do it by ourselves. It’s your turn to help! We hope with the announcement of the speakers and schedule along with changing the perception of the conference will nudge anybody who was on the fence in attending or sponsoring. Help support the community you love and the software you use. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. We hope to see you there!

Monospace 2012

2012-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

After almost a year since the last Monospace, I’m happy to announce that Monospace is back for 2012 and open for registration!

The coference will be held from October 17-19, 2012 at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, MA. We are planning three days of learning and fun, expect to attend drinkups, an attendee party, and learn from some of the best technical speakers on a very diverse range of topics in developing cross-platform .NET applications.

Whether you’re a new comer, a long time user, or just like to see LOLCATS in presentations. There is no doubt in our minds that Monospace 2012 will be even better than last year’s, so what are you waiting for, stop reading this and go register!

We are need speakers

If you’re interested in speaking in front of a diverse technical crowd, consider submitting a proposal and be prepared to:

By the way, this was a typo on the site during review, but I thought it was funny and reminded me of a meme and went ahead and launched with it. I’ve since corrected the typo, but thought I would explain for those who didn’t get it.

CodeBetter CI Mono Build Agent

2012-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

I am happy to announce that the CodeBetter CI Server now has a Mono build agent. I know what you’re all thinking.

Background

A couple months back, Andreas Håkansson, AKA The Code Junkie, asked me if I’d be up to setting this up. He wanted to make sure that all changes that Nancy saw didn’t break any Mono compatibility. I happily obliged to help out, but had to get a few other things done first.

I finally got some time this past weekend after putting the finishing touches on the mope and mono-build release. I figured, there couldn’t be a better time to use what I just coded.

Who Benefits?

Not only does Nancy and all the current projects on the CodeBetter CI Server benefit from this, but we all do. This allows us to be more confident that the open-source projects we use within ours, will work no matter what environment we prefer to run our projects in.

If you’re an open-source .NET developer, I urge you to sign-up and submit your project onto the CodeBetter CI Server if you haven’t yet. It will make your project better!

Who’s Paying?

I am also happy to say that all hosting costs for the build agent will be footed by Monkey Square, the parent organization of Monospace.

Enjoy!

Introducing mope and mono-build

2012-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

I’m happy to announce the release of mope and mono-build.

I compile, install, and switch different versions of Mono all the time. It also happens to be one of the most frustrating experiences I have to face, as a Mono developer. Sure, I’ve created small pieces of snippets here and there to help with the process, but they were always just strewn about.

Things shouldn’t be this way. Not in Mono.

I finally got fed up with it this past weekend. I wanted something where I can centralize Mono Version Management, therefore mope and mono-build were born. They’re not perfect, but it’s a start. Take a gander at the project README’s for full documentation.

Last, but not least, a big thanks to Sam Stephenson for rbenv and ruby-build. If it wasn’t for inspiration from his projects, I probably couldn’t of created these projects as fast.

Enjoy!

Mono in 2011 Continued

2011-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

What a year 2011 has been for Mono, Miguel de Icaza did an incredible job outlining a majority of the milestones in his year end post and it’s easy to see that Mono is picking up momentum in a lot of areas. It’s awesome to see everything that has transpired this year, barring the set backs that Miguel and his team encountered. I am truly proud to be part of the community and a contributor.

However, it was such a great year that Miguel missed a few milestones. It’s partly my fault for not reminding him in his “Tell me how you used Mono this year” post, but on the other hand it gave me the motivation to finally start my own personal blog. Below, is a list of a few more high profile projects in my opinion that cultivated this past year.

Monospace

With the help of Louis Salin, we dusted off Monospace and brought it back this year. Neither of us had ever organized a conference before, but we took the challenge head on. You can read Louis’s post on how we did it. The conference was a success and we’ll be doing it again next year with a little bit of a twist, more on that below.

If you couldn’t make it or missed a talk, our friends over at InfoQ have you covered. They recorded a majority of the sessions and have been releasing a new one every two weeks.

Monkey Square

Now for the twist of what is in store for Monospace 2012. We took the profits from Monospace to start a new 501c3 tax-exempt organization called Monkey Square. Our main goal with Monkey Square is to help foster the open source community around .NET. It is now the parent organization to Monospace and will be a visible presence and point of contact for corporate sponsors interested in supporting Monospace and other OSS .NET activities.

We are just getting started with this venture and you can keep up with the progress by following @MonkeySquareOrg over on Twitter. You can view the latest news and get a sneak peek of our website.

Moncaí

Last, but not least, the largest event for me this past year has been launching my new company and project called Moncaí.

Moncaí’s goal is to provide the best Platform-as-a-Service for running your .NET web applications. It is built entirely on an open stack and we use Mono heavily.

I launched Moncaí under an existing company of mine and I’ve since separated it out into it’s own entity called Moncaí, LLC. I’ve taken on a partner and we’ve been accepted into the TechColumbus incubator program. I’ve given presentations on Moncaí at NDC and Monospace.

Launching Moncaí has been a huge effort and we’ve done a lot of work to get where we are today. It wouldn’t of been possible without the great support we’ve received from those who have signed up in our private beta and friends in the industry.

Getting Personal

2011-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve found that I love writing and sharing my thoughts with others and I wanted to find a way to allow me to do that more often. In the past, I’ve been blogging on and off on my business blog this year, but I’ve been wanting to write about things that didn’t necessarily relate to my business and I didn’t have a place to share those thoughts.

My biggest blocking point in the past, was finding the right medium that allowed me to write like a hacker. Using Moncaí, I am rectifying that problem. I’ve imported the posts from my business blog that are better suited here. I’m going to document how my site works also, but for now all I have to say is – To be continued …

Monospace is Shipping Up To Boston

2011-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

I recently posted that we were planning Monospace 2011 to take place in Austin, TX around October of this year. As you may have heard by now, that is no longer the case. As the Dropkick Murphys song goes, Monospace is shipping up to Boston. Hopefully we won’t lose a leg! Another part of the change is the date. We are moving it from October to July. We haven’t set an exact date yet, but we are shooting for the end of July.

Why

You may be asking, why the change? What’s wrong with Austin? The change has nothing to do with Austin or Boston. They’re both great cities and have wonderful amenities to host a community like ours. The change is all about seizing an opportunity to bring you the best conference experience possible on Mono and .NET open-source! How are we going to do that? By combining two events, that’s how! The Mono team heard about our plans for Monospace and contacted us about some plans that they had also. Before I get into the plans, I have to give the Mono team props for doing this. They could of just went and did their own thing and more than likely causing the Monospace conference to suffer. Instead, because they care about the community. They contacted us about coordinating our efforts to bring the best experience possible to you.

What plans does the Mono team have? They’re planning to hold a Mono Summit in July by bringing their whole team to Boston from all over the world and invite major contributors to participate! I will leave the rest for Miguel to explain, because I don’t want to spoil too much. I however want to explain what this means for Monospace by coordinating with them. Simply put, it allows the whole Mono team to attend, besides just a few that would be allowed to come to Austin! That’s right, the whole Mono team! That’s 36 Mono developer’s at our disposal to talk about their area of responsibility. Who better to hear it from than the person who knows the ins and outs of that particular feature or area?

It’s time for open-source in .NET to shine and take center stage. As Louis mentioned in his post:

It won’t be Mono versus .Net or Microsoft versus Linux. Instead, it will be a community of cooperation. Projects will be discussed, to-do lists will be written down and things will get done. It is only by sharing our work that we’ll be able to create an ecosystem that will have a chance to compete in this world.

We sincerely hope you can come and join us for a preview of the future of Mono and .NET open-source.

Call For Speakers

One last thing, due to the recent changes, we have officially opened the call for speakers! If you’re a hacker, Monoista, trainer, web developer, Mono system administrator, and/or entrepreneur, submit a proposal to speak at Monospace 2011. Help make the next Monospace the best ever! The deadline for proposals will be May 15, 2011 by 23:59 EST, but it’s not a hard deadline. We want to make sure we leave room to cover the most current Mono and .NET open-source topics.

Monospace Refresh!

2011-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Building a Community

It’s no secret that I am infatuated with the Mono project, it’s the main ingredient in Moncaí. Heck, I even named the project Moncaí to pay tribute to Mono, therefore it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am going to do everything within my power to evangelize Mono, .NET, and the .NET open-source projects under them to build a kick ass community ecosystem.

In order to reach that goal, another one of my main goals for this year was to resuscitate the Monospace Conference. I found out that Louis Salin was also looking to dust it off and I jumped at the opportunity to partner with him to organize the conference.

Monospace 2011

Without further ado, we are happy to announce that we are officially planning Monospace 2011 to take place in Austin, Texas in October 2011! We got the wheels turning over the weekend by creating a sign-up page for you to show your interest while we plan the conference. We will release more information over the coming months. However, we can tell you now that it will last three days, with two days of sessions and one day reserved for an open space. We are also estimating ticket prices to be around $250 and we plan for great speakers to be there from all over the .NET open-source community to give sessions over cross-platform, game, and web development using Mono and .NET.

Whether you’re a new comer, a long time user, or just like to see LOLCATS in the presentations we are aiming to provide a conference to suit everybody. There is no doubt in our minds that Monospace 2011 will be a lot of fun, so what are you waiting for, stop reading this and go enter your email address and we will keep you updated on the progress!

Speaking at NDC 2011

2011-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

One of my goals to help give back to the .NET/Mono community that I am proud to be a part of, is to take up speaking. I am excited to announce that I can cross that item off my list now, because I have my first confirmed speaking engagement at the 2011 Norwegian Developers Conference from June 8th - 10th in Oslo, Norway. I wanted to include an image of a happy monkey to show how ecstatic I am about this opportunity, but the images that showed up in my search results were a little disturbing.

I’ve been lucky enough to be given a slot on day one June 8th from 15:00 - 16:00 to do a session on Moncaí called “Let me introduce my Moncaí!”. Here’s the abstract:

Cloud services are changing the way we approach developing application’s. Learn how Platform–as–a–Service (PaaS) takes it a step further and helps you forget about server’s and focus on your problems. We’ll start by discussing the philosophies behind PaaS and then dive into using Moncaí to deploy, build, and scale your web, mobile, or social application’s written in .NET.

With the keynote to be given by Scott Guthrie (AKA The Gu) and an agenda that contains a great selection of speakers, this years NDC is gearing up to be the best one yet. So what are you waiting for, get your ticket now. I’m looking forward in meeting everybody that attends and throwing some beers back with you.

If Norway is not a reasonable destination for you to attend a conference and if you’re interested in hearing me speak, or know of any opportunities that you think I might be interested in, please drop me an email. I’d be happy to speak about Moncaí, PaaS, .NET, Mono, MonoDevelop, and CouchDB.