Meetings
The July 2025 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 14th of July, from 6:00pm
to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This time we’re being hosted by the lovely folk at Cleo in their offices, on Shoreditch High St.
This event follows a more workshoppy-format: bring a laptop if you can and work through the exercises with some fellow attendees. You won’t go hungry as thoughtbot will kindly be providing food/drinks.
Full venue and registration
details are given below.
Agenda #
If you wish it was better, change it! #
Fritz Meissner says:
Wish you worked with understandable and easily changeable
code? Practice fixing the incomprehensible in an interactive,
zero-background-required exercise on the career-changing topic of
refactoring.
Afterwards #
When the talks come to an end we’ll decamp to a local pub for some food, some
drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more
informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the
meeting and covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to
be guaranteed entry you need to register via ticket tailor.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Cleo
Unit 2.10, 2nd Floor
Tea Building
56 Shoreditch High St.
London
E1 6JJ
See on a map
The venue has a hard limit of 60 people. If you register and realise you
can’t come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so we can someone
else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night
who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Accessibility info for the venue #
Below you can find all the accessibility info for Cleo’s office:
- There is step free access to enter the Tea Building from both entrances (Redchurch St and Bethnal Green Rd)
- There are stairs and a small open platform lift to get you from the Tea Building lobby to the lifts going up to the 2nd floor
- There are 2 lifts for transporting people to each floor of the Tea Building
- There is step-free access from the lifts to Cleo’s office unit
- The double doors to the office may be opened to accommodate a wider wheelchair or motorised chair
- The main floor of our office is step free
- There is 1 accessible restroom in the office, and 6 restrooms in total
Now, there are a couple of caveats, which we hope will not deter anybody:
- The main doors into the Tea Building do not auto-open - they open inwards with a push
- The door to Cleo’s office does not auto-open - it opens inwards with a push.
Posted by Frederick Cheung on Jun 24, 2025
The June 2025 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 9th of
May, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This month we’re hosted by the lovely folk at Judge.me
in their offices in Shoreditch. Full venue and
registration details are given below.
Agenda #
Rethinking Service Objects in Ruby #
Vladimir Gorodulin says:
Service Objects in Ruby can feel a bit off to use, so I’ll share some
experiments insights on some pragmatic ways to make them work better by
shifting toward a more procedural approach.
You? #
You can say:
Anything you’d like really, as long as it is of some interest to ruby
programmers. Get some tips
Afterwards #
When the talks come to an end we’ll decamp to a local pub for some food, some
drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more informal,
please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the meeting and
covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Our host for the meeting has a limit of 60 people, and we need to provide a
list of names to them for security purposes. So, to secure your place and not
be turned away at the door you need to register for your free ticket via
ticket tailor.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Judge.me
Ground floor
44-46 New In Yard
London
EC2A 3EY
Note: that the main office door for the venue is on New Inn Yard, opposite the
coffee shop, but we’ll be going in through the entrance on Anning St which is
round the corner behind Tesco.
See on a map
The venue has a limit of 60 people. If you register and realise you can’t come,
please use TicketTailor’s self-service
tools to give up your ticket
so someone else can come in your place. We might be able to let in people on
the night who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Accessibility info for the venue #
The event space is on the ground floor.
Posted by Paolo Fabbri on May 27, 2025
The May 2025 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 12th of
May, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This month we’re hosted by the lovely folk at Space4, near Finsbury Park. Full venue and
registration details are given below.
Judge.me are very kindly providing pizzas before the meeting. Make sure you register so we know how many to get!
Agenda #
An event-sourced programming model for Ruby #
Ismael Celis says:
Exploring how Event Sourcing and Ruby can provide a cohesive programming
model where auditable data, durable workflows and reactive UIs are the default.
-
LRUG May 2025 - Ismael Celis -An event-sourced programming model for Ruby
Mistakes were made, and definitely by me #
Andy Croll says:
CoverageBook is a decade-old Rails codebase
which has seen at least one full internal rewrite.
Let’s have a walk through of perfectly “reasonable” decisions we made
at the time that we’re now unravelling, and the new Rails-y-ness we’re
using as we do it.
-
LRUG May 2025 - Andy Croll - Mistakes were made, and definitely by me
Practical AI in Ruby: What LLMs Can (and Can’t) Do For Your Projects Today #
Lorenzo Barasti says:
A no-nonsense exploration of integrating LLM capabilities into Ruby applications using ruby_llm and similar libraries, highlighting real-world use cases without the Silicon Valley hyperbole.
-
LRUG May 2025 - Lorenzo Barasti - Practical AI in Ruby: What LLMs Can (and Can’t) Do For Your Projects Today
Afterwards #
When the talks come to an end we’ll decamp to a local pub for some food, some
drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more
informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the
meeting and covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via ticket tailor.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Space4
113-115 Fonthill Road
N4 3HH
See on a map
The venue has a limit of 50 people. If you register and realise you can’t come, please use TicketTailor to give up your
ticket so someone else can come in your place. We might be able to let in
people on the night who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Accessibility info for the venue #
The event space is on the 1st Floor with step free access via a lift.
Posted by Chris Lowis on Apr 23, 2025
The April 2025 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 14th of
April, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This month we’re hosted by the lovely folk at Board intelligence
in their offices, near Bank. Full venue and
registration details are given below.
Agenda #
From React to Hotwire – An Unexpected Journey #
Maciej Korsan says:
For years, React has been the go-to choice for building frontend applications
— but is it always the best solution? In this talk, I’ll share my journey from
working extensively with React to discovering Hotwire, a radically different
approach that enables dynamic applications without heavy JavaScript or complex
state management.
Rather than a theoretical comparison, I’ll walk through real-world examples,
demonstrating how I’ve implemented interactive features using Hotwire. I’ll
also discuss my experiences, the challenges I faced, and some surprising
discoveries along the way.
-
LRUG April 2025 - Maciej Korsan - From React to Hotwire: An Unexpected Journey
AI has many applications in our industry, we are just getting started #
Mario Gintili says:
AI has many applications in our industry, we are just getting started.
In this talk, I’ll explore an approach to AI-powered observability
tooling that knows everything about you and your codebase.
I’ll demo some of the most recent tooling in AI-assisted development,
show you how to enrich an LLM with highly relevant contextual information and
display a little workflow that shows how to use AI to fix bugs faster as
they happen in production.
-
LRUG April 2025 - Mario Gintili - AI has many applications in our industry, we are just getting started
Space for more talks #
You, maybe?
Afterwards #
When the talks come to an end we’ll decamp to a local pub for some food, some
drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more
informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the
meeting and covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via ticket tailor.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Board Intelligence
24 Cornhill
City of London
London
EC3V 3ND
See on a map
The venue has a hard limit of 50 people. If you register and realise you can’t come, please use TicketTailor to give up your
ticket so someone else can come in your place. We might be able to let in
people on the night who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Accessibility info for the venue #
Stay tuned for more information about this.
Posted by Alessandro Proserpio on Mar 12, 2025
The March 2025 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 10th of
March, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This month we’re hosted by the lovely folk at Explore Group
in their offices, near Aldgate. Full venue and
registration details are given below.
Agenda #
Objects talking to objects #
Gavin Morrice says:
A review on what makes OOP such an effective paradigm to work in, followed by a critical discussion on some of the newer design trends in the Ruby space. We will discuss the concerns of relying too heavily on these patterns, and alternative approaches.
-
LRUG March 2025 - Gavin Morrice - Objects talking to objects
Unlocking the Awesome Power of Refactoring at Work #
Hemal Varambhia says:
In this talk, I recount and discuss how I refactored some legacy ruby code using the Simple Design Dynamo and ideas from “Tidy First” to make it more agile, and then, using Domain-Driven Design, take that agility to the next level.
-
LRUG March 2025 - Hemal Varambhia - Unlocking the awesome power of refactoring at work
-
“Unlocking the awesome power of refactoring at work” by Hemal Varambhia
Afterwards #
When the talks come to an end we’ll decamp to a local pub for some food, some
drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more
informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the
meeting and covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via ticket tailor.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Explore Group
Portsoken house
155-157 Minories
London
EC3N 1LJ
See on a map
The venue has a hard limit of 60 people. If you register and realise you can’t come, please use TicketTailor to give up your
ticket so someone else can come in your place. We might be able to let in
people on the night who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Accessibility info for the venue #
There are a small number of steps to enter the building and then a lift to the 3rd floor.
Posted by Frederick Cheung on Feb 14, 2025
The February 2025 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 10th of
February, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This month we’re hosted by the lovely folk at Funding
Circle in their offices, on Queen
Victoria St. Full venue and registration details are given below.
Agenda #
Lightning Talks! #
Our February meeting is our annual event devoted to short talks of no more
than 10 minutes.
We have space for at least 1 more talk, and it is our most popular event of the year. So, if you have been on the fence about giving a talk, there is no better opportunity than this. To put yourself on the map, email us at talks@lrug.org
fell sunderland says:
Why I don’t use AI programming tools, and I don’t think you should either.
-
LRUG February 2025 - fell sunderland - AI tools for programmers
Why our schema files kept changing #
David Lantos says:
Tale of an investigation why a local db:schema:load would change our
db/schema.rb for seemingly no reason. Spoiler: varchar index
-
LRUG February 2025 - David Lantos - Why our schema files kept changing
10 years of RSpec in 10 minutes #
Jon Rowe will share:
a brief look into the history of RSpec and a glance into the future.
-
LRUG February 2025 - Jon Rowe - 10 years of RSpec in 10 minutes
Rails 8 + AI = Happy Life for Lazy Engineer to Create a Walking Skeleton #
Zhiqiang Bian says:
In this talk, I’ll explore how Rails 8, combined with AI-assisted
tools, can help engineers rapidly spin up a walking skeleton—a minimal
yet functional end-to-end system—with minimal effort.
-
LRUG February 2025 - Zhiqiang Bian - Rails 8 + AI = Happy life for lazy engineer
Never say, “Never say die!” #
Eleanor McHugh says:
Ruby is a high-level language, and there’s a general assumption that
it’s ill-suited to low-level shenanigans. But is this true?
In this lightning talk I’ll introduce some basic Ruby tools for
accessing low-level system features, concentrating on *nix platforms,
and see if it’s possible to replicate tenderlove’s Never Say Die gem
for recovering from segfaults.
-
LRUG February 2025 - Eleanor McHugh - Never say, “Never say die!”
The tag tale #
Jaehurn Nam says:
How we refactored Intercom’s conversation tagging service to not fake
tag and made customers happy.
-
LRUG February 2025 - Jaehurn Nam - The Tag Tale
Beyond current state: capturing how and why things changed #
Yevhenii Kurtov says:
Introduction into managing state for objects with complex lifecycle
when auditability is a must.
-
LRUG February 2025 - Yevhenii Kurtov - Beyond current state: Capturing how and why things changed
Self-Assessing against the Web Sustainability Guidelines #
James Smith says:
Sustainability is important, but it’s also hard, especially when
building web projects. How do you know you’re doing it right? This
quick talk will explain a tool I made for self-assessments against the
Web Sustainability Guidelines, which you can use too!
-
LRUG February 2025 - James Smith - Self-assessing against the Web Sustainability Guidelines
Afterwards #
When the talks come to an end we’ll decamp to a local pub for some food, some
drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more
informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the
meeting and covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to be guaranteed entry you need to register via ticket tailor.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Funding Circle
71 Queen Victoria St
London
EC4V 4AY
See on a map
The venue has a hard limit of 75 people. If you register and realise you
can’t come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so we can someone
else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night
who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Posted by Alessandro Proserpio on Jan 15, 2025
The January 2025 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 13th of
January, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This month we’re hosted by the lovely folk at Canva
in their offices, on Hoxton Square. Full venue and
registration details are given below.
Agenda #
Shape-up: the best parts #
Pablo Dejuan Calzolari says:
A talk about the 37 signals famous methodology and how we apply to 8 teams of
development which work in Ruby on Rails.
-
LRUG January 2025 - Pablo Dejuan Calzolari - Shape-up the best parts
They’re not right, you’re not wrong #
Yevhenii Kurtov says:
We are going to look into the essence of what DDD is and why it came to
be in plain English, without any consultant lingo. We will also
evaluate its advantages, indicators of the possibility of successful
adoption, and reasons to do so.
-
LRUG January 2025 - Yevhenii Kurtov - They’re not right, you’re not wrong
You? #
We’ve secured a venue, and have two talks, but there’s still space for a 10 minute talk. Could it be you? How about some of these ideas:
Get in touch to volunteer!
Afterwards #
When the talks come to an end we’ll move to a nearby pub for some food, some
drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees. Usually when we’ve visited Canva this has been The George & Vulture on Pitfield Street.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more
informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the
meeting and covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Our hosts have limited space so you to be guaranteed entry you need to
register for a free ticket via TicketTailor.
Note: as part of attending this month you will also need to agree to an NDA
provided by our hosts, Canva.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Canva
33 Hoxton Square
London
N1 6PB
See on a map
The venue has a hard limit of 150 people. Even with such a high number, if you
register and realise you can’t come, please use TicketTailor to give up your
ticket so someone else can come in your place. We might be able to let in
people on the night who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Posted by Murray Steele on Dec 18, 2024
The December 2024 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 9th of
December, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This month we’re hosted by our friends at Intercom
in their offices, on Old St. Full venue and
registration details are given below.
Agenda #
Saving My Relationship with Rails #
Adam Dawkins says:
Setting healthy boundaries for a happy app. Our apps inevitably get more
complex over time, and Rails isn’t always helpful when that happens. In this
talk we’ll explore what a Rails app can look like with a ‘functional core’,
and where to draw the boundaries between the core and Rails to stop things
getting out of control.
-
LRUG December 2024 - Adam Dawkins - Saving My Relationship with Rails
Mistakes Were Made: Lessons from Failure #
Clem Capel-Bird says:
This is a story of failure: the things I broke delivering a big project, the
lessons those mistakes taught me, and why breaking things can be an
engineer’s best tool for learning.
-
LRUG December 2024 - Clem Capel-Bird - Mistakes Were Made: Lessons From Failure
Afterwards #
When the talks come to an end we’ll move to a nearby pub for some food, some
drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more
informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the
meeting and covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Our hosts have limited space so you to be guaranteed entry you need to
register for a free ticket via TicketTailor.
Note: as part of attending this month you will also need to agree to an NDA
provided by our hosts, Intercom.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Intercom
9th Floor
The Warehouse
211 Old St
London
EC1V 9NR
See on a map
The venue has a hard limit of 80 people. If you register and realise you
can’t come, please use let us know via TickeTailor so we can give your place
to someone in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night
who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Posted by Murray Steele on Nov 18, 2024
The October 2024 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 14th of
October, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This month we’re hosted by the lovely folk at Zappi
in their offices, on Camden High St. Full venue and
registration details are given below.
Agenda #
Fighting Enshittification with ActivityPub #
James Smith says:
ActivityPub is the protocol that powers the Fediverse, a web of social sites
like Mastodon, PixelFed, and a host of other free and open source tools. I’ll
explain what ActivityPub is, how it works, and discuss the Federails Rails
engine which allows you to add federation into your existing Rails web apps.
By breaking open the silos of existing social media like this, we can fight
the enshittification of the web and reclaim a bit of power from the massive
companies that own our online lives.
-
LRUG October 2024 - James Smith - Fighting Enshittification with ActivityPub
-
Fighting Enshittification with ActivityPub - Slides
-
Federails, a Rails engine to add ActivityPub to your app
-
Caber, a simple ReBAC / Zanzibar gem
-
Mittsu, a Ruby port of Three.js
-
And the reason behind all this: Manyfold, a Rails app for managing and sharing 3d models
Jade Dickinson is giving us a preview of her RubyConf 2024 talk:
In this talk, I will present a methodology for replicating most standard
Rails systems, for the purpose of load testing.
You can use this to find out how your system performs with more traffic than
you currently encounter. This will be useful if you are on a Rails team that
is starting to see scaling challenges.
At Theta Lake we operate at scale and are applying this methodology to
proactively find ways to bring down our server costs. You don’t want to leave
it until either your server costs soar out of control, or your entire system
is about to fail. By seeing into the future just a little bit, you can find
bottlenecks in your system and so find where you can improve its scalability.
Afterwards #
When the talks come to an end we’ll decamp to a local pub for some food, some
drinks and some chat with your fellow attendees.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more
informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the
meeting and covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to
be guaranteed entry you need to register via ticket tailor.
We are trialling a new ticketing platform, Ticket Tailor. Do let us know how you
find the user flow on it.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Zappi
Theatre House
97 - 99 Camden High St
London
NW1 7JN
See on a map
The venue has a hard limit of 100 people. If you register and realise you
can’t come, please use eventbrite to give up your place so we can someone
else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night
who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Posted by Frederick Cheung on Sep 09, 2024
The September 2024 meeting of LRUG will be on Monday the 9th of September, from 6:00pm
to 8:00pm (meeting starts at 6:30pm).
This time we’re being hosted by the lovely folk at
Bloom & Wild in their offices, near Vauxhall. They’ve also kindly agreed to provide pizza and drinks. Full venue and registration details are given
below.
Agenda #
B&W Rewards - Domains, Events & Ledgers #
Rachel Bingham and Boaz Yehezkel will be speaking about:
How we developed the B&W Rewards system.
Starting from event storming with stakeholders and technical planning across squads to clear domain boundaries to
how we used an event bus and agnostic accounting system to keep things clear, concise and extendable.
-
LRUG September 2024 - Rachel Bingham - B&W Rewards - Domains, Events & Ledgers
From Spaghetti to Lasagna: Layering your code with DDD #
Lily Stoney
How to apply DDD to a monolithic codebase, the benefits and reasons why it can
be beneficial, and how the event storming process can make the process of
defining domain boundaries a simpler task!
-
LRUG September 2024 - Lily Stoney - From Spaghetti to Lasagna Layering your code with DDD
Afterwards #
After the talks are finished, and we’ve tidied up the venue a bit, we head over
to a local pub for some food and drinks and the opportunity to chat with each
other.
Of course, even though this is the socialising part and seems more
informal, please remember that still we consider it to be a part of the
meeting and covered by our code of conduct.
Venue & Registration #
Prior to attending you should familiarise yourself with our
README paying close attention to the code of
conduct which applies to all
attendees.
Secure your place #
Hopefully you all remember that physical meetings involve finite space and so to
be guaranteed entry you need to register via ticket tailor.
We are trialling a new ticketing platform, Ticket Tailor. Do let us know how you
find the user flow on it.
Venue #
The address of the venue:
Bloom and Wild
Unit 301 Vox Studios
1-45 Durham Street
London
SE11 5JH
See on a map
Bloom and Wild are based in the West Tower as you enter the courtyard - directions here.
There will likely be someone situated in the courtyard to direct people to the office and let them in but if not instructions on entering the building below:
- When you arrive at the West Building (the one without the concierge / cafe), please call 301 on the keypad and someone will let you in.
- Make your way to the lift (located up some small steps) and press 301 again in the keypad to the left of the lift doors.
- Once in the lift, press level 3 and this will bring you to reception
The venue has a hard limit of 50 people. If you register and realise you
can’t come, please use tickettailor to give up your place so we can someone
else come in your place. We might be able to let in people on the night
who haven’t registered, but we can’t guarantee it.
Accessibility info for the venue #
Below you can find all the accessibility info for Bloom & Wild’s office:
For step-free access there are two lifts in the West Tower, one beside the stairs as you enter the building and the other to access the 3rd floor.
We also have an accessible toilet.
Posted by Frederick Cheung on Aug 16, 2024
