Hi, everyone!

I have a ticket to RailsConf in Chicago, but I think I'm going to have
to give it up. I'd be happy to sell my ticket to someone else for the
original price ($400).

Of course, that'd be boring (but totally acceptable), so in the interest
of getting to work with more people in the Ruby and Rails community I
thought I'd also offer an option for a trade ... If you don't have the
dough (or would prefer a warmer fuzzier alternative to paying with cold
hard cash) I'd be willing to pay for your ticket (or even for the ticket
plus airfare, hotel, and car) in exchange for your time. The
requirements for this are:

* You need to be a good programmer. By good programmer, I don't mean the
walk-on-water-look-at-me-I-can-do-super-fancy-metaprogramming-while-chewing-gum-backwards
type. After all, only about 20 percent of programming requires mad
skillz (and I think we have that covered). It's the other 80 percent I
need help with, and that just requires someone with a good foundation in
programming, common sense, and the ability to get stuff done without
much direction. And programmers who have a great foundation in other
languages (e.g. Smalltalk, Python) but who are relatively new to Ruby
and Rails are welcome to try to convince me.

* You think you'd enjoy working with me and my company. To get an idea
of the sort of person I am, you might want to check out my blog:
http://jennyw.dangerousideas.com. Also, some info about my company. ItÃÔ
called Colorful Expressions (to evoke the feeling some people feel with
their computers; http://www.colorfulexpressions.com/). WeÃÓe a
consulting company (we donÃÕ have a fancy money-generating Web
application yet, anyway) that works mostly with small businesses and
non-profits. We have an interest in working for social justice
organizations and often end up charging a lot less than your typical
programming shop would as a result.

* You'd be willing to negotiate a favorable rate of exchange and be
willing to work (paid) for time in addition to the trade if necessary.
After all, I have no idea who you are and I'm going to be making more or
less a snap judgment, and it's also hard to just stick a person into a
project for a very few hours and expect something great to happen.

It might be that no one will want to take me up on a trade -- heck, even
I'm not sure whether it's a good idea or just silly -- and I'll just end
up selling the ticket. But at least I tried to be creative ... ;-)

If you are interested in either buying the ticket or working out a
trade, please e-mail me at jennyw / dangerousideas.com with "RailsConf"
somewhere in the subject (this address gets huge amounts of spam), or,
if you want to share your thoughts on this idea with the world, post a
comment on my blog (but either e-mail me separately or include your
contact info).

http://jennyw.dangerousideas.com/articles/2006/06/16/a-ticket-to-ride-the-rails-to-chicago

Jen