Scofield Wins Award, Writes Book, Presents in Italy and Charlotte

DURHAM, NC – Viget Labs' own Ben Scofield has been extraordinarily busy lately. The Durham-based senior developer returned from RailsConf Europe in Berlin to learn that his book idea had been accepted, his work won an award, and his Rails presentation made the grade for Rails in Italy.

First, Scofield learned that publisher Apress accepted his Rails book concept. So, soon enough, he will add "Author" to his list of achievements as he starts writing a guide on building Web 2.0 Rails applications, expected to be published in mid-2008. Although the project is still in its infancy, he's excited about the prospects.

"Knowing my experience and writing could potentially help other Rails developers solve their challenges is really satisfying," he said.

Then, he was greeted with an acceptance message from Rails to Italy that his submitted topic made the docket. Scofield is brushing up on his Italian and preparing to make the journey to Pisa at the end of October to present, "Hiding in Plain Sight: Unleashing the Power of Blocks and Procs." He already presented earlier this year at RailsConf in Portland and attended the Ruby Hoedown in Raleigh.

Scofield then will head to Charlotte from Nov. 2-4 to deliver, "Cleanliness is Next to Domain Specificity," at RubyConf 2007. He will talk about writing code that's specific to a given domain, including how code that looks like its domain is cleaner, faster to write, and better.

"I'd like people to come away with a good idea of how to get started writing cleaner code," he said. "I'll also chat about how to refactor existing bad code into something that's easier to understand and work with." But Scofield, who will present at 3 p.m. on the closing day of the conference, is also looking forward to learning from others at RubyConf. "I'm really excited to be able to talk about these ideas and introduce them to a wider audience. I'm sure everyone – speakers and attendees – at RubyConf will learn a lot from each other, and I'm eager to see how my ideas are useful to others and how they could be improved."

Finally, last week, Ruby Rumble organizers announced that Scofield's work, Irksome, won for best solo project. He created Irksome, which is an interface for using IRC from the web, during the international 48-hour web application development challenge that took place Sept. 7-8.

"Winning was really surprising because so many amazing projects were created during the Rumble," he said. "I'm still working to clear up some memory issues to make Irksome better, but receiving this honor truly was gratifying knowing that others see benefits in it."

About Viget Labs
Founded in 1999 and maintaining offices in Falls Church, VA and Durham, NC, Viget Labs provides strategic web consulting, interactive design, web application development, and online marketing services to clients around the world. Typical engagements include concept-to-launch development of online businesses, implementation of online marketing strategies for traditional companies, and custom projects that leverage a distinct set of our full-service capabilities. In short, we build web business.