A Tale of Two Groups

ChicagoRuby has its roots in two Ruby user groups that merged in July 2009: Chirb and ChicagoRuby.

Chirb – The Beginning
In 2005, John W. Long, Ryan Platte, and several other Rubyists started a Ruby interest group at Meetup.com. As the group grew in size, member Peter K. Chan wrote an RSVP app in Rails, and they left Meetup to form Chirb.

As far as Meetup was concerned, Chirb had joined a witness protection program. New identity, new address… the works. They were nowhere to be found. Or so Meetup thought.

A New Group Starts
Some months later, Ruby enthusiast Steve Rummel went looking around Chicago for a Ruby group to join. Steve searched high & low through Meetup, Google, and other resources. Finding none, he started our group through Meetup.com.

Name Change & Growth: ChicagoRuby.org
When time constraints forced Steve to step down as organizer in August 2007, three new organizers stepped up to keep things running: Wil Chung, Victor Hong, and Raymond T. Hightower. At that point we chose a new name (ChicagoRuby.org) and we launched the ChicagoRuby.org web site while maintaining the Meetup relationship for RSVPs.

For roughly three years we had two groups: Chirb and ChicagoRuby.org.

The Merge
On July 6, 2009, the organizers of the two groups decided to merge and we dropped the “.org” from our official name. Benefits of the combined group:

Two great groups combined into one. The best of both worlds. The best way to reach us: Sign up at Meetup.com.

Advantage in Multiple Meetings
More meetings and more opportunities to learn. What an exciting time to study Ruby!