Here are Micah (left) and Doug at the front desk of the belly of the beast. It was a treat to eat pizza on Bill Gates’ dime.

The event was 45 minutes of socializing, an hour of 4 presentations, then 45 minutes of socializing and shop talk.

Ron Evans talked about MERB, a way of speeding up resource intensive Ruby applications running on Mongrel. This pricked our ears because speed and scalability is still a big concern with Ruby on Rails.

Woody Pewitt (above) gave the requisite Microsoft presentation. I expected a presentation on VisualStudio or something more “developery”, but instead he talked about Silverlight. It wouldn’t be a Microsoft demo without a product falling over; Woody had to login to a Silverlight demo site via Passport, but Passport wouldn’t cooperate. That aside, Woody ran a tight demo and is smart and friendly.

Woody and his boss (I can’t recall his name) were great guys, and hey, free pizza, though they definitely fit the profile of “product evangelists”. I asked Woody’s boss the following question: “How does Microsoft plan to reach out to young web developers building the next big thing when the cost of the Microsoft development stack presents a signifigant hurdle.” The answer was along the lines of “We’ll offer VisualStudio Express” (i.e. crippleware). Hmm. I’m sure the Microsoft stack is the best product for developing most Windows desktop software, but Microsoft is mostly irrelevant at the leading edge of web development. It’s terrible to lose that leading edge because the young people building hot stuff today will start in the free and open source world and they’ll tend to stay there.

If you’re looking for a day job or startup project I’d recommend these types of Meetups. During open floor announcements people talked about their projects and the type of developers they need. Casual events like this - instead of big junket style conferences - are a great filter because just showing up on your own time signals that you’re a passionate developer or tech employer.

I’m happy to announce that our friend Micah is now a member of the Newshutch team. Some other things are in the works, but the main thing is that you can expect the pace of Newshutch development to pick up. Stay tuned for updates.

If you want to meet Doug, Micah, and me in person, we’ll be at these web developer meetups in downtown Los Angeles on June 13th:

• http://web.meetup.com/34/
• http://ruby.meetup.com/84/

Newshutch user Tim Curran has written a Windows script that polls Newshutch and lets you know if there’s anything new. Thanks Tim!

Finally, I’ve launched a new personal blog at nathanbowers.com. It’s mostly about technology, product design, and business.