We recently had a couple of meetings at RMU about our goals for 2011 and beyond.   Now it's time to share some of these ideas in a more public setting, so I'll be posting some notes on our plans over the next several days.

Engaging with the public is one thing that Ruby Mendicant University hasn't done a good job with until very recently.  While we've had a very active internal community with over 1000 mailing list posts, over 10,000 lines of IRC conversations, and three guest speakers in less than 6 months, we've only started on building out our public website a little over a month ago.

I've been promising folks that I'd make things more open to the community at large as RMU started to come together.  Since we're now getting to that point, there are a few things we can do right away that will help us head in that direction.  Firstly, we've discontinued the internal general discussion mailing list and IRC channels.  We've decided to merge these channels together with the public channels we've had to form the rmu-talk mailing list and the #rmu channel on irc.freenode.net.

Our hope is to create an open community in which our students, alumni, and friends in the community at large can get together and discuss improving their Ruby and software development skills in a supportive environment.  Things that have gone on withiin our internal channels that will now be done in public include code reviews, discussions about different technologies and methodologies and sharing of interesting learning resources.   The RMU community is a great place for meeting up with folks who are deeply interested in getting better at what they do.

You can also ask for feedback and help if you've been working on some of our publicly released exercises.  It's likely that you'll be able to find some students who actually worked on the problem you're interested in, and that they'll be able to give you some feedback or hints as needed.  I also periodically chime in with my own thoughts when review requests come up, so there's a good chance you can keep in touch with me this way as well.

Ultimately, the newly created RMU common community will become whatever our students and those of you in the public community make of it.  But I challenge each and every one of you to turn it into something great.  While our sessions are still run in private, and we have an internal alumni network that is responsible for keeping RMU up and running, the heart of what makes this program special is the really amazing people it has attracted.  I hope that as we open our lines of communication up to the world, we can continue on with this spirit of intellectual curiosity that has seen so much great impact over the last several months.

This is only the start of a brand new vision for RMU, we've got lots more to talk about in the coming weeks and months.  But hopefully, this first step will be a big one.

A friend of mine who operates a small family run farm up in New Hampshire is trying to help educate folks about the new federal food regulations that just made their way through Senate.  This is far outside of my area of expertise, but what he had to say was interesting so I've included his letter in full below.  If you can pass it along to others and possibly contact your representatives if you live in the US, that'd be great.

Hey all,

Very sorry to bug you all since I generally do not send out mass e-mails, but yesterday the Senate version of s510 passed, and is now in an H.R. committee. Last July the house passed their version, and now both house and senate need to agree upon a same version and then send it off to Obama.

The reason I am writing is because this legislation gives both unprecedented authority to the Federal government over all aspects of food growth and production, and at the same time poses a significant hindrance to small farmers and soon to be farmers. Currently the bill exempts small farms, and largely focuses on production facilities. I am not going to take up everyone's time detailing the bill. Just google s510 (ad in small farm, etc to your tag) But rather here are a few highlights not often mentioned about the effects of the bill:

1. The Bill governs any place where food is stored, produced, processed, with a few exemptions. Even with the exemption clause for some small farms, we would still fall under this governance. For example, you have probably all heard about how I want to start producing cheese next year. The state of NH has very reasonable requirements for a milk processing room. However, in this Bill it requires state agencies to work in conjunction with the federal government. So we may very well find ourselves now being governed with federal requirements or instead when we go to the state find that the requirements have greatly increased. The federal government has tried and wanted for a long time to consider farms as processors. It won't be long until that technical transition is made.

2. De-Facto governance: Very quick, GAP (a voluntary program sprung from CA) became de-facto mandatory for many farmers when grocers across the country (think your Hanafords, Albertson's, Shop and Save variety) required all of their suppliers to be GAP certfied even though it was never required by law. So many farms, especially in this area, lost their ability to wholesale extra produce if they were. (GAP pretty much requires you to have strictly a livestock or a produce operation. Imagine farms across the america where if you sell a leafy green, then you can't have a cow on the property. I'd move to Canada, but their laws aren't any better.)

3. Reduction of Farms- The next biggest reason, and actually why I am really emailing everyone is because of the very real threat of seeing even greater farm reduction. We already have farms, especially dairies, rolling over ever day. Just imagine a completely new set of requirements/costs on top of what already exists. Especially if the new requirements begin to prevent custom butchers, meat processors, dairy farmers from getting into the business.

Also, if you're a horse person: When my great grandmother's farm was sold off- a nice 23 acre field was swallowed up. Which meant that a lot of hay just dissapear from the local area. So those horse people that bought that hay looked elsewhere. Just imagine multiplying that over and over. Maybe we'll eventually find out how much hay NY state can produce. We're a dynamic area. Our farms rely upon income from pick your own, raw milk, meat, produce, sleigh rides, corn mazes, cut flowers, etc. etc. We're not a single minded operation, but rather a diverse set of farms, none of which are comparable completely, but that is the standard that ensues upon federal implementation of governance.

4. Doesn't really make food safer: Just because the law requires inspection of a facility doesn't mean that a facility that processes a half million eggs a day or 100,000 chickens to slaughter is really going to be clean? The sheer numbers are daunting. All we are doing is adding a bandade to an already falible food system, and companies like Cargil, IBP are supporting the bill.

Well, the most helpful thing would be to contact your house reps, and the house reps in the H.R. committee that oversees it. (honestly, they will probably just put it to vote on open floor thinking they have support right away.) So call, harass, email, date their daughters. Forward this along, make a call, thanks all.

 I'm late for milking now.
Zac