As many of you know, we span many time zones here at Agathon Group, both with our technology, but also with our employee locations. Because of this, we rarely get to see each other face to face, and have always used a conference of some sort as a good excuse for us to all get together while also attending a conference (we have to, of course, be as efficient as possible ).

Lucky for us we found (if you don’t mind my early 90′s lingo) a pretty rad conference to attend this year.

Aloha on Rails is a solid Ruby on Rails conference with some fantastic presenters and keynotes. And I don’t mean to rub it in, but it’s also in Honolulu, so you can’t really get a better location either.

The conference runs from October 4th to 6th this year, and there is still room, so if any of you are looking for a great conference and location to head to this year, I would highly encourage you to check out Aloha on Rails. And as a big plus, you’d get to hang out with us a little bit too! We never underestimate the value of face to face time not just with our own employees, but with our clients and friends as well.

We are very excited to be doing that at the Aloha on Rails conference this year. Hope to see some of you there!

Over at the Signal vs. Noise blog at 37Signals, Matt laments the pretentiousness of the word “boutique” as a company description. The goal is to find a word that describes a company that “[is] small and cares about quality and is trying to do something great for a few customers instead of trying to mass produce [junk] in order to maximize profit.” The problem, Matt continues, is that:

Boutique has connotations. It conjures up fashion. Something that’s precious and hoity-toity. And it seems exclusionary too. Like it’s just for the elites or something. If someone said, “We should go with a boutique agency”…it would make me roll my eyes a bit.

I respectfully disagree — for us, “boutique” remains a fantastic word to describe Agathon Group’s professional practices. Another word we use (including on our home page) is “studio”; both have a number of elements that we value. (I will use them interchangeably below.)

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Update: this position has been filled. Thank you everyone for your interest!

Agathon Group is in need of an experienced Ruby on Rails Developer to help us finish off a mix of internal and external projects. This is a 100% telecommuting, full-time, three month contract position.

We need someone:

• Self-motivated, who works diligently with minimal supervision;
• Proficient in Ruby on Rails — we’ll ask for sample sites and detailed descriptions of your role in each;
• Capable of hand-coding XHTML + CSS, preferably with a little JQuery on top;
• Optionally experienced in PHP;
• Comfortable with distributed development and Linux servers;
• Eligible for employment in the US; and
• Available immediately or sooner.

Agathon Group is a virtual company with staff distributed across four states and six timezones. We need someone we can trust to be highly motivated to produce good work even when we can’t look over your shoulder. You also need to be very good at what you do, because our clients trust us to deliver higher quality work than they can get anywhere else.

In return, we offer great team chemistry, interesting projects/challenges and competitive pay. If this goes well and projects keep arising, the position may change to a

full-time staff position at the end of the three month contract.

Please email hr@agathongroup.com to get the ball rolling.