The Quick Left team is all over the map these days. Literally. Rachel and Ingrid are in Nebraska for Big Omaha, and by the time they get back on Monday, I'll be in New York City during Internet Week to sit on a panel at Likeable U with our friends from TechStars - both old and new.

I'll be joining Kelly Rice, Kinvey, Lauren Appelwick, Shelby.tv, Dan Herman, ChatID, and our moderator Clare Tischer, TechStars. Clare plans to make our event the best of the conference. I'll be doing my best to keep up with the rest of the panel.

I'm in NYC Monday the 14th and for the conference Tuesday the 15th - drop me a line if you'd like to grab a cup of coffee.

Most importantly, I'm looking for recommendations for eateries in the Chelsea-ish area - the cheaper, dirtier, and sketchier, the better. Seriously - this is the most important thing aside from the conference itself - recommendations in the comments would be hugely appreciated.

Quick Left's love affair with the Backbone.js library has culminated in our very first training event, Intro to Backbone.js. We've implemented Backbone in a variety of different web applications both internally and for our customers, so it was only natural to share some of that experience in the form of a hands-on workshop.

Not too long ago we came up with an idea to shake things up with our hackfests: The One Night Stand. We held the infamous event last Wednesday by matching people that needed help on a project with people willing to share their skills for a couple of hours. It was a great time all around and there was even some actual code written!

Not bad, especially when you consider that nobody had to suffer the humiliation of a walk of shame.

Thanks to our sponsors at Silicon Valley Bank, we were able to kick off our quarterly Lunch and Learn series with Minimum Viable Product and Beyond on Wednesday.

Our friends at TechStars inspired us with Founder Dating, a mixer created to match people who may someday get married in the form of co-founding a startup. Good stuff, but what if you're a developer or UI designer who's not ready to make that kind of commitment? Enter Quick Left's next Hackfest, The One Night Stand. No serious relationships, just one night of project oriented hacking.

How it works:

If you've got a project that needs some Ruby on Rails, Javascript, or user interface design expertise, tell us a little bit about it and describe the help you want.

If you're a developer or UI designer who's willing to help somebody else move their side project forward, tell us a little bit about your expertise.

Don't worry, if you're cheating on your co-founder or employer for the night, mum's the word.

When you arrive at QLHQ, I'll play matchmaker to help break the ice. We'll try to get as many people matched as we can to help move people's projects forward. Don't forget to bring your laptop. We'll provide the beer and pizza.

When: Wednesday 3/28 6:00pm - 9pm
Where: QLHQ
Register: Use our fancy form to register here

We're excited to announce that our first quarterly Lunch 'n Learn, sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank, will be Minimum Viable Product and Beyond, a discussion centered around creating a product roadmap.

Congratulations to Raise Your Voice on the launch of their updated web tool! In the first two weeks since its release, users have been converting at more than double the previous rate.

In an effort to recruit one of our coworkers to give a talk at next Wednesday's Hackfest, Becca and I stationed ourselves near the kitchen like two lions at a watering hole. Collin was our water buffalo that day.

Before he knew what was happening we had pounced and got Collin's commitment for a presentation on how to structure applications too big for the Rails default and too small to break into a service-oriented design. If you've been bumping into challenges that are a result of creating a large, monolithic app, Professor Schaafsma's talk will be right up your alley.

Tomorrow night Quick Left will be hosting the inaugural Pitch to Developers event. The event was created by Alon Katz, a local developer, as a way to connect non-technical startup founders with programmers.

Since starting my apprenticeship with Quick Left just over three months ago, I've been asked frequently how I got started with Ruby on Rails. Being the efficiently lazy guy that I am, I thought I'd publicly share some of the resources I've been recommending during those conversations.