RubyConf

Heroku is a gold sponsor at Rubyconf 2017, the main annual gathering of Rubyists from around the world since 2001.

Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz) will be delivering the Opening Keynote at this year's RubyConf.

In addition, Caleb Thompson from Heroku will Finding Responsibility as part of the Human Factors Track:

Stop by the Heroku photo booth for selfies with friends, then join us at booth #8 to share ideas, talk about building things your way, with the tools you love, and of course pick up some sweet swag.

Finding Responsibility

In 2011, with a team of interns at a Department of Defense contractor, I created a Wi-Fi geolocation app to locate hotspots. It could find the location in 3D space of every hotspot near you in seconds. We made formulas to model signal strength and probable distances. We used machine learning to optimize completion time and accuracy.

I was so caught up in the details that it took me months to see it would be used to kill people. What do we do when we discover that we're building something immoral or unethical? How can we think through the uses of our software to avoid this problem entirely?