Tom Moertel's Blog

The best-kept secret in programming conferences, especially in a down economy

Posted by Tom Moertel Fri, 22 May 2009 05:59:00 GMT

I know, the economy sucks, and everything is expensive these days. It’s even worse for you, a polyglot programmer with a serious programming-language obsession. You prowl Proggit, lounge at LtU, and occasionally step on over to Stack Overflow. But it’s just not enough. You need more. You need to hang out in meatspace with other fascinating programmers, diving into modern object systems, getting mechanical with crazy VMs, hacking on code like the wild code-hacking beast that you are.

Sure, it’s a nice dream and all, but how are you going to make it happen? And even if you could in theory make it happen, how could you afford to do it now, in this down economy?

Well, my friend, let me share a secret: You can make it happen. And you can afford it. Here’s how: Just be at the 10th Anniversary Yet Another Perl Conference. It’s day upon day upon day of jam-packed programming-language goodness of all sorts, not “just” Perl – and this year it’s the one conference you can afford.

Seriously, I did a little price-checking, and YAPC is about the most underpriced programming-fest on the planet:

Wait, you’re not into Perl? No problem. The Perl community has always embraced diversity, and there’s a lot more than just Perl at YAPC. Check out the tag cloud for talks and you’ll see what I’m saying. At YAPC, the good stuff comes in enormous buckets, plenty for programming aficionados of all stripes. Here’s a taste:

• There’s the Parrot Virtual Machine Workshop. That’s right, YAPC comes front-loaded with a thunderous, 2-day, under-the-hood hackfest, all devoted to a modern VM – Parrot – that’s optimized for your favorite dynamic languages.
• You’re serious about keeping track of your code, right? Well, YAPC’s got talks about Git, too.
• Into objects? Then consider a barrel of talks about the Moose object system, which builds upon great ideas from Perl 6, CLOS (of LISP fame), Smalltalk, Java, BETA, OCaml, and Ruby – and sports roles, delegation, and a meta-object protocol.
• Are you into testing? Well, Perl culture is positively infected with testing. At YAPC|10, there are half a dozen talks about it. (Also: find out why you ought to be harnessing the power of TAP, even if you never program in Perl.)
• And, of course, there’s a little Haskell love, too: What Haskell did to my brain.

See, YAPC is for you.

Am I trying to persuade you to join us at YAPC? Yes. But I’m only doing it because I care about you. YAPC is a fascinating conference, packed with hackers from around the world, all eager to share interesting things, things many you would find delightful, if only you knew about them. So I’m letting you know about them, right now, so you don’t miss out.

Do yourself a favor. If you can figure out how to get your brain to Pittsburgh in the 4th week of June 2009 – yes, only 4 weeks away – then by all means register now for YAPC|10. It’s a great conference at a great price, and it’s something no discriminating hacker ought to be denied.

I hope to see you at YAPC|10.

Posted in perl
Tags conferences, haskell, moose, parrot, perl, pittsburgh, programming, tap, yapc
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PPW 2007: a twenty-ton can of programming whoop-ass

Posted by Tom Moertel Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:04:00 GMT

I am on the planning committee for the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop. So far, it’s been an interesting ride. Last year was the first PPW, and it went surprisingly well. In the post-conference surveys, 94 percent of respondents said they wanted to come back for another PPW, so we committed ourselves to repeating the grueling conference-planning process for 2007. (Fact: making big commitments like this is much more likely to happen if you’re drinking beer at the time.)

Now a year has gone by, and PPW 2007 is only three weeks away. This year’s conference is 100% larger – two full days – and offers a new, much-asked-for option: a one-day introductory course to give programmers new to Perl a quick dose of the language so they can dive into the rest of the conference. This year’s conference also offers a full-length Hackathon for those who feel the urge to code at the conference.

The main attraction, however, is the conference’s wide array of technical talks. We have retained the same mix of industry and academic speakers that attendees said they liked so much last year. Indeed, our speaker list includes some of last year’s most fascinating speakers, as well as many new speakers drawn from the world of Perl. No matter what your interests are, you’ll find talks for you at PPW 2007. (I’m particularly interested in the talks on continuation-based web applications, the cool new stuff in Perl 5.10, and the Moose object system.)

All of this is to say: Do not miss PPW 2007! Where else are you going to find so many interesting people, so many fascinating talks, and so many opportunities to have fun and make friends while learning useful stuff, all for so little expense? (Regular admission is only $70, and students get a big discount.) Get your ticket now because over half of the seats are already gone.

I hope to see you there.

Posted in perl
Tags conferences, perl, pittsburgh, ppw, ppw2007
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