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:
| Conference |
Price |
| JavaOne |
$1,995 |
| RailsConf |
895 |
| PyCon |
450 |
| RubyConf |
200 |
| YAPC |
125 |
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.
Update: If any Haskellers are reading this and want to meet up at
YAPC, let me know. I’m trying to put together a
BOF session.
Posted in perl
Tags conferences, haskell, moose, parrot, perl, pittsburgh, programming, tap, yapc
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:03:00 GMT
Just a quick note to all the wonderful Perlfolk who are eagerly
awaiting news of YAPC|10. (That’s the 10th-anniversary Yet Another
Perl Conference, to be held June 22-24, 2009, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where it all
started back in 1999.) Ahem:
Your beloved organizers have been hard at work and will be making
some announcements shortly. Stay tuned to yapc10 on
twitter for the latest and greatest.
Until then, don’t worry: be cool. When it comes to conference
planning, we’re a little less conversation, a little more action.
That’s just how we roll.
Hugs and kisses,
Tom
Tag: YAPC::NA::2009
Posted in perl
Tags elvis, perl, pittsburgh, yapc, yapc10
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Sat, 13 Oct 2007 10:06:00 GMT
Today is day 1 of the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop 2007. Judging by the attendance at last night’s pre-conference party (hosted by the great folks at Google Pittsburgh), this year’s PPW is going to be a blast.
Right now, I’m off to help set up the conference facility with the rest of the PPW organizing team. After we’re done, and after the initial check-in rush, I hope to kick back and soak up some of the talks.
Ha! If last year is any indication, I’ll be too busy running around doing conference-organizer stuff to enjoy the talks. But, this year, we are recording the talks. So at least I’ll get to listen to them later.
Gotta run.
Posted in perl
Tags pittsburgh, ppw2007
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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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Posted by Tom Moertel
Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:30:00 GMT
I am on the planning committee for the 2006 Pittsburgh Perl
Workshop and serve as the primary point of contact for
speakers. That means I get the inside scoop on the talks.
And from what I have seen, all I can say is, These
talks kick ass. Well, actually I can say one more thing:
If there is any possible way you can manage to get yourself to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
on Saturday, 23 September 2006, do not wait, do not mull
it over, register now for the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop.
If you miss this one, you’ll probably end up weeping in front of your keyboard for a long, long time.
PPW ’06 has speakers from the worlds of finance,
bioinformatics, engineering, politics, health care, insurance, Web-2.0
start-ups, environmental monitoring, and mathematics. And they all
have fascinating things to share with you about how they make Perl
work for them and about how you can make Perl work for you.
Registration is only $20 – can you imagine that, in an age when
programming conferences routinely cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars? – and all of the talks show you how to use
Perl to do real work, solve real problems, and make your real life as a
programming professional a whole lot saner. Even if you think
you don’t care about Perl, you ought to be a part of
PPW ’06 just for the rare opportunity to discover something
you may have overlooked. (At $20, when are you ever going to get
a chance like this again?)
Posted in perl, pittsburgh
Tags cool, perl, pittsburgh, ppw, ppw06, stuff, talks
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