Posted by Tom Moertel
Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:04:00 GMT
The 2008 Pittsburgh Perl Workshop is this
weekend! I can’t wait. (BTW, there are still seats available. If you
can somehow get yourself to Pittsburgh this weekend, by
all means, grab a PPW
ticket now.)
I’m on the organizing committee, so I get an advance look at the
talks, and I’m continually impressed by the quantity and sheer
interestingness of the things that the Perl community has to say.
When leading members of a community volunteer their time to talk to
you about something they’re passionate about, that something is
usually fascinating.
This year is no exception. There are tons of talks I want to see. Check out the schedule for
Saturday and
Sunday,
and you’ll see what I mean. (You’ll note that there are even
talks on programming GPUs and adorable BUG embedded hardware.)
In addition to technical talks, there are three courses being
offered this year. Daniel Klein is once again leading his From Zero
To Perl introductory course, which was widely praised at last year’s
PPW. Author and Perl trainer Peter Scott is offering Maintaining
Code While Staying Sane, which is all about maintaining legacy code,
something most programmers must do for a (surprisingly) large chunk of
their careers. Finally, the ever-knowledgeable brian d foy is
offering his Mastering Perl course for coders interested in learning
how to reliably write professional, enterprise-quality Perl programs.
(I think there are openings for some of the classes, too. If you’re interested,
click one of the links above and try to grab a spot.)
This year we’re expanding on the Hackathons, too. We actually have
allocated a dedicated “Hackathon Room” – and we’ve arranged for
freshly ground, freshly brewed coffee all day long to fuel the
hacking. :-)
All in all, it’s shaping up to be another fun-filled, festive PPW.
I hope to see you there!
Posted in perl
Tags perl, ppw, ppw08
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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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