VB: Some ideas for NPW2008 in Stockholm

Hi guys,

Well, reading the previous emails, I feel we all agree on the baseline.

My first email may have sounded like I suggested to make NPW into a kind =
of dynamic language workshop and that was not my intention. NPW 2008 =
should and will be a workshop with similar content and spirit as the =
previous editions. No revolution intended there.

What I meant was really just a theme: trying to gather speakers and =
talks in order to bring the spotlights toward the *dynamic* aspect of =
Perl, and use that to attract the interest of the academia (and get =
their help ;).

We have the chance of having contacts with world class hackers who are =
designing virtual machines and new languages (perl6). That is exciting =
enough for us perl developers, but that would be highly exciting even to =
folk that are not specifically specialized in perl: students wanting to =
get a first hand insight in how an open source community gets things =
done, and academics wanting to get in touch with real life language =
implementers.

Furthermore, as Salve mentioned earlier, the kind of developers who =
attend a workshop are almost per definition the kind of self-motivated =
people who wouldn't be scared but rather excited at the perspective of a =
workshop exploring the dynamic aspects of a language.

What I suggest for this workshop is to just do the usual, gathering and =
accepting talks as usual, but trying to send a clear message that we =
would appreciate talks about perl6, parrot and dynamic aspects of perl5. =
I don't think it would be hard to gather enough material to hold 1 =
dynamic track over 1 day, eventually more. And the overall content of =
the workshop would be still Perl focused. As an example, I am pretty =
sure any of us could get together at least one talk about things like =
runtime code generation, class hierarchy hacking/mixins, duck typing, =
and so on. These are things most of us use, and I think it would make =
for good talks...

On the side of that, if we could get 1 or 2 talks from Tobias or others =
about dynamic features that are not perl specific but can be a source of =
inspiration to developers using perl, I would find it really exciting, =
and so would many others I think.

How could we do that? By getting in touch with the right people, a long =
time in advance. Meaning contacting Perl6 and parrot developers and =
convincing them to come (eventually subventioning them? If we get a =
cheap venue...) The carrot for them would be that they would get =
academics to share ideas with, which as I witnessed when watching =
Jonathan, Tobias and Johan talk last week tends to be pretty exciting =
for both parts: they really have much to exchange!
Jonathan W. has already expressed his support. If we could get a couple =
of stars along quite early and advertise it, that should do the magic.

What do you think?

/Erwan