I've just signed a deal with a company to do consulting and coding (and probably a little training) helping out on a project I won't (and can't) talk about, helping create what I could best describe as a heavy duty software "flange".
It's a big software system that connects one complex and Very Important flow of information from one company to another complex and Very Important flow of information from another company.
Everything is proprietary (I mean absolutely everything down to the raw sockets) and double (and in some cases triple) redundant, and while it only runs for 16 hours out of each 24, it operates under strict Never Go Down and Never Lose Data rules, with downtime having big implications for thousands of people.
I for one really enjoy doing work like this, it's a real challenge for a system designer to deal with absolute conditions, and I think most of my best work has come when I set similar rules on myself.
Imagine a rule like "every CPAN upload must work on every production release of Perl on every platform Perl runs on". How would you deal with rules like that. Even trying to solve the problem as a thought exercise can be worth it.
As a bonus, this project also means I should have certain enough income booked in before the talk deadline to justify the cost of going to YAPC::NA! So it looks like it's back to the United States for me!
Hazzah! :)
So, other than the PPI talk, which is written already and and just needs to be expanded to cover work from this year, what would people like to hear talks on?
I'll probably need to change planes somewhere (presumably in SF) so there's probably some options for dropping in on a SF(ish) mongers and giving a talk on the way over (or more likely back) back for those that won't be going to YAPC (and I won't be at OSCON this year). Any West Coast folks interested in something like that?
