What sessions would make TPC irresistable for you? Watching Larry reminisce about Perl 1? Mark-Jason Dominus walking you through the hardest program he ever had to write? Damian Conway forced to write a simple program? DJ Adams showing you 15 uses for Jabber that you never thought of? Simon Cozens railing against egotism, pedantry, and ingratitude? Guido van Rossum to tell us to get over our whitespace bigotry? Matz to convert us to Ruby? Tom Christiansen to give us his patent workout program? Damian Conway to give us a week-long bootcamp-style exercise regimen? A woman to advise us on dating? Eric Raymond to give us sex tips? Elaine Ashton to tell us why there aren't more women in Perl? ....
I haven't talked to any of these people on any of these topics, I'm just throwing off ideas. What would YOU love to see at TPC?
I ask because I've just been given an extra room for ULTRA GEEK STUF. Some of the above (sex tips) would probably go in the Emerging Topics (ho ho) track, but hardcore tech stuff would go in ULTRA GEEK. I'll take your suggestions and the talks that narrowly missed out for the Perl tracks and see what I can come up with ...
--Nat
The Duel
Put Matt and Damian in a room for 2 hours, their mission is to crank out as many modules as they can. The audience hands out for usefulness / sillyness / style / originality / whatever, and writes the tests (bonus points for most bugs found).
Re:Here is an idea
Fletch on 2002-04-01T17:39:46
Who's Line (Of Code) Is It Anyway?
Tag team professional wrestling: Larry and Damian on one team, Dan and Simon on the other. With Chip Salzenberg as ring girl! Er, ring guy!
Is it April 1 in your time zone too?
Re:A *Real* Death Match
gnat on 2002-04-01T21:44:49
RMS is going to be there. Billy-Bo-Bob Gates won't. With whom should we try to hook up an RMS session? I'm currently trying to get an RMS and Miguel de Icaza panel/Q&A session, because they have an interesting mix of similar and different opinions.We (ORA) have reasonably good friends at the EFF. Anything fun to do there? Want to get the headsup on the NEXT piece of asshole legislation that Viacom et al are trying to ram down our throats? "Activism on Less than 45m/day!"?
A "Slashdot vs The Register" set of lightning debates? Two or three topics (selected from: Information Wants to be Free, Open Source Software is Better than Closed, Online Journalists are Illiterate Buffoons, and Microsoft is Good), with two-person teams randomly assigned positions. You could do it everywhere from formal debates (pro con rebuttal) to "Politically Incorrect" panels.
--Nat --Nat
Re:A *Real* Death Match
ziggy on 2002-04-01T23:55:04
If we're going down this line, then may I recommend Prime Minister's Hour? Or a real (Lincoln-Douglas style) debate?
How about "How to get a fucking sense of humour in a few hours time" or "How I learned to look at the calendar and realise it was 1 April"?
Hard core for this year would be to get somone like Thomas Dolby, who has done a number of tech conferences, to come and talk about digital music, how he does his own and even what the copyright laws mean to him and others. I don't know if he uses Perl but it never hurts to ask
If I want to see people 'debating' I can load up on usenet until my eyes bleed for free. Don't we have enough of men wanking themselves everywhere else? How about a practicum instead?
Re:hmmm....
pudge on 2002-04-15T17:36:12
We can always try the old standby suggestion of Fashion Tips for Geeks. My wife volunteers to present, and ThinkGeek can sponsor!
