The Perl Conference Newsletter

In this issue:

  • Sunday Arrival Dinner
  • Tuesday Night Social: Get to know your fellow attendees!
  • Tutorials spaces still available
  • Call for Speakers: Lightning Talks
  • Call for Volunteers

Arrival Dinner - Sunday June 18

Arrangements have been made with Zikrayet Restaurant and Lounge to host a large crowd for The Perl Conference Arrival Dinner.

Given the nature of the place, it will be possible to make this event more of a come and hang out destination than we've been able to have in past years. Just the same we have an official time of 6pm set for the dinner so everyone can have a common plan for arrival.

This is an arrivals dinner but not necessarily the arrivals dinner. It's also a tradition that others who prefer smaller crowds and/or a more vegan-friendly menu organize an Alt Arrival Dinner.

For more information, or to note your intended attendance, please visit: https://github.com/dcbpw/tpc-2017-dc/wiki/Arrivals-Dinner#attendees

For more information on the Alt Arrival Dinner: https://github.com/dcbpw/tpc-2017-dc/wiki/Alt-Arrival-Dinner

Tuesday Night Social This year we are continuing the very successful event established in Orlando last year, instead of the big banquet of years before. We will still be having a social at 6 pm with appetizers and drinks. After a long day of following your favorite track come say hello to friends from far and near over a glass of wine or a pint of beer!

Tutorials There’s still time to sign up! Some tutorials have very limited space, so sign up today! If you’ve already purchased your Conference pass, you can still add tutorials by logging in and making a separate purchase. The available tutorials are:

  • John Anderson - Perl in a Day - Sunday 6/18, $50
  • Dave Rolsky - Introduction to Moose - Sunday 6/18, $150
  • Randal Schwartz - Perl Second Best Practices - Sunday 6/18 (half day), $125
  • Ricardo Signes - Unicode and Associated Punishments - Sunday 6/18 (half day), $100
  • Mark Jason Dominus - Advanced Parsing Techniques - Thursday 6/22, $75
  • Mark Jason Dominus - Higher Order Perl - Thursday 6/22, $75
  • David Golden - MongoDB with Perl - Thursday 6/22, $99
  • Damian Conway - New Perl - Thursday 6/22, $150
  • Damian Conway - Parsing with Perl 6 Regexes and Grammars - Thursday 6/23, $150

Call for Speakers: Lightning Talks

This year there are THREE sessions of lightning talks! Each will have about 10 Lightning Talks of 5 minutes each.

These Lightning Talks may be serious, funny, or both. They may be given by experienced speakers already giving full length talks or by first time speakers just starting out (this is a great way to get started if you have something to say). If you are a first time speaker you will win a tie with an experience speaker when the schedule is made if it comes to it. Today's first time speaker could be tomorrow's keynote speaker.

In addition to the five minute Lightning Talks where you get to use your computer, slides, and any other tool, we will also have some Lightning Advertisements. These are only 30 seconds, you don't have to submit a proposal, you don't get any slides, and the only AV assistance offered is a microphone. If you have a BOF to announce or any other short message you can use the transition time that would be otherwise wasted between Lightning Talks to share your message. Just show up before we start and take a seat in the assigned seats in the front of the room.

Submit your talk here: https://goo.gl/forms/e6cSnnhs0HSVhzNF3.

Call for Volunteers Volunteer Registration Form Here: https://goo.gl/forms/dubrWgPaedd0gH723

Setup / Cleanup Crew On Sunday, we will need volunteers to assist with unboxing materials, placing signs, setting up AV equipment, preparing registration area, and working to make the area aesthetically pleasing. There will be a lot of odd jobs that need to be done.

On Thursday and Friday, we will need to go through everything that is left over, box it, and ship it out.

Room Moderator The Moderator will be assigned a room for the day (only during breakout sessions). Their responsibility is to introduce each speaker prior to their talk. They work with the Videographer to ensure talks do not start until the videography team is ready to record. They also ensure that their room keeps to the schedule, cuing the speaker to end their talk as necessary. They will provide any special announcements between talks as instructed by the organizer staff.

Videographer Each room will have a Videographer, who reports to the Videography Team leader. They are responsible for recording the talks in their assigned room (except where the speaker has opted-out of being recorded).

Assistant Videographer Performs tasks as assigned by the videographer. Acts as a runner if something is needed in the room.

Registration Desk Assists people with checking in. Serves as an information desk attendant. Assists attendees with retail purchases.

The Perl Conference 2017 (formerly known as YAPC::NA) is rapidly approaching, and we believe it will be great.

The Perl Conference, 2017 will be held this year in Washington DC, at the US Patent and Trademark Office, from June 18 through June 23rd.

If you haven't registered yet, please do so as soon as possible.
We want to make sure we're providing the best possible experience for our participants, and to that end, accurate registration counts are helpful, plus there is still time to get the early-bird rate.

The conference website is: [http://www.perlconference.us/tpc-2017-dc/](http://www.perl…

New to Perl? Come to The Perl Conference in Orlando for only $50.

If you are new to Perl and have never attended YAPC before, The Perl Foundation is pleased to announce a very special welcome gift for a few lucky individuals. If this is your first time, you could join the Perl commun…

Salt Lake Perl Mongers welcome Damian Conway, August 1st

Salt Lake Perl Mongers, with help from Bluehost, and Utah Open Source are pleased to announce a special presentation by Damian Conway:

Temporally Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming In Multiple Topologically Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Spacetimes...Made Easy!

Now who could miss that?! (It is free, after all.)

Date: Thursday, August 1st at 7:15pm…

A call to action for CPAN authors

CPAN authors should look at the smoke tests for their modules to ensure that they're passing on Perl 5.18. The hash randomization change (and a few others) has bitten many a module that may currently be relying on undefined hash behavior. If you haven't checked your modules recently, you may be in for a surprise.

The problem is significant, especially when compounded by the fact that a single misbehaving module can block many more modules that may depend on it.

As an example (not to finger-point, but just to illustrate): Crypt::DES, Crypt::IDEA, Crypt::Blowfish, and…