April 2012 Archives

YAPC::NA 2013 Call for Venue

YAPC::NA 2013 Call for Venue:

If you’re interested in running YAPC next year, then apply to organize it!

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

YAPC::NA SOLD OUT!!!

We have officially sold 411 tickets to YAPC::NA 2012, which means we are officially sold out! 

Hacking up biomolecules to understand how mercury causes so much trouble

Demian Riccardi will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as: 

I will present some recent tools I have developed to characterize the interactions of Mercury and other metals with biological molecules as present in the protein databank.  I will show how I use Perl with Moose and other CPAN modules to easily carve up thousands of structures and generate useful information.  Time permitting, I will also discuss how I manage quantum chemistry calculations using various electronic structure programs… all filtered …

Open Advice: If I knew then what I know now...

Noirin Plunkett will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Based on the recent “Open Advice” book, as well as many years of working and mentoring in Open Source projects, this talk will provide bite-sized introductions for newbies on how to go from consumer to developer, advocate, and participant.

Aimed at the Next Generation of Perl contributors, this talk will give every listener the tools and confidence to take the next steps!

[From the ="http://blog.yap…

Moose 101

Sawyer X will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

I’m assuming you’ve heard of Moose, right? That kickass object oriented framework that has taken the Perl world by storm. You know the one!

In case you’ve ever wondered “what is Moose?” or “how could I harness its powers to make my life easier and/or rule the world”, this talk is for you.

I’ll go over the basic functionality of Moose (with a few nifty tricks to keep you excited) and even sprinkle a bi…

Problem Domain, meet Nodes & Edges: using Neo4j from Perl

Nuba Princigalli will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

What we’ll see in this talk:

* What’s a Graph Database and why should we care?

* How to model our problem domains to such thing?

* How to build, manipulate and do generally meaningful stuff with it?

** Using the (by then) recently released Neo4j Perl client, by yours truly!

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Embrace your Community

Mark Keating will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

How can you benefit from free software in business? How can you run a business in which most of what you work with and produce isn’t charged for? What is the value in engaging with a non-profit orientated community? Why would you want to engage with a community that can critically be described as a social exercise in collaborative one-upmanship?

In this talk Mark will use the experience gained from several years managing a free software consultan…

Testing Workshop Photo Contest

We have a ticket to the YAPC::NA 2012 Testing Workshop that we held in reserve, but no longer need. If you would like a free ticket to get in to the Testing Workshop all you have to do is send an email to admin[at]yapcna[dot]org expressing your interest. The person who includes the most interesting picture of something Perl related (people from the Perl community, onions or camels, Perl ascii art, or whatever) will get the free ticket. 

[From the ="htt…

So, you want to run a Perl event?

Dan Wright will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Perl events come in all shapes and sizes ranging from tiny hackathons to a full-fledged YAPC’s.

In this talk, I will cover various lessons learned from years of running Perl events. I’ll reveal some often hidden pitfalls and outline methods for success in running your event. I will also cover some of the resources that are available to help you run your event.

Audience: Perl experience isn’t really relevant to this talk. This t…

YAPC::NA *NOT* sold out after all.

I’m very sorry, I posted the sold out message before verifying that my counts were correct. I’m apparently a little too excited about this. =)

Once again, I’m very sorry for posting f…

DuckDuckGo and Perl

Torsten Raudssus will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Talk about DuckDuckGo and Perl. The application and infrastructure of DuckDuckGo and about the Open Source and GreyPAN movement. Also giving an overview how to contribute to DuckDuckGo. Good for beginners to dive into Perl and contribute to a real world service directly.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Dorms Now Accepting Sunday Reservations

I’ve worked out a deal with University Housing for the dorms for YAPC::NA 2012. They’re now accepting reservations for Sunday, June 10th in addition to the weekday reservations. This should help those of you who are coming in for the workshops or hackathon. Register for your dorm now, or update your existing reservation.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

The Lacuna Expanse

Graham Knop will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

In this talk I’ll talk about the massively multi-player video game written in Perl known as The Lacuna Expanse. I’ll talk about how and why it was built (some Perl internals). And I’ll also tell you a little bit about Lacuna’s achievements. 

I also hope to unveil a big surprise.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog

Pair Programming and Code Review

Nathan Gray will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Some of the benefits of working with other programmers are being able to absorb best practices, avoid pitfalls, have more fun, and write better, more consistent code.

We will discuss what works and what to avoid, and how to interface with brilliant, introverted people who want to get their own work done.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Custom Facebook Integration

Juan Natera will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Attending a live entertainment event is a social experience, but at Ticketmaster we decided to take it to the next level by integrating with Facebook on our Interactive Seat Map. This Allows fans to see where their friends are seating, helping them to get seats close to their friends. In this presentation I will discuss some of the challenges we faced with this project, what we did to overcome them, as well as a live demonstration of the product.

/users/jt_smith/2012/04/index.html

Hands-on Stackato Workshop

Jan Dubois will give a free workshop at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Stackato is a private cloud platform from ActiveState

In this workshop you will:

  • get a very brief summary of the Stackato architecture
  • install the Stackato Micro Cloud on your laptop
  • deploy sample Perl applications (e.g. Bugzilla) to Stackato in minutes
  • convert your own Perl web applications to Stackato

Preparation

We will have some USB sticks with VirtualBox and S…

Messaging, interoperability and log aggregation - a new framework

Tomas Doran will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

In this talk, I will talk about why log files are horrible, logging log lines, and more structured performance metrics from large scale production applications as well as building reliable, scaleable and flexible large scale software systems in multiple languages.

Why (almost) all log formats are horrible will be explained, and why JSON is a good solution for logging will be discussed, along with a number of message queuing, middleware and network trans…

Perl NLP: Stemming and Lemmatizing

Tom Christiansen will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Perl is used in the NLP (natural language community) for a variety of tasks. In biomedical texts, words derived from Latin and Greek pose a big problem for English-language stemmers, because existing standard algorithms like Porter and Snowball fail to produce the base lemmas when faced with irregular plurals. 

This talk reviews the problems with existing tools and presents the new Lingua::EN::Biolemmatizer module, which interfaces with the Univer…

Conference Hotel SOLD OUT!

Unfortunately, due to the huge number of attendees at YAPC::NA 2012 this year, we’ve sold out the original conference hotel. We still have lots of rooms at the dorms, which you can book for only $42 per night for a single or $63 per night for a double.

Hardware Hackathon Talks

The hackathon and hardware hackathon have proven so popular that we’ve already sold out. However, we’ve acquired an additional room that will be available for hacking through-out the entire YAPC::NA 2012 conference. We did this to ensure there’s always a space to spread out and collaborate on projects. 

Why You Hate Writing Documentation (and What I'm Doing About It)

Rocco Caputo will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Documentation is anathema to hackers. Releasing early and often is much harder when every code change requires an editorial pass to an ever-growing body of documentation. The common solutions are to either not document anything, to let the documentation fall into disrepair, or to release late and not so often. What’s a fun-loving but conscientious hacker to do?

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]…

Hackathon SOLD OUT!

The Hackathon & pre-conference Hardware Hackathon at YAPC::NA 2012 has sold out! Now all the pre-conference activities have completely sold out.

[From the YAPC::NA…

Tweakers Anonymous

John Anderson will be giving a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Have you ever spent most of a day getting your editor set up “just right”? Have you justified the time spent on customizing your configuration in terms of the overall productivity gains that are going to result once you remember what key binding you put that new tweak on? Or maybe, whenever you see a tweak described for that _other_ editor, you can’t rest until you’ve duplicated and maybe even expanded upon it for the clearl…

YAPC::NA 2012 is going to be great. Nope, not because of all the...



YAPC::NA 2012 is going to be great. Nope, not because of all the talks, or activities we have planned. It’s because this sculpture adorns the lobby of the Pyle Center (aka the conference facility for YAPC::NA 2012). This place was made for Perl. =)

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Conference Hotel Reservations Closing Soon

If you want to a reserve a hotel room at the YAPC::NA 2012 conference facilities then you need to do so now. Reservations close on May 1. 

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Early-Bird Pricing Ends Soon

Early-Bird Pricing for YAPC::NA 2012 ends on May 1. Register today before the prices go up!

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

YAPC::NA is almost here!

We’re exactly two months out from YAPC::NA. Can you believe it’s that close already? 

Remember, YAPC::NA 2012 will be in Madison, WI from June 13-15. Book your flights, your hotel rooms, buy your badge to the conference, and bring your spouse along to enjoy our amazing Spouse’s Program.

[From the …

The YAPC::NA 2012 Job Fair and Expo Hall has sold out! We have...



The YAPC::NA 2012 Job Fair and Expo Hall has sold out! We have 20 exhibitors at our expo hall who will be looking for people to fill their Perl jobs. If you’re looking for a job, or are thinking that it might be time to make a switch, then the YAPC job fair is going to be an excellent place to gain some first-hand intel on some prospective employers. 

Zero to Perl Workshop SOLD OUT!

The Zero to Perl Workshop at YAPC::NA 2012 is officially sold out! It joins the Perl Testing Workshop that sold out last week.

We still have about 75 seats left for the conference itself…

Basic Regular Expressions Workshop

Bradley Anderson will be giving a free workshop at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

MJ was a ColdFusion Developer.  One day, MJ’s boss asked him to turn 3,000 badly-formatted text files into a single, valid spreadsheet.

MJ thought and thought and thought about this: “What will I do?”, he wondered aloud. 

Reggie is a Perl Programmer.  While MJ was beating his head into their shared cube wall, contemplating an early retirement to his van down by the river, Reggie, as all Perl Programmers a…

YAPC::NA is 75% sold out!

With just over 2 months before the conference we’ve sold more than 300 tickets to YAPC::NA 2012 so far! That’s great news. The bad news is that the conference facility maxes out at 400 people, so if you are coming to YAPC, you need to get your badge sooner rather than later. 

Get More Out Of Your Meetings

Abigail will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Many people, specially developers, hate meetings. They have to invest a lot of time, for little reward. Meetings, however, can not be avoided completely. At work, I can easily have a dozen meetings in a week. In this presentation, I will share some ideas and tips we use to make meetings more efficient; so the participants get “more bang for the buck”.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Corvisa is Hiring!

Department:Software Development
Compensation:Competitive with benefits

="Apple…

Corvisa is sponsoring YAPC::NA 2012! We’re proud to have...



Corvisa is sponsoring YAPC::NA 2012! We’re proud to have them as a sponsor.

Date, Times, Perl, and You

Dave Rolsky will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as: 

Dates and times are confusing and crazy. What nut invented Daylight Saving Time? Someone who’d never imagined a computer, that’s who!

Dealing with dates and times might seem simple at first, but there’s a lot of gotchas.

This talk will start by covering some concepts worth knowing about (What is an Olson timezone? What’s the Gregorian Calendar?).

After that we’ll talk about how the DateTime suite of module…

(Ab)using the MetaCPAN API for Fun and Profit

Olaf Alders will be giving a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

MetaCPAN aims to make it fun and easy to get data about CPAN modules, releases, favourites and even CPAN authors themselves.  Sites like www.github-meets-cpan.com, perlresume.org, mapofcpan.org and metacpan.org itself make use of the MetaCPAN API to deliver interesting and useful information about the constantly growing body of code in the CPAN.

This talk will touch on the various ways you can connect to the MetaCPAN API and give you so…

Being A Perl Release Manager

Abigail will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

For a long time, all Perl releases were done by the pumpking. However, in recent years, we have streamlined the process, and now “everyone” can do a release of Perl, and get his/her 15 minutes of fame.

In this presentation, using my experience in releasing 5.15.9, we’ll show what it takes to make a Perl release.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

How We Went Remote

VM Brasseur will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Hiring remote workers is great for filling those holes on the team…but if you don’t have the correct infrastructure in place you’re just setting yourself—and your remote team members—up for a world of hurt. This session will detail how our engineering department went remote and thrived because of it.

——-

A lot of engineering teams are considering going remote now. And why not? There are excellent peopl…

Perl Testing Workshop SOLD OUT!

The Perl Testing Workshop at YAPC::NA 2012 has officially sold out. We have no more seats to sell. We only have a few more seats left in the Zero to Perl Workshop and the Hackathon, so if you want to participate in either of those, be sure to buy a badge for them today!

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Lodging for YAPC::NA 2012

We’ve posted it before here, and on the web site, but we want to make sure nobody missed it. Here are all the links you need for lodging at YAPC::NA 2012:

Chadbourne Hall (nearby dorm) - $42.10 / night

Madison Hostel (10 blocks away) - $22 / night…

CPAN Workshop: See one, do one, teach one

brian d foy will be giving a free workshop at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Become a CPAN author and upload your first module while in this workshop. I’ll get you the PAUSE ID, show you how to make a starter module, show you how to upload it, file a bug against it, and show you how to fix it and re-upload. After this workshop, you won’t be scared of the process. It’s easy once you’ve seen it done once. Not only that, you’ll be able to show other people how to do it.

[From the YAP…

Lowell Hotel Registration Fixed

Some people had reported that the reservation system for the YAPC::NA 2012 conference center hotel at the Lowell Center wasn’t allowing them to book a room. Someone at Lowell had entered our room block wrong, it was set to force everyone to check out on June 15th, rather than allowing people to choose to stay until the 16th if they wanted. This has been fixed.

MetaCPAN API and Android

Sterling Hanenkamp will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

I’ve been building an Android application to access Perl documentation through the MetaCPAN API. This talk will give a brif look at the MetaCPAN API and how it can be used to build a mobile app like this.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Workshops Over Half Full

Both the Perl Testing Workshop and the Zero to Perl Workshop at YAPC::NA 2012 are over half full. There are less than 10 seats remaining in each workshop; and at the rate they’re filling we expect them to be completely filled by the end of next week, if not sooner. 

Introduction to the Perl Data Language

David Mertens will give a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Perl is awesome as processing text, but did you know that Perl can handle high performance computing, too? With the Perl Data Language, Perl can process large data at C speeds while using idiomatic Perl.

The Perl Data Language describes itself as “giving standard Perl the ability to compactly store and speedily manipulate the large N-dimensional data arrays which are the bread and butter of scientific computing.” What does this mean? In this talk…

Parking at YAPC::NA

If you plan on driving in to YAPC::NA 2012 each day, or are staying in the dorm rooms and driving to Madison, then you’ll need a place to park. All other lodging besides the dorm rooms has parking available, you simply have to ask for it. 

[From the ="htt…

Intro to Unicode

Nick Patch will be giving a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

UTF-8 is the most popular character encoding on the web and has been for 5 years.  Modern applications have to be developed with an understanding of Unicode, and this raises a lot of important questions since the good old days of ASCII.  What is a character? … a code point? … a grapheme?  This talk will bring you up to speed on character codes, Unicode, and UTF-8.

[From the YAPC::NA Bl…

The Secret Diary of a Small Perl Shop

Chris Prather will be giving a talk at YAPC::NA 2012 described as:

Most Perl developers are employed by large corporations, but many dream of what it would be like to strike out on their own. Tamarou is a company that has done just that, and we’re here to tell the tale of what it’s like. 

It’s been a wild ride so far, and we’ll discuss the illicit details of what we’ve learned over the last two years, and what we probably should have learned.

[From the ="http:…

Thank You Sponsors!

We’d like to thank our sponsors for stepping up to support us. We really couldn’t do this without their support.

You too could sponsor YAPC.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

About JT Smith

user-pic My little part in the greater Perl world.