After a break of five years, the London Perl Workshop returns next weekend. It’s been twenty years since the first one. This year’s event is at a new venue called The Trampery, which is very close to Old Street tube station. If you’re a veteran of the early-2000s “Silicon Roundabout” excitement, you’ll know the place as it’s right across the road from The Foundry – the place to be seen if you were working in that area. I seem to remember taking people there as part of the entertainment programme for the first YAPC::Europe back in 2000.
So I thought I’d have a look at the schedule and point out some of the interesting talks that I’m looking forward to seeing next Saturday.
Following Julian’s introduction, there’s an early indication of the quality of the talks – as there’s a massive clash. I understand how most people would want to see Paul Evans talking about Perl in 2030, but at the same time I’ll be talking about PerlDiver in the other main room. Now, obviously, I don’t want to sway anyone’s decision about which talk to choose – but I will have swag to give away. I don’t have any choice over which room I’ll be in, but I really want to see Paul’s talk, so I’m hoping it’ll be videoed.
I should point out that alongside the two main tracks, there’s a third room that the organisers hope will be used for hackathons, BOFs and things like that.
Next up we have Dave Lambley with Cloudy Perl, how it looks now and Richard Hainsworth with Using new RakuDoc v2. AWS Lambdas and Raku are both things that I’ve never really wrapped my head around. But I suspect that AWS will be more useful to me in the long run, so I’ll be with Dave.
The next choice is between Stuart Mackintosh’s TPRF Presentation and discussion and Ralf Langsdorf who sounds like he’s battling against Little Bobby Tables. I don’t do much community leadership stuff these days, but I’m glad there are still people who are willing to take on those roles – so I’ll be with Stuart. But Ralf’s is another talk that I’ll be looking forward to catching up with later.
In the final slot of the morning, the breakout room is hosting a talk – giving you a choice of three: James Green with I Adopted a Dist, and This is What Happened, José Joaquín Atria with Using OpenTelemetry in your Perl libraries and applications and Steve Roe with Raku HTML::Functional. I love a good CPAN module story, so I’ll be with James.
There’s then an hour for lunch. I’ll be trying one of the many local sandwich shops or pubs.
First up in the afternoon is a choice between Salve J. Nilsen – Metadata, CPAN, FOSS Supply Chains, and EU’s Cyber Resilience Act, Leon Timmermans – A modern introduction to XS and Andrew O’Neil – Chemometrics with Perl & Pharmaceutical Applications. Salve is covering a topic that, while seemingly dull, is something that more people need to take notice of. Leon is covering another topic that I’ve never quite understood. And Andrew is doing science – which is always fun. I think I’ll be listening to Leon in the hope I can finally understand XS.
Next up is Mohammad Anwar explaining What’s new in Perl v5.40?, Paul Cochrane on Fixing a fifteen-year-old curve fit bug or Salve is following up on his talk with a CPAN security BOF in the breakout room. Mohammad is always worth watching, but I very much enjoyed reading Paul’s blog post on this bug recently – so I haven’t decided yet where I’ll be.
Then we have a choice between Max Maischein – Managing recent files from Perl (which sounds useful), Nana Insaidoo – opensource vulnerabilities and where to find them (which sounds vital!) and the continuation of Salve’s BOF.
The last slot in this session is Mike Whitaker – Names are hard (which is inarguable), Yujia Zhai – Perl/Raku Based Coursework Design for Engineering Education or even more of Salve’s BOF.
Then we have a twenty-minute break. Phew. I think we’ll all need it after all that top-notch information.
Things get a bit disjointed after the break. There’s Andrew Soloman with Perl Talent Management: How Logicly attracts, develops, and retains their Perl developers. But that overlaps with two talks in the other main room – Ian Boddison with Perl, AI and Your System followed by Saif Ahmed with Bit Vector Arrays to Pixels in a Terminal with One Subroutine. And while all that’s going on, the breakout room has a session of Science Perl Talks chaired by Andrew Neil. They all sound interesting, but my interest in training trumps my other interests, so I’ll be listening to Andrew Soloman.
And then there are the lighting talks. As always, there will be a wide range of talks. I’ll be giving a brief update on Perl School. If you’ve been watching my social media, you might have an idea what I’ll be announcing.
Then we have the intriguingly-named Thanks & The Future of LPW before we all head off to the pub for a debrief.
There are currently about 140 people signed up for the workshop. I don’t know what the venue capacity is, but I’m sure they can squeeze a more in if you’d like to register. Oh, and if you are registered, please mark the talks you’re interested in on the schedule – it makes it easier for the organisers to decide which talks should be in which rooms.
Of course, if you’re not within easy travelling distance of London, then don’t forget that there are other Perl events in other parts of the world. In particular, there will be a TPRC in Greenville, South Carolina next year. See https://tprc.us/ for details.
To close, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this year’s LPW. Without them, the workshop wouldn’t be able to go ahead. Please show them some love.
