YAPC::Europe 2008, Newsletter 01

Copenhagen, 16 May 2008

This is the first newsletter from the organizers of the Yet Another Perl Conference in Europe in 2008. We are would first like to apologize for taking so long with this first letter, but here it is, the first newsletter in relation to the YAPC::Europe 2008 conference.

So to give a little explanation as to why this newsletter has been so delayed.

tagg bought a sailing boat
jonasbn bought a new (old) apartment and is training for the marathon
we made the HUGE mistake of trying to get our graphical presentation defined in concensus - and this is still not done
and in general everybody are running around doing a lot of different stuff

So we have been busy with a lot of stuff, but we have not stopped planning this years YAPC::Europe. Oh no - we organize all the time, even in our sleep. Anyway - we are slowly lining up what we believe will be a marvelous conference for all of you - so if you are undecided as to whether you should go, we say please come - we would very much like to have you attend the wonderful YAPC::Europe conference.

We are also currently in the process of evaluating the survey results from previous years: Birmingham and Vienna. A lot of thanks to the support and data we got from barbie and domm - thanks guys.

barbie will even set up a survey to finalize this years YAPC::Europe conference, so when it is time, please take the survey - your input is very valuable to organizers of YAPC::Europe conferences. We will send out a reminder when the survey becomes available.

Training

We are currently looking into offering formal Perl training on different levels in conjunction with the YAPC::Europe 2008 conference. The plan is to do this in the days before (Monday-Tuesday) and just after (Saturday-Sunday) the actual conference. We do not have the facilities to do this ourselves so we are in dialogue with a external partner, with whom we have collaborated before.

More information on this training and what we can offer will follow in a future newsletter. If you however are interested in following the training, please do contact us, since your indication of interest can help us.

30-minute Talks

We have received a lot of talks and some of the submitters are addressing our constraint on talk duration. We have decided to limit the standard talks to 30 minutes, in our experience this is a good length for a talk and we have previously used the format for the Nordic Perl Workshop in 2007.

It gives the attendees more flexibility in skipping between talks, going to a 3 hour tutorial means you miss half a conference day
It gives the speakers an audience, which are there out of interest instead
It gives us as organizers better building blocks for making a good schedule

We want to be in a dialogue with the speakers, so speakers who have more to say than can fit into our format, are simply requested to split their presentations at the natural breaks so people can leave or join during the breaks.

And if the number of questions during the talk overwhelmes the speaker, we are very open to BoF sessions etc.

Logo

As we wrote earlier we are having some issues with our graphical image for YAPC::Europe 2008, we are working on a temporary solution, while we figure out the colour of our bikeshed. If you possess any sort of graphical or artistic ability and want to join the discussion or want to helps us close it, logo suggestions are very welcome - you will not be lured into our organizing team if we choose to use your logo, but we will certainly appreciate any sort of suggestions and contributions.

Please contact us at email if you are interested in helping us out.

Call for Papers

We are still accepting talks and there is room for plenty more talks. The deadline is Sunday, 25th. May 2008, so you have to get your talks sent to us shortly. Please see the Call for Papers for details.

If you have trouble meeting this deadline, please let us know at email

If there are specific speakers that you would like to hear, please send them a friendly mail, and let them know. Or tell us, and we'll poke them for you.

Job Fair

We have received a request from a potential sponsor about organizing a job fair, so we are currently looking into the possibilities and general interest in a job fair. We are talking to CBS (the venue) about the possibilities for this setup and we are interested in hearing from other parties interested in this. Our sponsor contacts will in addition be invited to participate in the job fair if they are interested. We will get back to this in a future newsletter when we have more information on this.

If you are interested in participating in a job fair, please contact us at email

Sponsorships

We are very interested in hearing from potential sponsors. Sponsorships can come in many forms and we are very open to suggestions as well as classical sponsorships. Please contact us at email if you are interested in hearing what the opportunities are and what we have to offer you as a sponsor.