YAPC::Europe -- A Whirlwind Weekend in London

I took a quick jaunt over to the U.K. a few weeks ago, for the first YAPC::Europe conference (the conference web site will eventually contain links to the talks), held September 22 through 24 in London. I would have written this report sooner, but I came down with a cold right after getting back, and my stuffy head is just now clearing enough to write coherently. Pesky foreign germs! (For another view of the conference, check out the excellent report by Mark Summerfield.)

I arrived in London on Friday morning, the first day of the conference, which was tutorial day. Nothing like a little jet lag to start the weekend off right. After taking the tube in from Heathrow to Piccadilly Circus and dropping my bags at my hotel, I headed off in search of the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), where the conference was being held. It looked to be a straight shot down Regent Street, except that before I could get to the ICA, I had to take a detour towards Trafalgar Square, due to police lines around Waterloo Place. (In retrospect, the police barricade was just a trifle disconcerting, given the missile that was shot at the MI6 building the previous day.) Fortunately, I have a pretty good sense of direction, and I also spotted a few people who I was sure must be heading to the conference. After all, geeks look the same no matter where you are!

The morning tutorials started just after I arrived: Stas Bekman teaching his mod_perl tutorial and Johan Vromans doing a tutorial on object-oriented Perl. I didn't sit in, but they seemed well attended, and over the course of the weekend I heard various people comment that they got a lot out of the tutorials they attended. I spent the morning in the registration/computer room, talking with Jon Orwant (author of Programming Perl and O'Reilly CTO), Andrew Ford (author of the Apache Pocket Reference and the forthcoming mod_perl Pocket Reference), and Kevin Lenzo (of YAPC::America::North and YAS fame).

By early afternoon, my lack of sleep was really catching up with me, so I headed back to my hotel to take a short nap. Three hours later, I awoke to a ringing telephone and had to take a few seconds to remember where I was. It was 4:30, and Andrew Ford was calling to see if I was still planning to meet him to go over the final draft of the mod_perl Pocket Reference; we were supposed to met at 4, after the afternoon tutorials. Given my groggy state, we postponed the meeting until Saturday. Sorry, Andrew! Needless to say, I missed the afternoon tutorials. After a quick trip out to find dinner and a U.K.-to-U.S. phone plug adapter, I retired for the evening, intent on catching up on the sleep I had missed on the plane the night before.

Greg McCarroll of London.pm was the emcee for the weekend. The main theater at the ICA was pretty full, which makes sense, as they had sold out the conference at 200 people (essentially the capacity of the theater). Kevin Lenzo gave the first talk of the day, discussing Yet Another Society (YAS), an organization designed to help people host small conferences like YAPC. Planning is already underway for YAPC::America::North 2001 (possible sites are Montreal, Washington D.C., or Boston) and YAPC::Europe 2001 (possibly in the Netherlands).

Simon Cozens followed with an interesting talk about the similarities and differences between art and open source programming. He likened modern artists to open source developers: A modern artist is not bound by patronage to produce art that is pleasing to his patrons, just as an open source programmer is not constrained by his employer, but can build the software he wants.

After a short break, the program split into two tracks for the rest of the day. Having two tracks made it impossible for me to attend all the talks, so I had to pick and choose what I thought would be most interesting. Before lunch, I attended brian d foy's talk on the progress of Perl 6, where he explained the working groups and mailing lists that have been set up and the RFC process that is being used (as explained at www.perl.com). He also announced that there would be an informal Perl 6 Q & A during the latter half of the lunch break.

Lunch on Saturday was a lavish affair, with real dishes and silverware, excellent food, and many bottles of wine. The day was warm and sunny, so everyone took advantage of that rarity and crowded onto the balconies to eat lunch. I ate with Tom Christiansen (co-author of Programming Perl, 3rd Edition, and the Perl Cookbook), who suggested that I skip out on the afternoon talks and take advantage of the great weather to walk around and see some of the sites in London. Tempting, but I resisted, at least for a few hours.

The lunch crowd thinned quickly at 1 p.m., as everyone headed back down to the main theater for the Perl 6 Q & A. Nat Torkington (co-author of the Perl Cookbook and conference organizer for The Perl Conference) fielded many spirited questions about Perl 6. All the questions are evidence of the enthusiasm about Perl 6; the Perl community seems revitalized. But just at the discussion was really getting interesting, one of the conference organizers came in to say that there was lots of "pudding" upstairs. As far as I can tell, "pudding" is the British equivalent of American "dessert." After a quick decision by the organizers to schedule another Perl 6 Q & A on Sunday, a few dedicated people moved down front to continue the Perl 6 discussion, while most people went back upstairs for sweets. I'm not sure what this says about the priorities of the Perl community. ...