[ANNOUNCE] London Perl Workshop: Newsletter 4

[Mark Keating]

Hello all,

If you are on a general mailing list please don't ignore this just 
because it says Perl in the title , this is a free and open event for 
the technical community so you may wish to consider attending merely to 
expand your breadth of knowledge...

Welcome all to the fourth Newsletter for the London Perl Workshop 2011 
(the United Kingdom's Perl Workshop - http://shadowc.at/pvDXop), 
hopefully by now you have registered for this event 
(http://shadowc.at/oqPG7h), added it to Lanyrd 
(http://shadowc.at/nhq3kN), liked the Facebook page 
(http://shadowc.at/pMuOiL) and been avidly watching the news pages 
(http://shadowc.at/pTjWfX) and following me on twitter 
(http://shadowc.at/qQqxhX)...

The workshop will be held at the University of Westminster's Cavendish 
Campus on Saturday 12th November 2011.

Oh, well...go and do all those things, but before you rush gleefully 
away take a look at what's in this newsletter.

1. Training Numbers
2. Food and Drink
3. Mentor T-Shirts
4. Looking for developers/graduates, placements and internships
5. Volunteering on the day
6. New to Perl


      1. Training Numbers

The schedule for the training sessions is now live at: 
http://shadowc.at/nRB3Xd, I would once again remind people that the 
mentors themselves will have final say on the number of people for each 
training session. If the trainers could set a maximum in their abstract 
and advise me that would be fantastic. On the day we will be checking to 
make sure you are not over-crowding the sessions and we will refuse/turf 
people out if the trainer asks or seems over-whelmed. These sessions can 
only work if the trainers themselves are able to convey the subject to 
their attendees.


      2. Food and Drink

Once again, and thanks to the overwhelming generosity of our sponsors, 
we will be having sponsored coffee and cake in the morning, a buffet at 
both the lunch and the evening social sessions and 'n' rounds of beer in 
the evening to whet ones appetite. I would like to thank all the food, 
drink and beer sponsors for making this possible.


      3. Mentor T-Shirts

DuckDuckGo have offered a free t-shirt to any mentor/presenter (and we 
can probably squeeze some for the volunteers on Registration etc.) who 
will wear it during their talk on the day of the conference, one each 
not one between all of us. Please let me know if you would like to take 
them up on this offer and state your size before 2nd November, thanks.


      4. Looking for developers/graduates, placements and internships?

If you work for a company, or know of a company that is hiring 
developers at this time please get them in touch with me as they may be 
allowed to attend, distribute leaflets and talk to people. There are 
however some caveats so I must speak with them beforehand (we will not 
be allowing recruitment agencies unless they sponsor - these must be 
legitimate companies) to ensure that the best experience can be achieved.

If there are companies looking to hire graduates, or who are willing to 
take students as interns or on placement for experience then please 
contact me as soon as possible so that I can compile a list and place 
you in touch with Sean at the university who will be more than happy to 
talk to you.

Current sponsors should speak to me immediately if they have not already 
done so.


      5. Volunteering on the day

As always I will require a group of people to help me on the day. I 
already have some people but I need more. So please email me if you can 
help, I will need people to time talks, check videos and place leaflets 
and banners up before the conference and help manage the minutiae of 
organisation. At this time I have:

Registration/Organisation: Steve Sexton, Chris Jackson and Leigh Keating 
doing shifts on Registration for the day

Videos: Mike Whitaker (helping organise but he will also be speaking) - 
I have 3 video cameras and would like to have 2 more, preferably digital 
so I can grab the footage on the day or soon after - I would like to 
bring as few tripods as possible, who has the ability to provide more 
and will help Mike and I on the day.

Setting up: Me, t0m, at this moment, so who will join myself and Sean 
from 8-ish on the morning of the conference for the mad setup rush.

Lightning Talks: I hate to volunteer him but I will be expecting the 
magnificent Leon to help with this again.

I look forward to hearing from you all


      6. New to Perl or use another language

If you are new to the Perl language, or are a practitioner of another 
programming language then we would love to welcome you to the London 
Perl Workshop this year. The LPW is a free event, and when we say "free' 
we do mean "free as in Beer". There are: free attendance, free sponsor 
goodies, free coffee/cakes in the morning, free buffet lunch, free 
presentations by world-renowned speakers and new speakers, free 
workshops and then free beer (usually 1-3+ rounds dependent on number of 
attendees) and food at the social event after the conference.

We would also like to welcome those of you taking your first steps into 
the higher languages and to programming, come along to a conference that 
embraces newbies, be prepared for spirited debate and to have your 
understanding stretched, but in a friendly way with a beer and a cake of 
choice .

The reason we would especially like to welcome you this year (you are 
welcome any time) is that there is a glut of companies in the Perlverse 
seeking new programmers, some of these companies seek experienced Perl 
personnel, but many of them also seek experienced polyglot programmers 
as experience of more than one language brings benefits and they have on 
the job training where you can use your existing skills while learning 
new ones, there are also companies seeking graduates and have graduate 
internship programs so this is the right time to brush up your skills in 
Perl and see what has changed, and trust me a lot has. So take the 
plunge, at the very least you can see some of the new things in a 
rival/new language and get a free drink.

Visit: http://shadowc.at/pvDXop and register today .

-mdk

-- 
Mark Keating BA (Hons), Writer, Photographer, Cat-Herder.
Managing Director: http://www.shadow.cat
For more that I do visit: http://www.mdk.me