[ANNOUNCE] London Perl Workshop 2012: Announcement #1

[Mark Keating]

It is my great pleasure to announce the date of this year's London Perl
Workshop (the United Kingdom's Perl Workshop), which will be held on:

Saturday 24th November 2012
University of Westminster
Cavendish Square Campus

WHAT IS IT?
The London Perl Workshop is a free one-day conference in central London,
UK. LPW is the UK's Premier Perl Event and so is also known as the
United Kingdom Perl Workshop (UKPW). In 2012 

HOW CAN I ATTEND, OR PRESENT A TALK?
If you would like to come then please log in on the site and click that
you will attend, this is an important step for us and our sponsors so we
can judge numbers for the events and activities. If you are not already
registered with Act you can do so on this site, it is free and easy to
do. If you have attended a Perl event recently, with the exception of
YAPC::NA::2012 who maintain their own database, you will probably
already have a login with Act, otherwise you will need to create a new
user first. You can do this by using the links in the navigation menu on
the website which will soon be live on
http://www.londonperlworkshop.org.uk.

If you would like to speak then please submit your talk on the website
as soon as possible - the earlier you submit, the better for the
organisation of the event. If you want to check on specific requirements
or have an idea for a type of talk or event then please contact the
organisers.

IS THERE A THEME?
The theme for the London Perl Workshop will be 25 Years of Perl, and
will focus on the manner in which Perl is used in the commercial world
and the strength of Perl for development in an enterprise environment;
we would also like to see talks on the usage of Perl in the past 25
years and the evolution of the environment. You can use any aspect of
Perl such as Camelia, Rakudo, Raptor, etc. Speakers are invited to talk
on any subject that relates to this theme, though we will also accept
talks on other subjects.

WORKSHOPS?
This year we hope to have access to three workshop rooms and would like
to run as many workshops as possible to introduce new users to the world
of Perl and to refresh the skills of those wishing to engage with the
latest developments in the Perl world. If you wish to submit a workshop
please use the same submission form as the talks, please note that
workshops will typically be 60, 120 or 240 minutes in length.

Proposal Deadline: Friday 19 October 2012
Speaker Notification: Monday 22 October 2012

There will be further announcements detailing the launch of the website,
at which point the call for papers, login and further event details will
be open.


SPONSORSHIP
Each year we are required to fund the conference rooms, lecture theatres
and workshop rooms, as well as arrange and cover the costs for many
other activities normally associated with the London Perl Workshop such
as the famous sponsored beer after the conference. We will once again be
hosted by the Department of Electronic, Communication and Software
Engineering who have secured us a generous discount on the normal
university room rates and who will hopefully play a greater part in the
event this year with activities that coincide with the workshop.

If you wish to sponsor the event we have several basic packages (others
packages may be tailored to your specific needs), please forward this to
all sponsors or persons you feel would be willing to help sponsor this
event:

All Sponsors (minimum sponsorship £250) will receive:
* A page on the wiki;
* Their logo on the website and in all related marketing;
* A write-up by Mark in all advertising and related promotion;
* A page in the Conference Booklet (A5);
* Their logo in the back of the conference booklet;
* Their logo on the Conference banner;

Lecture Room Sponsors (Sponsorship cost: £500 each room, Minimum: 1
room) will receive all the above and:
* The ability to brand the room with posters/banners advertising them;
* A fifteen minute introductory spot in their room on any subject they
wish;

Workshop Room Sponsors (Sponsorship cost: £500 each room, Minimum: 3
rooms) will receive all the above and:
* The ability to brand the room with posters/banners advertising them;
* A fifteen minute introductory spot in their room on any subject they
wish;

Lecture Hall Sponsors (Sponsorship cost: £1000 each room, Minimum: 2
lecture theatres) will receive all the above:
* Their logo given prime position on the Conference banner (Larger and
near the top)
* Brand the lecture theatre with their promotional material;
* A 20 minute slot at the conference (in a lecture theatre) on any
subject they wish;

Coffee Break Sponsor (Sponsorship cost: £500)
* Ability to brand the coffee area with posters/banners (needs to be
negotiated for what will be allowed)

Evening Sponsors (Principal Evening Sponsorship cost: £1,000, Minimum: 1
event needed) as 'All Sponsors' plus:
* Ability to brand the pub with posters/banners (needs to be negotiated
for what will be allowed)
* A 10 minute slot to address the crowd (they will be drinking your beer
and food so expect cheering/noise)

Marketing Sponsor (Sponsorship cost: tba, Minimum: 1 needed) as 'All
Sponsors' plus:
* Their Logo given prime position on the Conference banner (Larger and
near the top)
* Their logo on the front page of the conference booklet - as sponsor of
the booklet
* Principal promotion opportunities to be discussed with the sponsor

As always if more than one companies wish to join together and have a
room together 2*£250 minimum, they will both be allowed to brand the
room with posters and the time slot will be shared. We are also open to
discussing other ways to integrate your promotion and ideas into the
conference. We would be delighted if you wish to attend or promote your
company further, run job advertising/recruitment.

If you wish to sponsor less than the "minimum" sponsorship we can
discuss an appropriate package to suit your sponsorship. My intention is
to begin promoting the event as soon as possible to maximise the
exposure of the conference and of our sponsors.

We will also accept small donations from the community and more
information on this will follow in a later release.

OUR SPONSORS
We have several sponsors who have already joined us at this time:

antibody MX
Contributor towards the evening event (as always :) ).
AntibodyMX provides a hosted antispam and antivirus email filtering
service based entirely on a proven open source platform. Perl being one
very important component. Users of the platform see a near-instant,
near-total reduction in the amount of spam, phishing and malware content
arriving at the mail server. AntibodyMX also provides onsite mail
filtering, white-label filtering solutions to ISPs and will soon be
launching CellMX, a filtering service for remote and mobile workers.

Enlightened Perl Organisation
The Enlightened Perl Organisation is dedicated to the promotion of Perl
(in particular Raptor Perl or Perl 5) as a production language that is
suited to an enterprise environment. The EPO will be providing banking
and organisation facilities for the London Perl Workshop for the third
year running. 

Magnum Solutions
Magnum yearly run a free training course in the morning during the LPW.
We are initially keeping this open to UoW students only, in order to
help promote Perl to new audiences. For full information on Magnum's
training courses please consult their website. 

Shadowcat Systems
Shadowcat Systems is a developer, sponsor of, and contributor to open
source software projects including Catalyst, the elegant web framework,
and DBIx::Class, an object-orientated database abstraction library.
Shadowcat provides consultancy, training and support for these projects;
systems management and automation; the design and implementation of
network architecture; the development of proprietary and open source
custom web applications; and offers Perl refactoring and project crisis
management.

Shadowcat Systems are based in the United Kingdom but we deliver
solutions to a global community of clients via onsite supervision along
with traditional and internet based communications. 

University of Westminster
As last year we are graciously being hosted by Department of Computer
Science and Software Engineering (CSSE) at the University of
Westminster. We cannot exaggerate how grateful we are for their support
of Perl and Open Source in London.

CONTACT
Organisational contact: Mark at m.keating(at)shadowcat.co.uk

Please email this text to any list you find appropriate.

-mdk