[ANNOUNCE] Announcement 1: The 2014 London Perl Workshop: Perl and the Internet of Things

[Mark Keating]

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

Perl and the Internet of Things
Saturday 8th November 2014
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).

HOW CAN I ATTEND, OR PRESENT A TALK?
If you would like to come then please log in on the site at 
www.londonperlworkshop.org.uk 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 
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.

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.

This is a free event though we also allow people to purchase a ticket 
for a sum of money if they so wish All ticket money will go towards the 
running of the event in this and subsequent years so is greatly 
appreciated. However we are an inclusive community and do not set fiscal 
brevity as a barrier. if you wish to attend for free please select a £0 
ticket. All attendees MUST select a ticket value.

IS THERE A THEME?
The theme for the London Perl Workshop will be Perl and the Internet of 
Things. It will focus on using Perl to control a wide variety of 
connected devices. We will consider a 'thing' to be a hardware item, a 
physical device, a virtual device or a service (especially if it is a 
service that remotely affects hardware).

We have already confirmed that Hakim Cassimaly, co-author of Designing 
the Internet of Things will be attending the event and giving a special 
workshop on hardware connected devices powered using Perl. We hope also 
to have Adrian McEwan (the book's other author) attend.

We welcome the submission of talks, discussions, presentations and 
workshops using other languages, or that have seperate technical or 
engineering objectives. The strength in developing is knowledge from a 
wide variety of sources. If you use another programming language or 
system to connect physical and virtual devices together and want to 
submit or attend the event then we would be honoured to welcome you. If 
you are connected to a UK Hackspace and wish to attend and display then 
please approach the organisers with ideas of your requirements.

Speakers are invited to talk on any subject that relates to this theme, 
though we will also accept talks on other subjects. We will accept talks 
from people of any age, background or circumstance, the London Perl 
Workshop is an inclusive event and we would love to have you attend. The 
call for papers is officially opened and waiting.

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 connected devices, the literal 'Internet of Things'. We would also 
love to refresh the skills of those wishing to engage with the latest 
developments in the Perl and other languages. If you wish to submit a 
workshop please use the same submission form as the talks, please note 
that workshops will be 60, 120 or 240 minutes in length.

Proposal Deadline: Friday 24th October 2014
Speaker Notification: Monday 27th October 2014


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: £1,500, 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: £1,500, 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

*Special Event*  Sponsor (Sponsorship cost: £2,500, Minimum: 1 needed) 
as 'All
Sponsors' plus:
This year we hope to have a special event which will be a play room with 
electronic toys to assemble, program and demonstrate. Bring a laptop and 
help create something to show at the Lightning talks. We need a special 
sponsor to help us achieve this vision. They will receive the usual 
sponsors package and:
* Their own Conference banner
* Their logo on the Rear page of the conference booklet - as sponsor of
the special event.
* 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