Chicken UK 2012
(Banner by Sarah Snell-Pym)
When and Where
Friday 2012-09-28 until Monday 2012-10-01.
My (Alaric Snell-Pym) home, Gloucester, England.
How to get there
Ask me for my address on IRC or by email. I'm alaricsp in #chicken, and my email address can be found by looking in the chicken-users archives.
Get the train to Gloucester, or organise on chicken-users with people who will be driving up from London if you're interested in car-sharing.
Foreign folks may find it easy to fly into Bristol airport and get the train up from there rather than coming in from London.
If you have trouble figuring out the best way to get here, nab me on IRC or chicken-users.
Accommodation
People are welcome to stay in our house, and there's hotels and stuff nearby for people who don't want to queue for the bathroom in the morning! We have four guest beds, and loads of space to stretch out sleeping bags. You're also welcome to come earlier and/or leave later than the above period, we just won't be organising much stuff outside of those days. If we are oversubscribed for sleeping space, I'll give preference to people who beg harder for free sleeping space - tell me how poor your are!
If you'd rather stay in a hotel, there's a few near us.
Food
We'll provide breakfast and lunch in the house for all who want it (we're vegetarians, so edit the table below if you're a vegan or beyond, or have allergies)
Booking
You're welcome to come even if you didn't fill in the Doodle - the Doodle existed to find a widespreadly agreeable date, not as a ticketing system! I've certainly got enough space for everyone who signed up to the Doodle, and we can fit a few more people, so just add yourself to the table below if you didn't join the Doodle and would like to come.
Programme
I plan to organise technical and social events on those four days, but people are welcome to stay over before and after that, be it if you want to travel up at convenient times and be refreshed and settled before the activities begin, or just for the heck of it.
Please suggest items for the programme in the following table, which we can flesh out into a schedule once we've got some ideas.
| Event | Type | Speaker | When | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opening Dinner for the Early Arrivers | Social | Alaric | Thursday evening, at home: keep us posted on your arrival times and we'll try to arrange for pizza to be available | |
| Ugarit | Show and Tell | Alaric | Friday morning | |
| Buffet Lunch | Social | Snell-Pym Family | Friday lunchtime | |
| Friday Hacking | Hacking Sprint | All | Friday afternoon | |
| Dinner+Pub Outing | Social | - | Friday evening | |
| A walk and a picnic lunch | Social | Alaric | Saturday morning and lunchtime | |
| Saturday Hacking | Hacking Sprint | - | Saturday afternoon | |
| Dinner+Pub Outing | Social | - | Saturday evening | |
| Doodle talk | Show and Tell | Christian Kellermann | Sunday morning | |
| Buffet Lunch | Social | Snell-Pym Family | Sunday lunchtime | |
| Sunday Hacking | Hacking Sprint | - | Sunday afternoon | |
| Dinner+Pub Outing | Social | - | Saturday evening | |
| Monday morning | ||||
| Buffet Lunch | Social | Snell-Pym Family | Monday lunchtime | |
| Monday Hacking | Hacking Sprint | - | Monday afternoon | |
| Dinner+Pub Outing | Social | - | Monday evening |
Stuck for ideas? I propose the following kinds of sessions;
Hacking Sprints
There are where interested parties choose a project and hack on it, alone or in groups. I'll have places to sit at laptops, with Wifi, Ethernet, and UK and Euro power sockets. Totally unstructured, really just quiet time for us to get on with stuff, having been FUELLED with ENTHUSIASM by the other activities. If you don't have a project to hack on (or don't feel like hacking on your project), then join somebody else, ask them to get you started, and do some of the low-hanging-fruit tasks they never get around to. If you're a Scheme beginner, then a volunteer (Alaric if nobody else fancies it) will run a tutorial group.
Talks/Presentations
Does anybody want to stand up and tell us about anything? I can try and borrow a projector, and we've already got a whiteboard!
In particular, I think it'd be great to have a Show and Tell of scheme projects we've been working on. Don't panic that your project is boring, or early-stage, or terrible code. The worse your code is, the more everyone can help you make it better ;-)
I'd suggest 30-minute slots for those, 10-15 minutes of you showing off your project and how it's implemented, then the rest as discussion.
So to get the ball rolling, I've suggested one on Ugarit.
Social events
For a start, I propose that we go out for evening meals to save me the cooking and washing-up effort, and as a pleasant outing.
But if there's interest, we could also take an afternoon or two out for an outing. Feel free to research Cheltenham, Stroud and Gloucester on the Internet and see if there's anything that appeals to you. I have three suggestions:
- We could go for a walk around the beautiful grounds of Gloucester Cathedral and the Docks.
- If we go to Cheltenham we can drop into The Cheeseworks to look at bizarre cheeses
- A walk in the countryside around the village I lived in until recently.
Oh, and if it's nasty and rainy outside, we have heaps of board games, including the legendary Robo Rally (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/roborally). What do you all think? Please add suggestions to this page.
Also, I'm building up a list of round table discussion topics to enliven our social events:
- Chicken Documentation / Web presences: Are we approachable to new users of different levels? Are we meeting the needs of experienced hackers?
- R7RS: Is it going in the right direction? What are our wishlists for WG2?
- What's next for chicken core? Is the scrutinizer and specialisation done and dusted, and if so, what shall we do next?
- Salmonella: Moritz and Alaric previously spoke about working towards an infrastructure for running lots of Salmonellas (different platforms, different Chicken versions, etc) and merging the results into an "egg stability index" of some kind. Is this still worthwhile?
- Chicken Eggs. What's our wishlist for future eggs? How is the egg-writing community looking? It's a bit dominated by the Usual Suspects - is there more we should be doing to be more inclusive?
- What's the state of Scheme as a whole? Is it doomed to remain largely a hobby language? I know there's some commercial users of Chicken and other Schemes, but what's the long-term trend? Is there more we can do to make Chicken and the eggs more "industry friendly"?
- Do we want Scheme, and Chicken in particular, to be picked up as a first language by complete newbies, or is it better to focus on being a sharp tool for experts?
- The Vaporbook
Who's Coming?
| Name | Accommodation Needs | Food Needs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| andyjpb | Sleeping bag | ||
| Christian Kellermann | Sleeping bag | ||
| Peter | Sleeping bag | ||
| Kristian Lein-Mathisen | Sleeping bag | dairy intolerant | |
| Affan Salman | Self hosting | No alcohol, vegetarian food is great. :-) | I'd be able to attend on Saturday and Sunday only. Looking forward to it! |
| Ivan Raikov | Will not be able to come ;-( | Taco Bell and Mountain Dew :-D | |
| Shawn Rutledge (ecloud) | we'll see | not picky, vegetarian is great | not sure yet, sounds like fun though |
| Moritz | |||
| mattw | May not actually be coming, as was the only person not free on these dates :-( | ||
| Zaniyah | Self hosting | Probably Sat+Sun only | |
| Mario Goulart | Not coming | Attending via IRC | |
| Felix | Not coming | Can't come; maybe via IRC. |
And Finally
And remember: This isn't some big formal conference. It's us inviting the Chicken community over to our new house for a nerdy housewarming :-) So if there's something you'd like to suggest or ask, just say! Don't be shy!