It's the time of year to gather up all the cool stuff you've been working on and get it ready to show everyone else. The calls are out there for several conferences right now: YAPC::Asia Nordic Perl Workshop YAPC::NA YAPC::EU OSCON Wow, that's a lot of Perl to talk about.

A while ago I blogged that I really wanted a Perl-based conference toolkit that YAPCs and other conferences could use so they didn't spend time hacking on the website when they should be organizing the conference. Well, the folks who work on ACT have been working to fulfill some of the items I presented and earlier today they officially announced that it is open source with a dual GPL/Artistic license.

Perl Foundation board member, conference organizer and Perl oldbie Nat Torkington is interviewed in this article from Linux Format

Long-time readers might remember my plea for a conference module to allow YAPC organizers to organize rather than hack the website. Well, I'm very pleased to announce that I was able to get in touch with the YAPC Europe folks and the ACT folks and they have agreed to work on making ACT the default YAPC web site framework. One of the main issues with ACT was that it hadn't

The Perl Foundation in conjunction with the YAPC::Europe Foundation are happy to announce Houston and Vienna as the venues for next year's North American and European YAPCs. The votes were close again this year for YAPC::NA and we had three excellent bids from Boston, Houston, and Philadelphia. With the evaluations complete, the Perl Foundation's Conferences Committee has selected Houston, Texas, as the venue for YAPC::NA::2007. The proposal was a joint

The Chicago Perl Mongers and The Perl Foundation are proud to announce the Fall 2006 Chicago Hackathon, the weekend of November 10-12, 2006 in suburban Crystal Lake, IL. It will be a round-the-clock weekend of programming on Perl-related projects with your colleagues in the open source community. Dozens of programmers from the open source community in the midwest, as well as others from around the US, will be getting together

I have posted all the bids. If you seen any horrible errors in my cut-and-paste, let me know perlfoundation.org or post a comment.

The Boston.pm bid follows: Update: Applied some formatting updates from Bob Clancy to address cut-off columns on some tables. NAME SYNOPSIS CRITERIA Estimated Costs Site 1: Northeastern University Introduction Meeting Room Costs Banquet Costs Possible University Staff Costs A/V costs Speaker Costs Other Costs Site 2: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Readily Accessible Location Public Transportation

The Philadelphia.pm bid follows: YAPC::Philadelphia 2007 Overview Why Philadelphia? Because Philadelphia is less than an 8 hour drive for one third of the nation's population. Because it is home of the cheesesteak. And most importantly because we are hosting YAPC just before Independence Day, a day the city participated in creating. Each year Philadelphia celebrates with more than a week of activities at the Sunoco Welcome America festival complete with

The Houston.pm bid follows: Overview Proposed Dates Facilities Location Rice University University of Houston Downtown University of Houston Internet Access Cost/Affordability Low Cost Experience Attendee Cost Conference Budget Audio/Visual and Equipment Other Fees and Services Accommodations Food Service/Catering Dining Catering Internet Access Alternative Accommodations Transportation Getting to Houston

I think the title says it all. August 1 is the deadline, so get your hosting bids polished up and submitted. As discussed here previously, once the call for venue is officially closed

As spelled out in my original Call for Venue August 1st is the closing date. At this year's YAPC::NA, the YAPC BOF drew some interested parties from Texas who were considering a bid. I also believe Boston.pm were going to re-submit, but I haven't heard anything from them recently. Did you attend this year and have a blast? Can you keep YAPC::NA going? We need you to make it happen

Jeremy Fluhmann responded to my Call for Venue post saying he'd be interested to see the other bids when they get posted. This brings up a good point: when should the bids be made public? My thought was that they would be made public after the Conferences Committee has selected the host group. This allows people to see what we voted on and it's a good reference for next year.

Can't figure out how you're going to get to Chicago for YAPC::NA this year and wish it was in your city? Want to meet Perl luminaries, but aren't sure how? Want to contribute to Perl without writing a new MVC framework? If you answer yes to at least two of these questions, you might be just the person we want to host YAPC next year. But you can't host if

Josh McAdams and Pete Krawczyk have just released the YAPC::NA 2006 schedule on the conference website. This year there will be four rooms of talks going on for the three days of the conference. We are lucky enough to have both Larry Wall and Damian Conway giving keynote addresses. Of course, there will be a lot of Perl 6, Pugs, and Parrot talks, was well as the usual barrage of

The Pittsburgh Perl Mongers are pleased to announce The PITTSBURGH PERL WORKSHOP a one-day, low-cost conference on Saturday, September 23, 2006. This year's theme is "Perl at Work." The Pittsburgh Perl Workshop is modeled after the highly successful Perl workshops held in Europe over the last several years. The day is designed to provide you with a comfortable, exciting, and enjoyable learning experience. The Workshop

As TPF Conferences Chair, I try to help eager, excited organizers put together a YAPC. Ever since I ran YAPC in Buffalo in 2004 I've wanted to put together something called Conference::Toolkit that would solve all of the YAPC web-site needs. Well, given my TPF duties, I honestly don't have the time to do this right. And I want it done right. I want to put together the best conference

I've been remiss in noting that YAPC::Asia::2006 is right around the corner. But if you're in Tokyo and want to go, it appears you're a bit too late. They've sold out! They have a great line-up of talks and speakers If you're already registered, have fun!

This year YAPC::Brasil will be held April 19-22, 2006 in Porto Alegre/RS, Brazil in conjunction with the 7th International Free Software Forum From what I've heard, FISL

In Toronto last year, there was a pre-YAPC hack-a-thon that brought together many of the Perl 6 coders in person, which can be very productive. TPF provided $600 US to cover costs, and as you can tell by the amount, the group worked as low-budget as possible. Right now, the week before OSDC Israel they are