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