AngloHaskell/2008

Anglo Haskell has previously happened at Microsoft Research, Cambridge in both 2006 and 2007 much fun was had! For 2008, we think it should happen again, but this time at Imperial College, London. Who's up for it (add names further down)?

This year it's being (un)organised by Matthew Sackman (matthew-_), Tristan Allwood (ToRA) and Ganesh Sittampalam (Heffalump) who all regularly sit on #haskell and #anglohaskell (with nicks in (parenthesis)). Philippa Cowderoy is also prodding the organisers at regular intervals to do some organising...

Date and Venue

We have a suitable sized room booked out at the Department of Computing, Imperial College, London on Friday the 8th and Saturday the 9th of August.

No objections were raised at all about the proposed date or venue, and so things are going ahead as planned.

The room that we have booked is quite nicely reconfigurable, so we can do break away groups and such or even multiple tracks if there is demand for this.

Some reasonable instructions for getting to Imperial are available.

WiFi

WiFi will be available at Imperial throughout the weekend. There is a simple mac-registration system which you can do through your laptops and all should work without a hitch.

Lodging

It's likely that there'll be people in need of crashspace and so forth. If you need to, please you this area and #anglohaskell to organise where to stay overnight.

Imperial does offer lodging in its halls but they're very expensive. There are some useful contacts if you want to phone and barter. Or, possibly just crashing with friends on floors with sleeping bags and so forth might be simpler and certainly cheaper. Also don't forget that Imperial is about 10 mins walk from South Kensington tube station so public transportation is available if you want to rush home.

Note that parking is both expensive and highly competitive in the surrounding area so it would probably be easier to not drive in. Parking for bicycles is available on campus, provided you have your own bike locks.

Attendees

Per last year, all attendees should bring or make a nametag that identifies you by your real name and/or IRC name. If anyone wants to drag a roll of stickers and a pen along that'll help!

Attendees may well want to sign up for dinner on Friday below, too.

Definite

Please add yourself to a list here if you know you can attend.

• Matthew Sackman
• Tristan Allwood
• Ganesh Sittampalam
• Pieter Laeremans
• Philippa Cowderoy
• Tom Harper
• Neil Mitchell
• Neil Brown
• Edwin Brady (Friday only)

Possible

• Eric Kow
• Lauri Pesonen
• Roly Perera
• Alex McLean
• Chaddaï Fouché
• Jamie Brandon
• Duncan Coutts
• James Rowe
• David Himmelstrup
• Simon Parry
• Chris Done

Please add yourself to a list here if you think you can attend.

Programme

Planning will be taking place on IRC as per last year: #anglohaskell on irc.freenode.net

If you're having trouble following things on IRC, the discussion page on the wiki might be a good place to leave comments and questions.

Last year we had talks in the day on a Friday, followed by pubbage in the evening and assorted activities on the Saturday. Again, no one has suggested there's anything wrong with this plan, so we're going ahead.

Friday

For dinner on Friday, there are many good pubs around Imperial and some really decent pubs across London many of which sell decent PubGastro food. If you want to rush off to meet friends, family etc then that's obviously fine, but if you'd like to stay around for a geeky evening meal then that might be fun.

We're proposing to go up to Giraffe at High Street Kensington which is about a 10-15 minute walk from Imperial. It has a menu which should give some idea - basically if you just have a main and a drink then you can get by for less than £15 which is pretty damn good for that part of London. I (Matthew) have been to this particular Giraffe at least a dozen times over the last 5 years and I do think it's probably the best value for money in the surrounding area.

If you'd like to join us for this meal then could you add your name below please. I'd like to book with them in advance (by the end of July) as they will be busy on a Friday evening. Alternatively, if you really don't like the look of the menu or would prefer that as a group we do something else then please make a lot of noise!

• Matthew Sackman
• Tristan Allwood
• Philippa Cowderoy
• Tom Harper
• Ganesh Sittampalam
• Edwin Brady
• Neil Mitchell + 1

Saturday

We have the room at Imperial booked here as well. It would be a shame not to use it so if there are too many talks then it can be used for that. Similarly if people want a quiet place to Group Hack with access to whiteboards and so forth then it could be used for that. Let's see how many people want to give talks, but other suggestions for Saturday could be noted here too.

There are endless coffee shops in South Kensington, and if there's enough demand, there is a possibility that some catering could be provided. However, if you're fussy about your coffee, our experience is that the College catering coffee is not wonderful.

Other Thoughts

For potential group hacking on Saturday, we need something to hack on. On what shall we hack?

Talks

It wouldn't be AngloHaskell without some talks, so volunteers please! Previously we have had a largely more practical set of talks than you might find at Fun in the Afternoon or an academic event. This was a good thing, and some of the best talks were from people who were far from considering themselves as experts, so feel free to tell us about your experiences.

The room booked at Imperial has multiple projectors and connections for laptops and so forth. It even has whiteboards.

• Simon Marlow has promised to keynote on Parallel GC
• Matthew Sackman could talk on automatic type level static analysis of embedded Domain Specific Languages.
• Tristan Allwood - Making zippers for structured editors
• Philippa Cowderoy - Fusion-powered EDSLs
• Neil Mitchell - Hoogle 4, fast type searching (I gave an AngloHaskell 2007 talk, so would be happy to defer to someone else)
• Ganesh Sittampalam - Squiggle: using associated types to embed SQL
• Tom Harper - Stream fusion on Haskell Unicode strings
• Neil Brown - Explicit concurrency with the CHP library

Please please keep offering talks. If you have constraints like "Friday only" or "can only talk for 30 mins" then please indicate these and try and grab slots in the timetable below as necessary. I've just added a timetable for Saturday too so we can spill over there as we are now in the wonderful position of having more talks than we can fit on Friday (without reducing talks to 30 mins).

Timetable

A preliminary programme, talks need to be confirmed and can change around. I've assumed a rough 30mins + 15min questions/overrun/discussion per talk - shout if this is a problem. Certainly we can squeeze up if more people want to give 30min talks.

Friday

Time	Event
10am	Matthew and Tristan around to open up
10:30 am	Tea, coffee and biscuits
11am	Welcome, Start!
shortly after	Keynote (Simon Marlow)
11:45am	Talk 2 (Matthew)
12:30pm	Talk 3 (Tom)
1pm	Lunch
2pm	Talk 4 (Tristan)
2.45	Talk 5 (Philippa)
3:30pm	Tea, coffee and biscuits
4pm	Talk 6
4:30pm	Functional grit - small talks that may grow into functional pearls. Open session, anyone can give a quick (30 seconds to 5 minutes) talk!
When people get hungry	Food!
Beer o'Clock	When everyone's finished eating, we'll head for a nearby pub

Saturday

Time	Event
10am	Matthew and Tristan around to open up
11am	Brunch
12pm	Talk 1
12:45pm	Talk 2
1:30pm	Lunch
2:30pm onwards	More talks? Hacking? Pubbage? Cricket?
Tired o'Clock	Depart!