AngloHaskell/2007

This page serves as a historical record of the fun that was had at AngloHaskell 2007. You have now missed AngloHaskell 2007.

AngloHaskell 2007 is taking place on the 10th of August at MSR Cambridge, with further activities on the 11th. It's free, and everyone is invited! Simply add your name to the wiki and we'll see you there :-)

Local contact: Duncan Coutts, REMOVED, backup Ganesh Sittampalam REMOVED

Organisational contact: Neil Mitchell, REMOVED

Date and Venue

Confirmed! We're going with the 10th-11th of August in Cambridge, starting with talks at Microsoft Research and with more planning to happen below.

Many thanks to Matthew Sackman for offering us an alternative venue! Perhaps we can try it next year?

Yes, I'll still be at Imperial then so I can't see why not! MatthewSackman

Edit: That's Cambridge in England. Yes, we have been asked this.

Directions to MSR

MSR has some directions, which can be best summarised as ‘get a taxi’. Here is (hopefully) a Google Earth location of MSR, as well as a Google Maps link. (J J Thomson Avenue is immediately west of Clerk Maxwell Road.)

If you do take a taxi and the driver doesn't know where it is, tell him or her to drive down Madingley Road until you reach the West Cambridge site, J J Thomson Avenue. The Computer Laboratory (next door) has marginally better instructions.

The fastest way to MSR (on foot and public transport) from the station is to cut through to Trumpington Road via Bateman Street (don't follow the driving directions!), and take the Citi 4 or Uni 4. There's a bus stop just across the road from Bateman Street.

To get to the city centre by bus, take the Citi 1 or Citi 3. Do ask to make sure they're going in the right direction though! There are also a number of clearly marked shuttle busses between the centre and station running during the day every 10 minutes or so.

To walk to the centre (20 minutes not carrying luggage), go straight down the road facing you when you come out of the station, bear right when the road ends at some traffic lights / a WW1 memorial / the botanic gardens, and keep walking straight (Hills Road / Regent St / St Andrews St) for quite a while until you reach a pedestrianised bit, at which point you are in the centre.

From the city centre to MSR, you can catch the number 77 Madingley Road Park and Ride which goes from bus stop M on Emma St. (Or find your way to Pembroke or Silver Street, and catch the Citi 4 / Uni 4 from there.) (Note that the 77 doesn't stop by MSR any more, it goes to the park and ride from which you have to walk back, 10-15 mins. This caught me out the other day --SimonM).

Parking

Some parking spaces will be available around the back of the MSR building. To get out again, drivers will need to talk to reception to obtain a token.

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!

If you can't make the start on Friday, or can only make it on Saturday, that's fine. If you're not sure where everyone's going to be, give one of the contacts a call or a text.

Duncan Coutts has volunteered to act as local contact, with Ganesh Sittampalam as backup. Thanks guys!

Definite

• Philippa Cowderoy
• Neil Mitchell
• Simon Peyton Jones (leaving for vacation on Saturday though)
• Peter McArthur
• Chris Smith (cdsmith)
• Duncan Coutts
• Simon Marlow
• Ganesh Sittampalam
• Claude Heiland-Allen
• Paolo Martini
• Ben Lippmeier
• Derek Wright
• Tom Cooper (astrolabe)
• Dan Licata
• Tim Massingham
• Bill Pearson
• Andy Gimblett (gimbo)
• James Rowe
• Garry Bulmer
• Mark Rafter
• Tom Parslow
• Gen Zhang (genneth) - will only arrive on Friday evening however.

Possible

• Ben Moseley
• Alex McLean - looks like i might not be able to make it now :/
• Ian Lynagh
• Edwin Brady
• Titto (if it is in September)
• Sebastian Sylvan - interested. It depends on the talks. I'm sure all the talks listed so far will be interesting, but if we can get one or two of the "big names" to give a talk, then it's a surefire guarantee that it'll be worth coming for, and then other talks would be icing on the cake! Personally I'm very interested in the concurrency/parallelism stuff that's going on currently (so if anyone reading this has something to say on that, sign up!). Also, might be worhtwhile to synchronise it with a bank holiday so people don't have to take a day off?
• Lennart Augustsson - I can probably make August 10-11, otherwise early September.
• Matthew Sackman - it's unlikely I won't be there.
• Magnus Therning
• Alan Mock
• Emil Sköldberg
• Piers Cawley - acting as ignorant, but interested, spectator I'm afraid.
• Matthew Pocock (dozer) - I'm in Cambridge that week anyway
• Tom Hall
• David Carter - also ignorant and interested; P(attendance) ~ 0.9
• Wei Teo
• Vitaly Lugovsky

Lodging

It's likely that there'll be people in need of crashspace and so forth, so please organise here! Both offers and requests are good.

Nearby Colleges

Many of undergraduate colleges (which are really glorified halls of residence) offer cheap accommodation over the holidays. Locations near MSR include Churchill College, Wolfson Court (an annexe of Girton College), Fitzwillian College, Robinson College, New Hall (female only) and Burwells Field (an annexe of Trinity College).

This map might prove useful.

-- Peter McArthur

I just booked in to Churchill. A single room with shared facilities was £50.20 per night. Their accomodation phone number is +44 (0) 1223 336164.

-- Tom Cooper

Hostels

The YHA hostel is now full for Friday night. Another guest house right next to the station is Tenison Towers (01223 363924, £35/night).

There's a fairly inexpensive YHA hostel in Cambridge (21.50 per night per person, plus a little extra if not a YHA member). There may be others.

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. This seemed to work, so we'll follow a similar model this year.

Talks

Philippa will be arriving at MSR around 10am, with tea, coffee and biscuits available from 10:30am. There'll be a sandwich lunch available (time to be confirmed around the talks) and another coffee etc break sometime between 3 and 4. We'll also end with an 'open' session in which people can grab a whiteboard and talk for 10-15 minutes on whatever takes their fancy - see below!

Volunteers please! Last year we 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.

Talks planned and/or offered:

• Philippa Cowderoy - my experiences with Haskell as a person with Asperger's Syndrome - CONFIRMED
• Neil Mitchell - Making Haskell Faster - CONFIRMED
• Claude Heiland-Allen - maybe something on embedding Haskell inside the multimedia software Pure-data - CONFIRMED
• Ben Lippmeier - effect inference and optimisation, like at SAPLING - CONFIRMED
• Simon Peyton-Jones - Indexed type families in Haskell, and death to functional dependencies - CONFIRMED
• Lennart Augustsson - I could have my arm twisted enough to give a talk.
• Alex McLean - something related to improvising live music with Haskell - I need to sort out my schedule but am not sure if I can get to cambridge for the friday now :(
• Dan Licata - If there's still room, I can give a talk on the design and implementation of view patterns in GHC.

If anyone has any dietary requirements, could they add them here before Friday the 3rd? Lunch'll be sandwiches, I'm told vegetarians should be okay either way.

Abstracts

• Simon Peyton-Jones - Indexed type families in Haskell, and death to functional dependencies

  Indexed type families, aka "type functions", can express all that functional dependencies do, but in a much nicer way. Furthermore they play nice with GADTs etc. I'll describe the idea, and sketch the main technical challenge for type checking.

• Neil Mitchell - Making Haskell Faster

  In Haskell there is sometimes a tension between declarative high-level programs, and high-performance programs. This talk discusses a whole-program optimisation for Haskell, which can transform a high-level program into a very low-level performance orientated one.

• Claude Heiland-Allen - Extending Pure-data with Haskell

  Pure-data (Pd) is a real-time graphical programming environment for multimedia processing. Pd has a stateful objects and message passing paradigm, and additional object classes can be written in C (Pd native), C++, Python, Scheme, Ruby, and possibly others (through extra plugins). This talk will be about the trials and tribulations of adding Haskell support to Pure-data.

• Philippa Cowderoy - Experiences with Haskell as a person with Asperger's -or- 'Ow much 'askell would an aspie 'acker 'ack if an aspie 'acker could 'ack 'askell?

  Asperger's is an oft-controversial condition on the autistic spectrum, sometimes (mis)described as 'geek syndrome'. Philippa talks about how the condition affects her, how and why Haskell works for her as a programming language and how the Haskell community has responded to her.

• Ben Lippmeier - Type Inference and Optimisation for an Impure World

  Everyone knows that pure programs are not only easier to understand, but easier to reason about - but is a program based totally around state monads and IORef still pure? Does it matter? I'll demonstrate a prototype compiler that does an effect inference on Haskell-like code which allows laziness and program transformation style optimisations in the prescence of destructive update and other side effects.

• Dan Licata - View Patterns in GHC

  View patterns are a simple and convenient way of reconciling pattern-matching and type abstraction. I will describe our design for view patterns and its implementation in GHC.

• You? - Functional Grit

  Small and perhaps dirty talks that may nevertheless grow into functional pearls. An open session - we'll let volunteers take the stage and a whiteboard for 5-15 minutes each to talk about whatever they fancy (though preferably programming-related!)

  • Neil Mitchell - Yhc: Past, Present, Future

Other activity

After Friday's talks, food and drink would be a good idea!

I suggest we go to The Regal for brunch on Saturday to kick off with. That's the Wetherspoons from last year. After that, punting again if it's not raining too much? Any suggestions for if it's wet?

I'd like it if we can eat at a restaurant before finding a pub for the evening on friday. Borrowing Fun in the Afternoon's post-talks curry works if nobody's got any other suggestions - PhilippaCowderoy

Timetable

This is somewhat preliminary and subject to change as talks are confirmed or otherwise, but the overall structure should hold:

Day	Time	Event
Friday	10am	Philippa arrives at MS Research
	10:30 am	Tea, coffee and biscuits
	11am	Keynote from Neil and Philippa
	shortly after	Simon Peyton-Jones - Indexed type families in Haskell, and death to functional dependencies
	~12:00 pm	Ben Lippmeier - Type Inference and Optimisation for an Impure World
	~12:30 pm	Neil Mitchell - Making Haskell Faster
	1pm	Lunch
	2pm	Philippa Cowderoy - Experiences with Haskell as a person with Asperger's
	2:30pm	Claude Heiland-Allen - Extending Pure-data with Haskell
	2:45?pm	More talks
	3:30pm	Tea, coffee and biscuits
	4pm	Functional Grit - small talks that may grow into functional pearls. Open session, anyone can give a quick talk! Yhc: past, present, future -- Neil Mitchell
	When people get hungry or MSR kick us out	Food! Likely we'll head out for a curry
	Beer o'Clock	When everyone's finished eating, we'll head for a nearby pub
Saturday	11am	Brunch and chat at The Regal - at least someone will stay on until 1pm, next activity may start earlier though, anyone who may show up late should keep phone numbers for one or more of the contacts
	1pm	Afternoon activities - probably punting if it's not raining, failing that we'll find something
	When everyone gets tired/hungry	We'll retire to a pub for food, drink, chat and perhaps hacking. A pub with wifi'll be preferred, so feel free to bring a laptop or PDA!

Wifi at MSR

Once again, MSR is willling to provide wireless internet to everyone who gives their name and email address (and where appropriate, company/institution name) - this time by Friday the 3rd of August. Feel free to add your details even if you're not sure you're coming!

• Philippa Cowderoy (REMOVED)
• Ganesh Sittampalam (REMOVED, Credit Suisse)
• Alan Mock (REMOVED)
• Chris Smith (REMOVED)
• Lennart Augustsson (REMOVED, Credit Suisse)
• Claude Heiland-Allen (REMOVED, GOTO10)
• Andy Gimblett (REMOVED, Swansea University)
• Paolo Martini (REMOVED)
• Emil Sköldberg (REMOVED, NUIG)
• Piers Cawley (REMOVED) - added in the vain hope that a slightly crashed deadline won't matter too much.
• Tom Hall (REMOVED, Anglia Ruskin University)
• Thomas Parslow (REMOVED)

Wiki organisation

This isn't really a major point, but: it seems to me that keeping about the pages used to organise previous events is a good idea as things go on, and that this page should be used both to link to the archives and contain the current discussion. Anyone take issue with this?