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!

Definite

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

• Matthew Sackman
• Tristan Allwood
• Ganesh Sittampalam

Possible

• Philippa Cowderoy (subject to accomodation)
• Eric Kow
• Lauri Pesonen
• Neil Mitchell (looking likely)
• Tom Harper
• Roly Perera
• Alex McLean
• Edwin Brady (at least the 8th)

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 something a bit more interesting, there are some nice uncomplicated restaurants on High Street Kensington (for example, Giraffe) which is only a 10 minute walk. Or if you want to go further up market, there are some very nice restaurants in South Kensington itself (for example, Hugo's), but obviously with higher cost. Because these things may get booked up in advance, they may not appreciate 20 or 30 or more people suddenly descending upon them. Pubs may also be very busy on a Friday night, so I would suggest that I book in advance. This is probably better discussed on #anglohaskell, but if you have an opinion please add it here.

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.

• Matthew Sackman could talk on automatic type level static analysis of embedded Domain Specific Languages.
• Tristan Allwood could similarly speak.
• Philippa Cowderoy has something up her sleeve
• 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