Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
There were two events today, the Perl 6 hackathon and the pre-conference meeting. We had not chance yet to talk to the Perl 6 guys and ask them what did they do yesterday, we hope to do that later and hope they did a nice job and had a lot of -Ofun moments despite all the problems with the internet and the electricity in this part of the city.
The pre-conference meeting seemed to be bigger that we could predict and was a pleasant for all the participant. We occupied not only the whole second floor of the cafe but also a pub nearby.
So, now the main part of the conference starts. Tomorrow we begin at 10 with Larry's keynote just after a short intro to the conference and how it will go.
Don't be late, be on time :-) You may access the venue from 9 o'clock in the morning to get your T-shirt, your conference badge holder etc.
See you tomorrow!
Dear YAPC::Europe 2013 attendees,
The conference starts on Monday but the first activities related with the conference take place already tomorrow.
More and more people arrives to Kiev, and if you are in the centre you might meet Perl people on street. Some of them wear T-shirts from the previous Perl events like YAPCs and local Perl hackathons.
If you happened to arrive to Borispil airport in the afternoon you probably have suffered from a substantial delays because of the enormous crowds before the passport control and in the baggage claim area. We hope that that is the only negative experience you could have during your journey.
If you stay in the Dnipro hotel and would like to hang out with people, try finding them either in the lobby or in Munich bar on the 4th floor.
Tomorrow we open a day with the Perl 6 hackathon which takes place in the Byzantium conference room of Dnipro hotel. This event starts at 10 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m., one our before the next event, the pre-confernece meeting starting at 7 p.m. See more details (address and some pictures for easy recognition) in our recent newsletter.
Enjoy!
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
The conference is almost here!
Those of you who are already in Kiev might have noticed that it's really hot here these days. It was +31 ˚C at 8 p.m. Imagine what happened in the midday.
Having this fact in mind, we checked once again if the air conditioning in the venue works well. We were assured it does.
But that's not all. We ordered three coolers and thus we will have drinking water throughout the day, you don't have to wait until the next coffee break or lunch.
Also, we (once again, for the third time now) increased the order for the river cruise to include more refreshing drinks.
From other stuff, we've seen a lot of work has been doing in the conference rooms to install chairs and provide us with enough AC sockets. The restaurant has their forks ready :-)
Today we received a few boxes with the conference T-shirts. The funny thing, the Perl 7 ones were laying on top of one of the boxes :-)
If you are coming to the Perl 6 hackathon, take a time to read the wiki page about it.
Finally, we'd like to thank our new Silver Sponsor, uCoz! It is a good example showing that it is never late to support a Perl event.
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
Some of you might already have arrived to Kiev. It's really nice here these days although it may be a bit hot in the afternoon.
If you arrive early you may want to check what you can see in Kiev. Refer to the wiki pages on the conference site for more details.
Larry Wall has arrived today, so don't be late at the conference as he is giving the Keynote on Monday morning.
We keep getting more and more committed attendees, which makes us happy :-)
A short sleep and tomorrow (formally, already today) morning we will have to collect some stuff for the conference, inspect the venue and the ship, pick up somebody at the airport and another hundred of small but important things.
See you, maybe even occasionally on the streets of Kiev.
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
Five days left before the conference, four days before the pre-conference meeting. Some of the attendees are already in Kiev. The time flies!
Today we did another bunch of small things to make the conference better.
We were examining the possibility to have enough (actually, even more than enough) AC sockets in the venue and the talk rooms. There were a funny story when I asked if there are enough AC sockets in the venue in Riga in 2011, and they said "Yes" and bought about 200 extension cords, which gave an AC socket for every seat in the front rows. Now we have these cords in Kiev :-)
Good news! There will be a Speakers room in the venue. If you speak, you may prepare your talk in a quiet room.
We have finalised the contract with the catering company (as well as with the restaurant for the pre-conference meeting, and the river boat a day ago).
We see that 220 people opened their conference tickets. We hope that you all print it at home and we will avoid the queues and other unpleasant stuff in the venue during the check-in. By the way, don't forget to check in on Foursquare.
If you stay in Dnipro hotel, you may use their public computer room to print a ticket. Ask at the reception of how to get there.
Also, there's one more talk in the schedule. Thomas Klausner (domm) gives a talk about ZeroMQ.
That's mostly all for today.
See you very very soon!
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
Six days left before the conference (and even fewer before the pre-conference activity).
Today we have passed the level of 300 committed attendees. Which means there will be more than 300 people at the conference and even more on the boat during the river cruise!
We also enlarged the order that we made earlier for the pre-conference meeting. You are welcome to join.
The printing company said they have printed the welcome banner with logos of all the sponsors that made the conference easier to organise. We will collect it tomorrow.
We are answering more and more questions from the attendees about different bits connected with the conference, such as money in Ukraine, partner programme, hotels etc. Please refer to the conference wiki pages where you can find some useful information.
There's one new talk in the schedule, Perl and SSH, to replace one that was unexpectedly removed by the author. We would like to thank Salvador Fandiño for his readiness to give one more talk to fill this gap.
Finally, you can now print your conference badge which also serves a conference ticket. Print it at home, cut it along the gray line and you will get your own badge :-) We will have a pile of transparent plastic badge holders in the venue. If you cannot find the link to the conference ticket, this most probably means that you did not purchase the ticket yet.
See you soon in Kiev!
Seven days before the conference. And today was a day with hundreds of things we had to settle. There was a time two or three month ago when we thought that everything was done. Today it was quite opposite :-)
What did we do today? We discussed the details of the venue with the sponsors who will have their desks in the main hall. We did some payments for the venue and the river cruise. We made up a welcome banner with the sponsor logotypes. We ordered plastic holders for the badges. We started finalising the menu, because we have to report to the catering company the exact number of the attendees by Wednesday. We ordered a number of soft sitting places for the hall.
Once again, we fixed the schedule (and we will continue doing that) to ensure the balance between the number of the attendees of the talk and the room capacity. By the way, it's an interesting fact that the total duration of accepted talks is exactly 50 hours. 50 hours and 0 minutes.
To help you navigate among the talk we recommend you to read today's article by Dave Cross in Josetteorama with the preview of the conference.
See you very soon in Kiev!
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
Today we are happy to announce the special limited offer for the students. If you are a student and would like to attend the main conference days, you may buy a special ticket of 20 €.
There are only 30 tickets available. The tickets are sponsored by one of our sponsors. To apply you are expected to fill in the form and later buy a ticket.
As soon as we have 30 applicants we will close the form. Please note that this ticket gives you the right to attend all the talks during the main conference days, as well as coffee breaks and lunches but it is not a ticket for the River Cruise.
We try our best to provide more opportunities for people who are interested in Perl. See you in Kiev!
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
One of the traditional element of the YAPC::Europe conferences is a T-shirt which the attendees can get at the reception desk. This year we decided to make an experiment and let you choose your own T-shirt. You can select your personal combination of the colour and (one of the predefined) text on the T-shirt's back side.
This year's conference is entitled "Future Perl". We don't know exactly what future we will have. So, you will be able to help with understanding that and demonstrate your own vision of the future.
Please go to the conference T-shirt constructor and make your T-shirt there. Submit it until 1 August and we will print it for you and bring to the conference venue.
Make your own choice! Do not follow the crowd!
See you in Kiev very very soon.
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
Today we are happy to announce that we will have full-fledged meals at the conference. Each day of the main conference days (Monday to Wednesday) we will offer you two coffee breaks and a lunch. We are trying to make everything to satisfy you and to minimise the need to search for food on your own :-)
The two coffee breaks take place about 11 a.m and 4:30 p.m, each 30 minutes long, while the lunch will be served from 1 to 2 p.m. Everything will be served in the venue.
We arranged the second coffee break right before the session of lightning talks so that the speakers can test their laptop connection during the break.
Here is the menu. Would you like it, go and buy your conference ticket if you did not do that yet. If you are a speaker (of at least one full-length talk) or have purchased a ticket (student, or regular, or business one), or your attendance is included in the sponsor package, you are allowed to eat :-)
We would like to thank our sponsor, Booking.com, for covering the full cost of the above meal.
See you in Kiev!
Dear YAPC::Europe 2013 attendees and those who did not buy a ticket yet, :-)
Today we are pleased to introduce our volunteers. In June, a few guys from PortaOne company contacted us with their intent to help during the conference. Later same month, we received a similar request from Evozon, this time there were two ladies ready to help us with the organisational flow on site.
We are happy that this year it was so easy to find volunteers and there are so many of them (comparing to Riga in 2011 where there were much much fewer). We would like to thank them. All the people taking place in organising this year's conference are listed on the Organisers page.
What will the volunteers do? Their primary task is to help the speakers in the talk rooms, such as informing them about time left before they have to stop their talk. It is very important to keep the schedule firm, as we will have three parallel tracks and the attendees will move between the rooms. Also it will help the speakers to be more confident about how long they may speak, or should they let the audience ask questions.
A special thing with the volunteers from Evozon is that they are the part of the team who submitted a bid for hosting the YACP::Europe in 2014. The Venue Committee received three proposals: from Sofia (Bulgaria), Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and Granada (Spain). We will announce which venue was selected in the first day of the conference, on 12 August 2013. Do not miss that part of the event!
See you very soon with more news about the conference.
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
There're lots of things we've got to tell you about the forthcoming conference, and all the news are only good ones :-) Although we became kind of tired during the last weeks, we are still very excited about the result we would like to achieve.
There were a few questions about attending the Partners Programme and it looks like we have to be more clear about who the partner is and what they can use for free.
It is easy. There are basically two things that we offer to your partner.
First, if they come with you and stay in Kiev during the conference day, they may use our free Partners Programme excursions, which will take place each day in approximately the same time when you will be in the venue listening to the talks. Once again, this is completely free. It's worth to notify us by sending an e-mail to mail@yapcrussia.org.
Second, there will be a River Cruise at the end of the second conference day, and you are welcome to attend it with the partner. Contrary to the Partners Programme, this is not free of charge. As an attendee or a speaker, you may attend the Cruise yourself with no additional cost. For your partner you have to buy an additional River Cruise ticket. The option is available on the purchase page of the conference site. In this case there's no need to inform us, because we will see your payment. Neither you have to register your partner on the site.
We hope we made it clear of what, where and how your partners may participate.
There were also questions about children. For sure, we are welcome to see our attendees with their children in Kiev but we cannot provide any child day care for them. If your partner believes they will manage to attend the Partners Programme or the River Cruise with a child, feel free to join!
See you soon with more newsletters (and actually more correct week countdown number).
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
The week countdown counter just turned to become a one digit value. It is only nine weeks left before the conference! Are you ready?
Today we talk about talks :-)
If you are going to give a talk at the conference (and thus get a free ticket) and still did not submit it consider doing that now: act.yapc.eu/ye2013/newtalk.
The deadline for talk submissions is 1 July (it is less than a month from today). We will notify all the speakers of whether their talks are accepted or not before 15 July. The final schedule will be ready on 1 August.
There are a few more news connected with the topic of this newsletter.
First of all, our Programming Committee is already working and you may consult it at any moment by e-mailing to talks@yapcrussia.org. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any doubts about your talk, its title, theme, duration or whatever you might want to ask. You are also welcome to send us your slides if you want to ask us about its content or layout.
Secondly, we are glad to introduce you our four volunteers from PortaOne who will work in the talk rooms to help the speakers to agree with the conference schedule. You can find their faces on the conference site.
By the way, this time we will make the schedule in such a way that there are at least 10 minute gaps between adjacent talks. This decision is based on the feedback you gave us in Riga a couple of years ago.
Excited? We too. Come to Kiev!
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
The beginning of May was a silent period as there were a number of holidays in a number of countries :-) and the activity of the sites users was also low. Anyway, today the conference statistics made a record and hit 100 committed attendees. Committed are those who bought a ticket or whose talk was accepted.
As of today, there are 243 registered people coming from 27 countries and 47 monger groups, and 101 committed users. We are looking forward to bigger numbers, which only make the conference better, as the YAPC is not only a set of technical talks but also a socialising and communication event. The conference in Europe is one of the few real chances to meed your online Perl pals (would it be IRC, or PM mailing lists, or sites like blogs.perl.org) and make new friends.
To help you decide we will give a small extraction from behind the scene. Take a look at the talks that are submitted to us but are not yet approved. The official schedule publication date is 1 August. We will try to approve the best talks from as many speakers as possible. Some of them submitted more than one talk, which we appreciate very much. Would you like to participate, simply submit your talk now.
We've change the configuration of the site so that you can see all the talks submitted, weather they are accepted or not.
The list of talks is available onine
So, we wish you a pleasant reading. Don't forget that some talks are already accepted and are also visible in the schedule. See you next week!
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees,
This week's newsletter contains a few useful checklists. Please follow them to make your attendance easier and more pleasant.
If you are a speaker,
If you are an attendee or a speaker,
If you do not speak,
If you are coming with a partner,
Thank you!
See you next week.
YAPC::Europe 2013 Partners Programme
Today we are announcing the Partners Progamme for the YAPC::Europe 2013 conference in Kiev. We've been talking about it before but finally we've got a rough schedule and are awaiting for your feedback.
The Partner Programme is for everyone travelling together with a conference attendee and not very insterested in attending the event. Instead of sitting at the hotel or walking along the city alone one has a wonderful opportunity to join the company of other guests and enjoy Kiev with our experienced guide.
Our guide is our friend Oksana Tsupko, a certified ukrainian tour guide. You can visit her website for more information. Quoting her:
...the most desirable thing for the most of tourists is to feel and see real life and spirit of a country, but not only to watch "must see places" with endless group excursions... One of my prior tasks is to create sincere friendly atmosphere in relations with my tourist guests. And from this friendship our great trip begins!...
The Programme itself is free, you pay for your the transportation, tickets and food.
We've prepared the first draft of the schedule:
Monday, 12 August
10:00 — Meeting at the Ukrainian House
10:00-14:00 — Walking tour "Ancient Kiev"
14:00-15:00 — Lunch
15:00-16:00 — Chernobyl museum or walking trip along Dnieper shore and Pedestrian bridge
17:00-18:00 — Walking tour through the Podil region
Tickets: St.Sophia Cathedral ~6€, Chernobyl museum ~2€.
Tuesday, 13 August
10:00 — Meeting at the Ukrainian House
10:00-12:00 — Walking tour in Pecherskiy region
12:00-14:00 — Trip to Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Monastery
14:00-15:00 — Lunch
15:00-17:00 — War museum and Motherland or Hydropark and Obolon quay
Tickets: Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Monastery ~5€, War Museum ~1€.
Wednesday, 14 August
12:00 — Meeting at the Ukrainian House
12:00-15:00 — Bus trip to Pirogovo Open Air museum (Lunch at the museum)
15:00-16:30 — Pinchuck Contemporary Art Center or Water Museum
16:30-17:00 — Walking tour along Kreschatic
Tickets: Pirogovo Open Air museum ~3€, Pinchuck Contemporary Art Center free, Water Museum ~5€.
If you're going to attend the Partners Programme, please, register yourself by sending an email to mail@yapcrussia.org.
Let us know if you have ideas and like to see something else!
Do not forget to buy a ticket for the conference and book a hotel at the lowest price.
Dear YAPC::Europe 2013 attendees,
Let us share some basic information about how we will be compiling the schedule for the conference.
During the main conference days, namely, Monday 12th through Wednesday 14th August there will be three talk threads every day. One of the tracks will go in the big room where all the attendees can gather at the same time. This is the biggest room in the venue with almost 500 seats in it.
Every day will be opened at 10 o'clock in the main room. First come some hot news about the conference and its flow, then a keynote from one of our best speakers.
After that we continue with three parallel tracks and do it until about 5 o'clock in the evening, when a session of lightning talks starts. There will be three sessions, one hour each, all in the main room. You may submit a lightning talk now.
There will be a number of 30 second slots between lightning talks so that you have a chance to make your small announcements.
During the day there will be two 30-minute coffee breaks and one-hour lunch. Catering will be organised in the venue, so that you will not be lost in the city trying to find a place to have meal at.
Based on the feedback you gave us in Riga in 2011, we will make the pauses between the talks 10 minute long. This will allow you to find the room without any rush. Should you have time to choose the next talk you attend, you'll have a few additional minutes to do that.
The talks itself will all start and finish at the same time, so people will not interrupt any ongoing talks if they want to join after another talk ends. This does not apply to longer talks though, like the ones with tutorials or mini master classes, which can be up to one hour long.
If you have any comments and wishes about the flow of the conference, please do not hesitate to send them to us at mail@yapcrussia.org. Please do it before the conference, not after it :-)
Let us also remind you that we are waiting for more submitted talks. Please add your talk online as soon as possible.
Also remember that the Early bird price expires in a couple of days. Do not wait, buy your conference ticket now.
In the next newsletter we will show you a bit of the venue and will publish the guidelines for the slides that we expect the speakers to follow.
See you really soon!
Dear YAPC::Europe 2013 attendees,
Let us deliver a portion of really good news. We were working hard the last few months to be able to announce it today.
Every day, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, there will be two coffee breaks and a lunch, and they all will be served at the venue.
Although we are not gathering in Kiev just to eat together, we think it is very important to have high quality catering at the event. There will be no need to go outside of the venue and look for cafes or restaurants. This will also let us keep the lunch break one hour long, giving more time for the talks.
You will be able to eat and talk with your colleagues from other cities and countries, all in the regular conference hours.
Let's then just keep today's newsletter this short :-) There will be more news about when and where you can eat and drink at the conference in the following weeks (we've got more good news to come).
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees and Perl lovers,
A brief statistics update first. At the moment there are 155 registered people coming from 22 countries and 36 monger groups. You may explore and see who is coming online.
Also, don't forget that the Early Bird ticket price is expiring in a couple of weeks. Buy now.
Talks submission is also still open. We encourage the speakers to submit talks as early as possible, as it will help us to compile and unveil the schedule earlier. Which, in turn, will attract new attendees and let us make the better conference.
Anyway, last week the YAPC::Europe Venue Committee has announced a Call for Venue. In other words, local groups of European Perl users are expected to apply for hosting the YAPC::Europe in 2014.
Let us take another small look at the backstage behind the conference organisation. The call for venue from the Committee means that it's time to think about the place where the next year's YAPC::Europe will take place. It can be one of the city where there was one of the previous conference, or a completely new one. For those willing to host a YAPC in their town it is a very exciting time. Believe us, we had experienced that four times :-)
The process of choosing the next venue is long enough, although it is almost not visible to the regular attendees. The groups of local Perl mongers submit a proposal, which includes a lot of details about the place they propose. Airports, hotels, public transport, visas, beer prices, restaurants, city infrastructure, Perl activities in the area, catering, additional activities, sponsors, financial things, — all that must be described in detail in the proposal. After receiving a proposal the Venue Committee prepares a big list of questions to the potential organisers, and then finally votes. The YAPC::Europe Foundation Board then approves the choice.
The next venue will be announced during the opening of this year's YAPC::Europe. In the closing session, the future organisers will tell you about their city and their ideas about the next conference (would you add this talk to your personal schedule on the site, the next organisers will be able to see your interest in their conference).
So, you see, in practice the organisers spend more than a year to prepare the three day conference. This year we are demonstrating the process of the preparation in our weekly-live-show newsletters. There's a full archive of them online.
Just a curious fact. Assuming about 300 attendees at the conference and a year of preparations, there will be more that one full day of organisers' attention for each attendee :-)
We are very excited to see you all in Kiev in August.
Dear YAPC::Europe 2013 attendees and those who is still considering joining (don't wait, join now),
This week we're publishing our regular weekly newsletter on Wednesday instead of a usual Sunday (ok, even Wednesday evening :-). Guess why? We have done a lot of work during the last few days. Preparing a great conference is a very exciting thing by itself, maybe even more interesting than debating about the Perl versioning and naming :-) Not only we try to make the attendees happier but we also would be proud to establish new standards for hosting future conferences.
Anyway, our main news today is: we launched the Hotel reservation service on our site.
What is it? It is a page where you can see all the hotels that are available in Kiev, and find them on the map so that you can easily understand how far from the venue the hotel is. The venue, of course, is also marked on the map.
There's a list of about 200 hotels, hostels, aparthotels and apartments that are waiting for your reservation. For a quick reference of price levels you can select the dates you are going to stay in Kiev and the number of people in the room. Click "Search hotels" button and get the real time prices immediately.
Explore the hotels either by scrolling the list on the left or by clicking the hotel markers on the map. For each hotel we display (apart from their names and addresses) the minimal available price for the whole stay period and the distance from the venue.
The venue we selected for the conference is located in the very centre of the city, so there are plenty of hotels nearby, and you don't need to use any public transport if you book a room in one of them.
This is not the end of the story. We are pretty much sure that the prices you find on our accommodation search service are the lowest available on the internet - would it be a hotel site or an online travel agency.
Even more, for the majority of the hotels in Kiev you even don't need to pay upfront. Just reserve a room (credit card will still be needed for confirming your booking) and pay at the hotel on arrival!
All done? No! There are a few hotels for which you as an attendee can get a discount. Those are marked with a red label in the bubble on the map. The link will lead you to a page where you can choose your personal discount. It can either be a 5% discount or a fixed discount of approx. 25 euro for the whole stay.
Explore the hotels by clicking on "Learn more and Book now". You will go to our partner's site ostrovok.ru, where you will see available rooms, photos and detailed descriptions of the selected hotel.
Would you like to book it, do it on ostrovok.ru. Even if you are not yet 100% sure you attend the conference, you may safely find and select a hotel which is refundable, i.e. often there's no cancellation fee if you cancel early enough (please read the hotel policy on the site for more information on that).
This searching service is available in two languages, English and Russian (booking and payment are also available in both of them).
Just a few extra notes about all this.
We do not take any extra money from the attendees who book rooms using the service. All we raise there is an affiliate commission that we are going to add to the conference budget.
All the prices should be really lower that anywhere else. Should you find cheaper price for the same room, let us know.
So, booking a hotel you not only receive a better price but also support the conference paying no extra money! Book it: act.yapc.eu/ye2013/accommodation/index.html.
If you'd like to learn more about the service behind hotel reservation we work with, please refer ostrovok.ru/about/en/. Also take into account that at least 50% of the organisers team already used the service themselves.
Next week we will tell more about what we are working on to make the conference the best ever YAPC::Europe.
Hi,
To make a great conference, we need great talks. Today I'd like to encourage everybody to submit a talk to YAPC::Europe 2013. It's easy, just fill in a form on the conference site: act.yapc.eu/ye2013/newtalk.
This year there will be three parallel talk tracks. We plan to start at 10 a.m. with a keynote (single-threaded) and finish at 6 p.m. with a lightning talk session (also single-threaded). The time in-between will be filled with talks, food and communication :-)
We offer four possible length of the talks: 20, 40, 60 and 120 minutes.
20 minutes are intended for introductory talks, where the speakers gives some basic information about the topic and assumes that the listeners would like to get an idea of a new technology, or some new usage pattern, or new ideas in some area.
40 minutes are for general purpose talks, and the speakers are expected to talk about a particular topic in detail.
60 minute talks are reserved for keynotes and in-depth talks. There are only a limited number of keynote slots and we expect to have well known speakers there.
In-depth talks are a kind of teaching class but shorter. The attendees coming to an in-depth talks should have strong intent to develop particular knowledge of technology. In exceptional cases we might allow 120 minutes for the talk of this kind.
On top of that we're planning to have three one-hour sessions of five-minute lightning talks. You may submit them using the same form.
While submitting a talk please specify as many details as you can, including the level of intended audience and tag list (so that the attendees can easily filter talks on the site). Would you like to leave comments for the organisers, there is a separate field there for you.
Talk submissions deadline is 1 July. Speaker notification date is 15 July. Final (well, close to final) schedule is expected to be published on 1 August.
In addition to the official dates above we will try to accept talks earlier if it will be obvious that the talk should appear in the schedule, and there's no need to wait any formal date.
I should also mention that all the accepted speakers (except those who give only lightning talk) attend the conference free of charge.
So, take the chance to attend the YAPC::Europe in Kiev for free and submit your talk now!
Hello,
After a week of Christmas (the Eastern one) break we are here to continue our weekly newsletters. They will now also appear on the conference site in the News section.
First, a brief statistics update. Today there are 71 registered people coming from 15 countries and 26 monger groups. There are four submitted talks already. And we have some first early bird ticket purchasers. Thanks to all of them.
Today we would like to call for sponsorship.
YAPC::Europe is a non-profit event aimed for those who use Perl in their daily activity (or even on a monthly or yearly basis, checking the crontab settings after migrating to a new server :-) All income comes from attendee fees and from sponsors.
The attendee fee is extremely low comparing to other IT conferences. I would even make the attendance free if we would have enough external support. Everything we get we spend on the venue, equipment, food and other activities such as renting the rooms for hackathons, the river cruise this year (instead of the attendees dinner). Also we cover expenses of a few guest speakers (the list of them is really very small, and believe me nobody of them gets luxury rooms :-) There are some occasional expenses like printing souvenirs (if ever), posters etc.
We are inviting companies that use Perl and would like to support its development to sponsor the YAPC::Europe 2013 in Kiev. Sponsoring YAPC not only allows make it cheap for the attendees but also provides a great way to support language development, ideas exchange and visibility in the outer world.
Companies sponsoring the conference get their brand well known among the attendees. Every year the European branch of YAPC collects 300-400 people including programmers, system administrators, freelancers, IT managers and even web designers.
Perl world comes hand to hand with the global Open source movement, thus being with us will make your company more open in the eyes of the attendees.
Finally, there are recruitment opportunities during the conference. Having a booth in the venue will give you three days of the conference attendance, and everybody coming there will not be able to miss your booth. Recruiters from the previous years were able to find new employees there. Would you like to interview your candidates during the conference, we will let you do that in the venue (in Riga there were a special room behind the scene).
We offer four sponsorship levels with different set of options.
There is also a Corporate attendee price for business users.
The detailed description of the above mentioned sponsorship levels is available on the conference site at the special page. Please note that we are very open to discuss the details to find the best terms for everybody.
Please contact us at mail@yapcrussia.org for further details.
Support Perl today to ensure your future!
Thank you.
We now officially announce the dates of the conference. YAPC::Europe 2013 in Kiev will be held on 12–14 August 2013 (Monday to Wednesday).
Today we launch the site of our conference. You may now register, submit a talk and buy a ticket.
In the following weeks we will add a hotel reservation page and hope to offer the attendees discounts for booking the rooms in Kiev.
Dear YAPC::Europe attendees and those who would like to come to Kiev in August 2013,
We are very happy to announce the launch of the conference site: yapc.eu/2013.
Together with that, I am correcting the week countdown counter: there's no week minus 34, and the week -35 is followed by the week -33. The dates of the conference are 12-14 August 2013. There's a negligible small change that the dates will be changed, so we will make additional announcement when we are ready. It's Christmas and New Year time, that's why we have to wait a little bit more to be 100% sure. Vyacheslav vti and Anatoly sharifulin have just returned from Saint Petersburg where they attended the celebration of the 25th birthday of Perl, which is a good excuse :-)
Anyway, if you plan to go to Kiev for the next YAPC::Europe, please register on the site. If you attended one of the previous YAPCs (not necessarily ::Europe edition), you may log in with your account on the Act system. Please don't forget to press the Join button (a red link in the site user menu will be calling you to do that).
If you wish to give a talk at the conference, you can already submit it. We set three different time lengths for the talks: 20, 40 and 60 minutes. One hour talk is only accepted for more-than-just-a-talk versions, such as small teaching classes or in-depth tutorials. As usual, we will glad if you submit a lightning talks. We hope to have three sessions of lightning talks, one at the end of each day.
We have also opened a payment system, and you can buy a ticket (20+-minute speakers do not have to do that). This year, the standard price is set to 110 €. The early bird price is 90 €, and the price for the students is 60 €. The price of one ticket for the corporate users is 400 €.
Finally, we are publishing the Sponsorship Proposal. If you or your company would like to help organising the conference and agree to sponsor us, please contact us at mail@yapcrussia.org. Beyond the official proposal we are ready to discuss other variants and sizes of sponsorship if you will not find an option that is suitable for you.
During the following weeks we will be updating and polishing our site. For instance, we will add a page about Kiev sightseeing. Also, we plan opening a hotel reservation page so that you can book a hotel with a discount. I will discuss the partnership with leading Russian booking reservation site (they also use Perl together with Python and Go) this week.
That's all for today. We wish you a Merry Christmas and we will be back in a week with more news about the conference!
Hi,
This week I didn't fix the countdown week counter but I think I will do it next time. This week Viacheslav (vti) was negotiating the contract with the venue, and I am happy to tell you that he managed to save a few thousand euros by reorganising the room configuration that was initially proposed. We did not lose any space, and we still have the big and nice concert hall, so no worries. Huge thanks to vti! We hope to sign the contract next week.
It is very likely that we will have no extra paid classes around the conference. But still, if you are reading this and would like to give a class, please contact us.
We'd like to organise a Speaker Training on the day before the conference for those who would like to polish, correct, or completely rewrite their slides to make them better and more useful. We are in contact with the trainer we want this training to lead, and we will share the details as soon as we have them. The training is supposed to be on Sunday morning.
Another activity, that we will organise before the conference, is the Perl 6 hackathon. Jonathan Worthington (jnthn) was very kind to agree leading it. This event is scheduled to Sunday 11th August, the day before the conference. We did a Perl 6 hackathon in Riga in 2011, and it was a nice event that not only let all the main people behind Perl 6 to gather together, but also was warm for the newcomers who wanted to get a deeper insight into Perl 6 development.
I would also like to host a Perl 5 hackathon in parallel with the Perl 6 one. Please contact us at mail@yapcrussia.org if you would like to participate in it and what topics might be covered there. Unfortunately, I have no idea of the current Perl 5 internals and development processes there, so I am not the best person to plan this event.
For the hackaton(s) we will to reserve a room in the Dnipro hotel nearby the venue.
Next week: date announcement, site launch, call for speakers, and the start of selling tickets :-)
Dear Perl users,
Two weeks ago I mentioned a couple of activities that I found nice to have in the conference. Today I will tell about other things that we already tested during our previous events.
In 2009, at YAPC::Russia in Moscow Alex Kapranov hosted the Game of the Future, where we were trying to predict the future of Perl and related things. There were a few groups that were compiling the future based on probable or improbable events that might happen in a few years, as well as on the known facts. As a result, a mind map was build, which is quite interesting to read today:
What is the future of Perl.pdf
You may find a number of region-specific items there but the funniest thing is that we were considering the YAPC::Europe in Kiev an unlikely event at that time.
Another fresh idea was implemented at one of the Russian Perl Workshops in Saint Petersburg (codenamed SaintPerl). Alex Kotov, the principal organizer of this event series, proposed a rage contest. The attendees were asked to create rage comics, and they all were demonstrated at the workshop closing session. There are plenty of online constructors for creating comics in that style.
Next week, I hope, we will announce the final dates of the conference and will open the site. Stay tuned!
Not too many news about the conference today, although I made a visit to Kiev as a bare tourist (well, actually, as a fan of one of the actors) and this note is about that.
Last Friday I went to Kiev from Amsterdam with a connection in Frankfurt (I did not realise until now that the connection was in the host city of the previous YAPC::Europe).
Even with a connection it was extremely easy flight, and not too long, something about three hours in the air. The ticket costs 213 €.
Kiev built a new terminal in their main airport Borispil (KBP). There's another one, but I have never been there. The airport is quite remote from the city, and if you use a taxi, you should spend about 20-25 € depending on which area of the city you are going to. Note that if you catch a cab you may expect to find a taximeter there, which I did not see a year ago, and that fact is just great.
There are still quite a few symbols of the Euro-2012 in the city.
You will also see more automata when you need to buy a metro ticket. And it costs only 0.2 € per trip, can you imagine that? Buy 5 tickets for 1 euro! Ugly looking but working, unlike the ones in Moscow.
My destination was a theatre in one of the streets running from Khreschatyk, so, having not too much time, I simply enjoyed walking along it, eating traditional perepichka (unhealthy, I think, food, but having the taste of Kiev's history).
I also hanged out in the book shop nearby (after Amsterdam, it is such a pleasure to dive into the place with thousands books in so adorable languages, Russian and Ukrainian, not mentioning the cafe in this three-storey bookshop).
I can also confirm that you will find free Wi-Fi in McDonalds (heh, another piece of unhealthy food :-) I discovered there that there will be a documentary with the 70 minute lost interview with Steve Jobs in the cinema nearby, which perfectly fit into my schedule. So, another hour and a half in my favourite cinema in Kiev Kiev with pop corn and Cola (I was hardly thinking if pop corn is compatible with Apple). This is remarkable because this time I took neither a laptop, nor a camera with me and used only iPhone 5 and iPad mini during the whole trip (these new devises are very technologically attractive, although an iPad lost a pixel on its screen after six hours in the air, probably suffering from the increased radiation).
Then I examined the venue. It stands on its place :-) By the way, once again I noticed that from the outside it doesn't look like a five-storey building.
Since long ago there's no single year when I do not visit Kiev at least once (usually more). The conclusion I made is: you always can find somebody or something protesting on the streets. This time is a long-living alley with tents and exhibition Yanukovych vs. Tymoshenko.
At our first Ukrainian Perl Workshop in Kiev in 2008, Peter Edwards and Jonathan Worthington made photos at the doors of jewellery shop named Perlina. Now the owners of it finally agreed that only the first four letters make real sense (Перл is Cyrillic version of Perl).
A short stay in the hotel for a couple of hours for quick rest, and then back to the KBP airport.
Then Munich MUC airport (with its barbed wired fences), and then AMS with an hour delay because of strong fog both in MUC and AMS.
Kiev is a great city, which, while really suffering from lots of modern changes, is still charming and attractive. See you there in August.
Viacheslav Tykhanovskyi summarises his trip over the venues in Kiev during the last few weeks. He did a huge job and now the huge job for us is to pick up the best venue :-)
As I am in the org team of the next YAPC::Europe in Kiev, I have some news about the venues. I have been visiting all the previous selected 7 venues and 2 new that we found on the way. Not an easy task I should say. So here is my report.
Ukrainian House is a nice huge city-centered place, it has the best view actually. The only downside is price :) We really want to get this place, so we are trying out different strategies of balancing the budget.
MasterClass is a nice venue near historical center, but it doesn't have enough space to accept and feed 300 visitors.
President Hotel is one the most expensive hotels in Kiev, so the price is corresponding. And it's not very easy to reach with the public transportation.
Parus Business Center is pretty close to the center (10-15min walk). When I visited this venue the office manager even asked me 'Perl? Does anyone still program on it?'. I laughed and kindly explained him that YES, WE DO!
European University is a great place but somewhat distant from the city center. Also the halls are on different floors.
Hotel Bratislava. Unfortunately I coudn't see any of the halls, because it was under renovation. Also it is on another side of the river.
NSC Olimpiyskiy. This is the main football stadium in Ukraine. It'd be great to have a conference here, unfortunately is it overpriced and very dependent on the local football games. We could end up with canceling the conference.
Hotel Rus. This hotel has a great name. Rus is the name of the medieval polity in Europe which used to unite many slavic tribes. And Kiev was the capital. This hotel has a big hall that can be divided into smaller parts. I like this approach so the attendees won't need to run between different floors. This was kinda the same on YAPC::Brazil 2012 (what a great place btw :). It is very close to the Parus Business center.
Contemporary Art Center has a big hall mainly dedicated for exibitions. The main downside is that they cannot be divided into parts with good sound isolation.
So this is it. Now we are deciding which one is going to win. Help us decide using the comment section below.
Thank you!
The time has made its 2% and brought us one week closer to the YAPC::Europe 2013 in Kiev!
This time our main news is that we are also closer to the point when we are able to fix and announce the dates of the conference. This week we explored a couple more venues, and there are only two left in our list.
Interestingly, we found a venue we did not met before, and it is the venue that a Python Pycon conference is exploiting in October. So far, there're President Hotel and European University that we will see in the following days. And then -- we select the venue based on different metrics :-)
About the dates, it is also becoming less fuzzy. Most likely it will be 5-7 or 12-14 August 2013, both Monday to Wednesday. (But please please don't buy your tickets yet :-) Looking back, there were a few conferences both in the beginning of August and in its middle weeks, and there's no direct correlation between the date and the number of attendees.
The dates of the previous YAPCs::Europe look like a scale on the old radio:
Of course, we will check if there are any events of other IT conferences around the dateы and let the organisers of local summer workshops know about the date asap.
Stay tuned! More exciting news coming very soon.
There was a tweet from Viacheslav Tykhanovskyi last Friday: My life during last weeks: waking up early to visit the next venue for yapc :-). Do you know what stands behind that less-than-140-character message?
In Barbie's Perl Jam book, there's a section called Research Your Venue where you can see a list of problems arising before the organisers: finding a venue, requirements for the main auditorium, floor plan layout, breakout area, storage room, hackathon and BOF rooms, speaker preparation rooms, accessibility, internet connectivity and Wi-Fi, location, cost, catering, dietary requirements, morning and afternoon breaks, lunch, dinner, early arrivals dinner. The things in this list following catering combine a separate list of headache reasons for the organisers.
For the conference in Kiev we've got seven different venues in mind, and I would like to thank the guys in Kiev, Viacheslav and Yaroslav, for helping with both preparing a list of potential places and doing hard work of detailed exploring them one by one. Viacheslav is the main force behind that.
In our internal wiki (an instance of MediaWiki in PHP :-) we keep a table where we make notes about venue parameters, including their price. It will help us to make a decision after we explore all the venues. I hope this will be done before the end of this year, presumably in November.
Here is our primary checklist:
- Big room with 300 to 400 seats. - Two or three rooms for 100 people. - Hall space. - Lunch area. - Catering facilities. - Two coffee breaks a day. - Wireless internet access for 300+ devices. - Open SSH etc. ports. - Multimedia projectors and screens. - Additional projector or big monitor in the hall. - Microphones on the stage. - Microphones in the room (at least in the main one). - Possibility to connect your laptop's video. - Possibility to connect your laptop's audio. - Sound recording. - Video recording. - Power supply. - Venue access (whether the attendees need to have any documents with them). - Price. - Discounts. - The size and date of prepayment.
Each of the items is not just a boolean value but rather a container keeping lots of details. For example, catering may include just a space for a break, or the venue may force to buy their food, or it may include the need to search for the cafes outside. Or the rooms for talk tracks: smaller rooms may be physical or virtual, that is it may be configured from a part of hall areas, which is not always great.
When I prepared a proposal for hosting YAPC::Europe in Kiev a few years ago, I approached couple of local universities (which are by default the most suitable venues for any conference). One of them was rather curious in that it was not possible to rent the venue to have three subsequent days within a week because they had an agreement with some local non-official church who gathered two times a week there, every Sunday and Wednesday. More to add to this strange situation, when we discussed the details, the director of the venue spoke to me in Ukrainian while I talked to her in Russian. I still don't know what that was and why. I have no problems with understanding Ukrainian but I also believe she had no problems speaking correct Russian. It's like when you speak Italian and receive answers in Spanish.
All in all, once again thanks to the guys in Kiev for their detailed research. We will keep you informed and announce the date and the address as soon as we can.
Please also follow, subscribe, connect, visit and like the following links related to us, the organisers team.
Personal Twitter accounts, listed alphabetically by last name.
twitter.com/ykorshak twitter.com/vtivti twitter.com/sharifulin twitter.com/andrewshitov
Our Facebook profiles:
facebook.com/yaroslav.korshak facebook.com/viacheslav.tykhanovskyi facebook.com/sharifulin facebook.com/ashport
Our blogs:
showmetheco.de (Viacheslav's English blog) sharifulin.posterous.com (Anatoly blogs in Russian) blog.shitov.ru (I also blog in Russian mainly)
Official YAPC::Europe 2013 Twitter accounts:
twitter.com/yapcrussia (we keep it as the main one this year). twitter.com/yapceu (don't forget to follow this one as it will became the only official place since 2014).
YAPC::Europe Facebook page:
I would also like to ask you give more feedback in comments to our postings. Currently only a provocative experimental personal post may cause a burst :-) Reading your reaction would really help to make the conference better and better satisfy your expectations. Or mail us at mail@yapcrussia.org.
This week we publish an interview with one of the YAPC::Europe 2013 organisers, that was recorded for the recent Yet Another Perl Podcast on 13 September.
Dear listeners, this is the second issue of the second season of Yet Another Perl Podcast, the podcast about Perl in Russian. Here today are myself, Alexander aka Afiskon Alexeev, Dmitry Degtyarev and our today's guest, Perl's rock star Vyacheslav vti Tikhanovskiy. This issue is basically a chat with him.
-- What does it mean, a non-religious developer, as it is stated on your blog?
-- Before answering this question, let me say that a rock star is an exaggeration. As for the non-religious, there're two meanings here. First, I'm non-religious literary, second, Perl is not a religion for me, I can easily use any other programming language or any utilities, be it in Perl or not.
-- But you still think of yourself as of Perl developer, right?
-- Mostly yes, that's right. It is mainly Perl, but as I said, it is possible to go outside.
-- How far did you go outside already, what do you know that you can use with ease?
-- Confess, do you write in PHP?
-- No, I don't use PHP and even never tried. There are no tasks for PHP at hand.
-- What else do you use?
-- It is mainly C, low-level programming. JavaScript, of course. And I write lots of bash scripts.
-- What's on your desktop? Linux?
-- Yes, Ubuntu.
-- Despite the fact that you are a mac user, aren't you?
-- Yes.
-- An interesting choice. Why, if you can explain?
-- I'm used to Linux at my work, it was not comfortable enough to constantly set up an environment, and I installed Ubuntu, that is how it was.
-- Tell us please, what influenced you and what made you choose Perl when you were considering the languages to use. Or you don't think that you already did the choice?
-- There were no any selection of the language. There was a task, I don't remember exactly what that was. And it began in Perl, I did no choice.
-- How long do you program in Perl consciously?
-- I don't remember exactly. Since the institute, maybe since 2004 or 2005.
-- You are a productive programmer and create a few public projects a year.
-- The projects I do in my spare time, yes, I can call them productive.
-- How many projects in Perl are there in a year, did you ever count?
-- It's difficult to say. A random task comes, and there's no solution on CPAN. Indeed, it's a rare case but it leads to a new module or a site. I can't give you an exact number.
-- One of your recent projects that we saw is perltuts.com. What caused you to make it, what did you lack, why? How did the idea come?
-- I wanted to look at Ruby, they've got a site, RubyMonk, there're online lessons there, which you can quickly pass and lean Ruby basics. I thought it could be done in Perl too. And here it comes.
-- How many tutorials are there on Perltuts today?
-- Four or five, I believe.
-- So a newbie in Perl visits a site, and in future there will be a set of tasks to help with learning the language, right?
-- In theory, yes.
-- Interactive online tutorial.
-- Yes, indeed, this is the goal.
-- How can I add a lesson there? It there code on githib?
-- You can download every lesson and read it offline. The only value the site adds is that you can run a code sample there. You can easily download a POD file, examine its structure and create your own tutorial. You can't upload it at the moment, but you can ask me to do that. There is no site code on github yet, I was going to publish it, but had no time yet. To write a tutorial you don't need any code. Just make a simple POD and that's it.
-- OK, let's move on to the most interesting question. Tell us about the YAPC::Europe. What's on in 2013, there should be something very important, right?
-- Yes. It was announced during the last conference in Frankfurt that the next conference will be held in Kiev, and we work hard on it and would also like to see all the programmers from the CIS countries who was not able to come to the conference in Europe before because of different reasons. It is a unique opportunity to meet and see the famous Perl programmers, that's why we are very impatient. I hope everything will be great.
-- Is it right that the preparations are already in process? If so, how do they look like? Do you call the hotels and tell that you want to make a conference?
-- Sure. Before the bid for the city is published, we always need to find a few potential venues. There are a number of conditions and restrictions. Behind the venue stands the general city infrastructure which is considered, the cost of getting there, sightseeing areas etc., etc.
-- Who are the organisers of the conference?
-- Of course, it's Andrew Shitov who organise everything, Yaroslav Korshak and me, and also Anatoly Sharifulin who joined us recently. Thus there are four of us.
-- As the organisers, do you search for the venue, right? Look for sponsors?
-- Yes, everyone is doing what he can.
-- And the most intriguing: tell those who don't read your blog, who will come there?
-- We contacted (well, Andrew did) Larry Wall, Damian Conway and Matt S. Trout. I guess there's no need to explain who they are. And they preliminary agreed and look forward to coming to Kiev, thus we expect their plans won't change.
-- Did you also contact Sebastian Riedel?
-- No, we did not. As far as I remember from the past, he's strongly against attending any Perl events, so I even don't know if it's worth to invite him. Maybe someone will do that.
-- Back to your projects, in particular web projects, it's interesting to note that most of them are built with Dancer. Why Dancer and not Mojolicious which is so popular now?
-- In the past, my projects were based on Mojolicious, now on Dancer. Well, not everything, maybe a couple of them. This is because the projects are not difficult, and I need them to be stable and long-living.
-- As a framework, is it enough for you?
-- In commercial projects I use other frameworks, for sure, but for simple sites Dancer is just right.
-- What do you use in commercial projects?
-- There are custom frameworks with their application specifics suitable for particular tasks. There's nothing single and common at the moment. Every project uses some repeated basic functional but every one has its features.
-- Did you ever notice which function in your Perl code is most frequent?
-- A function? I don't use functions, I use methods only. Maybe it's a constructor :-)
-- What do you think of dependencies in Perl code? I mean, CPAN modules.
-- It's useful of course but again I'm not a fanatic here. If some narrow task is solved with a particular module with good history, why not save time and force. I only agree.
-- Can you recall which module was the first that you installed from CPAN?
-- No, it's difficult to remember. Template::Toolkit maybe.
-- So, still web?
-- Yes.
-- You are mostly a web programmer, aren't you?
-- Yes, mostly I am.
-- BTW, your blog appears to be in English. Why is it so?
-- Probably because the audience is bigger. It's a fact that there are more writings in English about Perl. Thus more chances to get a feedback.
-- So English is not a self-goal for you?
-- No, it is more like a method for getting bigger audience.
(Dmitry) -- Back to the CPAN. Is there a module that you as a developer use everywhere? Not counting Dancer, of course.
(Afiskon) -- I can name at least two. They are Try::Tiny and Carp.
(vti) -- I used Try::Tiny until I've read a discussion somewhere that it was slow, and now I use bare eval, and eval or do. It localises the variable with an error, and no problems usually arise. Try::Tiny doesn't solve the problem. To catch an exception you still need to write ifs, test isa class etc. There is also a nice module Error::Simple but unfortunately it is not maintained for a long time and nobody recommends to use it. But it offers the most handy interface for exceptions. No ifs, just a catch block, just name the classes and immediately get the block where you can handle an exception.
-- There is a language, called Perl 6, which is very very good for working with exceptions. As well with classes. I tried it, I liked it and even created three modules already. Did you try Perl 6 and what do you think about it?
-- I am positive about it. It is nice when something is developing and when a new language influences other languages and the industry in whole but it is not for use yet, there're no advantages yet.
-- We talked earlier to Andrew Shitov, who said that Perl 6 probably has no future [Did I say that?? -- Ash.] and it has done its job bringing new and useful ideas back to Perl 5. Do you think that the language has its future?
-- I also think it is not for use in production now but it's still possible to be a successful if not in production but in influence on Perl 5, other languages and other platforms. There are lots of positive things in those aspects. Thus it may be a bare academic languages, nothing dangerous in it.
-- Well, I think we've asked everything we wanted to today. Do you wish to tell something to our listeners?
-- I would like to invite everybody to the YAPC::Europe in Kiev in August. Try to find an opportunity to come. I think, there will be lot of fun and usefulness there.
-- It's almost in a year, isn't it?
-- Yes 49 weeks.
-- The countdown has started.
-- Right.
Written by vti.
As I am in the org team of the next YAPC::Europe in Kiev, I have some good news for you, fellow Perlers! But first a short note about the venue. We started going to the every venue (out of 7 selected previously), meeting the people there, getting all the details we need for choosing the best one. We have prepared an extensive list of the things that must be present, so we won't forget anything. As usual, if you have any suggestions what a venue of your dream must be ping us on twitter. And now to the fun part.
So far we have contacted Damian Conway, Larry Wall and Matt S. Trout and asked if they were interested in attending Kiev. And they kindly agreed! You know these prominent members of the Perl community! Also Matt will be giving a closing talk, I am sure you loved them from the previous years.
Kiev is a great place for Perl programmers from CIS who couldn't come to previous European Perl conferences due to visa issues or the distance. A good chance meeting people we know as authors of great software and books.
This is the end of today's, minus-49-weeks-before-the-conference newsletter. See you next week. Follow us on Twitter.
There are no dates for the YAPC::Europe 2013 announced yet but assuming a year contains 52 weeks and the conference is planned to happen in August, let's roughly estimate there are about 50 weeks before the conference. We'll just hot fix the numbering as soon as the dates are known.
So what's new about the conference. Believe me or not, we are not sitting and waiting for the end of June to start doing conference preparations :-) We've got intensive discussions in the mailing list to set up the roles among the organisers, launched internal wiki pages and made a brief research of some minor details.
In the following few weeks we will closely look at every of our seven venues that we have in mind. Just to list them:
The Ukrainian House, which is the most attractive by its location place (and thus it is the most expensive one). It's a big conference house somewhat similar to the Riga Congress Centre we had in 2011. Personally I find this place the best fit but let's see how it goes.
Master Class Cultural Center, having a bit messy name when translated to English, is a great place for medium-sized technical events and is located next to Kiev-Pechers'k Lavra.
President Hotel, the place where quite a few IT events were hosted before. It offers reconfigurable rooms which is quite awesome.
Parus Business Centre is a futuristically looking modern building with conference facilities, quite suitable for hosting the conference titled Future Perl.
European University has got a few rooms big enough for the size of the YAPC (not of ::Asia though) and equipment we need. I find that the universities are quite handy for our conferences, we had different events of the YAPC::Russia series, including those outside Russia and Ukraine, held in the universities and I was happy with that.
Conference Services Kiev. The name supposes that the place is specialised on hosting conferences, and indeed they have a number of rooms of different size but are located a bit far from the city centre (still reached by public transport).
Bratislava Hotel is our backup plan (if everything above fails). I'm afraid it is too small for the conference, having the biggest room with 250 seats (let's see if it is reconfigurable).
I hope that we will be strong enough to let ourselves primarily sort the venues not by prices.
This is the end of today's, minus-50-weeks-before-the-conference newsletter. See you next week. Follow us on Twitter.