Author sightings, partner events, and other notable happenings.

MIT is 150 years old this year, and they’re throwing a party! Well, a symposium, really. If you happen to be in Cambridge April 11–12, you have an opportunity to see some computer pioneers, like Patrick Wiston, Ron Rivest, Butler Lampson, Rodney Brooks, and Tim Berners-Lee.

Author Appearances

• Apr 5–7, QAI, QUEST 2011, Boston, MA
  Tutorial: “Coaching as a Two-Way Relationship,” and talk: “It’s the People; It’s Always the People”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Apr 6, Orbitz headquarters, Chicago, IL
  HTML5
  Brian Hogan, the author of Web Design for Developers and HTML5 and CSS3
• Apr 6–8, 33degree , Krakow, Poland
  Keynote plus talks on JVM languages
  Venkat Subramaniam, the author of Practices of an Agile Developer, Programming Groovy, and Programming Scala
• Apr 6–8, Scottish Ruby Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland
  Speaking
  Chad Fowler, author of The Passionate Programmer
• Apr 7, Scottish Ruby Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland
  Charity tutorial
  Chad Fowler, author of The Passionate Programmer
• Apr 9, Twin Cities Code Camp 10, Minneapolis, MN
  “Introduction to Advanced Ruby”
  Brian Hogan, the author of Web Design for Developers and HTML5 and CSS3
• Apr 9–10, Voices That Matter: iPhone Developers Conference, Seattle, WA
  “Advanced Media Manipulation with AV Foundation”
  Chris Adamson, author of iPhone SDK Development
• Apr 9–10, CodeConf, San Francisco, CA
  “Project and Community Management with Github”
  Andy Lester, author of Land the Tech Job You Love
• Apr 10, ?
  “Turning Passion Into Words—Tips, Tricks, and Tools for Aspiring Authors”
  Brian Hogan, the author of Web Design for Developers and HTML5 and CSS3
• Apr 10, railscampPolska, Wista, Poland
  “Getting Started with Elixir: Simple object orientation and charming on top of Erlang”
  José Valim, author of Crafting Rails Applications
• Apr 10–14, COLLABORATE 11, Orlando , FL
  “SQL Injection Myths and Fallacies,” “Models for Hierarchical Data with SQL and PHP,” “Scalable Architecture and Design for MySQL,” and “SQL Antipatterns: The Next Generation”
  Bill Karwin, author of SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming
• Apr 11–13, JAX London, London, England
  Keynote (Tuesday 12) on “Deliberate Discovery and Programming Patterns”
  Dan North, co-author of The RSpec Book
• Apr 12, Software Quality User Group of New England, Burlington, MA
  “Agile Testing and Test Management: Where Do They Fit?”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Apr 13, DevTank , London, England
  “Java is from Mars, Ruby is from Venus”
  Paolo Perrotta, the author of Metaprogramming Ruby
• Apr 13, SHRUG, Stockholm, Sweden
  “Oniguruma—new regex engine in Ruby”
  Staffan Nøteberg, author of Pomodoro Technique Illustrated
• Apr 15, GLSEC Conference, Grand Rapids, MI
  Keynote: “Thriving in a Competitive Marketplace”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Apr 15–16, Southern California Software Symposium, Los Angeles, CA
  “Rediscovering Apprenticeship in the 21st Century” and “Grails: Bringing Radical Productivity to the JVM”
  Dave Klein, author of Grails: A Quick-Start Guide
• Apr 16, GLSEC, Grand Rapids, MI
  Keynote: “Thriving in a Competitive Marketplace”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Apr 16, ACCU conference, Oxford, UK
  “Overcoming Resistance to New Ideas/Breaking through the Brick Wall”
  Rachel Davies, co-author of Agile Coaching
• May 16, BohConf, Baltimore, MD
  “Getting Started with Elixir: Simple object orientation and charming on top of Erlang”
  José Valim, author of Crafting Rails Applications
• May 16–19, RailsConf 2011, Baltimore, MD
  “SOLID Design Principles behind the Rails 3 Refactoring”
  José Valim, author of Crafting Rails Applications
• Apr 17, Chennai Java User Group, Chennai, India
  Talk on JVM Languages
  Venkat Subramaniam, the author of Practices of an Agile Developer, Programming Groovy, and Programming Scala
• Apr 18–21, Pragmatic Studios, Denver, CO
  “iPhone/iPad Programming” with Mike Clark
  Daniel Steinberg, co-author of iPad Programming: A Quick-Start Guide for iPhone Developers and author of Cocoa Programming: A Quick-Start Guide for Developers
• Apr 19–22, Great Indian Developer Summit, Bangalore, India
  Keynote plus talks on Java, RichWeb and .NET related topics
  Venkat Subramaniam, the author of Practices of an Agile Developer, Programming Groovy, and Programming Scala
• Apr 20, ASP.net Boston User Group, Waltham, MA
  “Overcoming Some Pitfalls of Transitioning to Agile”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Apr 21, Boston Product Management Association, Waltham, MA
  Panelist for “Is Agile Development for You?”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Apr 21, Red Dirt RubyConf, Oklahoma City, OK
  “Using BDD in JavaScript from Ruby”
  Noel Rappin, author of Rails Test Prescriptions
• Apr 22–23, RedDot RubyConf, Singapore
  Speaking
  Chad Fowler, author of The Passionate Programmer
• Apr 22–23, RedDot Ruby Conference, Singapore
  Speaking
  Dave Thomas, Pragmatic Programmer
• Apr 25, Blazing Cloud, San Francisco, CA
  Online and in-person class
  Sarah Allen, author of the forthcoming Test First Rails
• Apr 26, Mongo Philly, Philadelphia, PA
  MongoDB Administration
  Brendan McAdams, author of the forthcoming MongoDB: A Quick Start Guide
• Apr 27, MarkLogic User Conference, San Francisco, CA
  “REST with MarkLogic: Getting the Balance Right”
  Ron Hitchens, the author of Getting Started with XQuery
• Apr 27, Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise, Philadelphia, PA
  “Mary Poppins Meets the Matrix: Seven Programming Languages at the Cinema”
  Bruce Tate, the author of From Java to Ruby and Seven Languages in Seven Weeks
• Apr 27–28, Emerging Tech Conference, Philadelphia, PA
  “Say Yes—or Say No? What to Do When Faced with the Impossible”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Apr 30, No Fluff Just Stuff, Reston, VA
  Talks on JVM languages, concurrency, and testing
  Venkat Subramaniam, the author of Practices of an Agile Developer, Programming Groovy, and Programming Scala
• May 5, The Skills Matter eXchange, London, England
  2-day training course on MongoDB (mainly focused for DBAs and Ops staff)
  Brendan McAdams, author of the forthcoming MongoDB: A Quick Start Guide
• May 5, Agile New England, Waltham, MA
  “Agile Program Management: Is Large Agile an Oxymoron?”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• May 10–13, XP2011 , Madrid, Spain
  “Still No Silver Bullets”
  Esther Derby, coauthor of Behind Closed Doors and Agile Retrospectives
• May 10–13, XP2011, Madrid, Spain
  Keynote
  Brian Marick, author of Programming Cocoa with Ruby and Everyday Scripting with Ruby
• May 12, XP2011, Madrid, Spain
  Park Bench Discuss: “Grumpy Old Agile Coaches”
  Rachel Davies, co-author of Agile Coaching
• May 13, XP2011 , Madrid, Spain
  hands-on coding workshop, “Extreme Startup,” with Robert Chatley
  Matt Wynne
• May 13, GeeCON 2011, Krakow, Poland
  “Regex—the Future Programmer’s Best Friend”
  Staffan Nøteberg, author of Pomodoro Technique Illustrated
• May 13–15, Gateway Software Symposium, St. Louis, MO
  “Hello! Groovy”
  Dave Klein, author of Grails: A Quick-Start Guide
• May 15–20, Full. Email Johanna for slots in August.
  Problem Solving Leadership Workshop with Jerry Weinberg and Esther Derby
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• May 16, RailsConf Baltimore, Baltimore, MD
  “Building Bulletproof Views”
  John M. Athayde and Bruce Williams, who are writing The Rails View for the Pragmatic Bookshelf
• May 16–19, RailsConf, Baltimore, MD
  “Test Your Legacy Code”
  Noel Rappin, author of Rails Test Prescriptions
• May 16–19, RailsConf, Baltimore, MD
  TBD
  Chad Fowler, author of The Passionate Programmer
• May 17, RailsConf 2011, Baltimore, MD
  “The Holy Grail (of Databases)”
  Eric Redmond, author of the forthcoming Seven Databases in Seven Weeks
• May 18, DevSum 2011, Stockholm, Sweden
  “Regex—the Future Programmer’s Best Friend”
  Staffan Nøteberg, author of Pomodoro Technique Illustrated
• May 28–29, RubyConf India, Bangalore, India
  TBD
  Chad Fowler, author of The Passionate Programmer
• May 28–29, European Ruby Conference, Berlin, Germany
  “The Revenge of method_missing()”
  Paolo Perrotta, the author of Metaprogramming Ruby
• May 28–29, Euroko 2011, Berlin, Germany
  “Writing your own Programming Language to Understand Ruby Better”
  José Valim, author of Crafting Rails Applications
• Jun 5–6, Better Software Conference/Agile Development West, Las Vegas, NV
  Agile Architecture workshop with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Jun 6–10, Better Software Conference/Agile Development West, Las Vegas, NV
  Speaking
  Pragmatic Programmer Andy Hunt
• Jun 7, Better Software Conference/Agile Development West, Las Vegas, NV
  Agile Program Management for Agile and Non-Agile Projects
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Jun 7, Mongo NYC, Ney York, New York
  TBD
  Brendan McAdams, author of the forthcoming MongoDB: A Quick Start Guide
• Jun 7–8, agical, Stockholm Sweden
  “TDD in Clojure”
  Brian Marick, author of Programming Cocoa with Ruby and Everyday Scripting with Ruby
• Jun 8–9, Better Software Conference/Agile Development West, Las Vegas, NV
  “Faltering Projects: Getting Them Back on Track”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Jun 10–12, Central Ohio Software Symposium, Columbus, OH
  “Grails Deep Dive” and “Rediscovering Apprenticeship in the 21st Century”
  Dave Klein, author of Grails: A Quick-Start Guide
• Jun 13, SPA Conference, London, England
  Workshop: “Improving Trust in Teams”
  Rachel Davies, co-author of Agile Coaching
• Jun 16–18, Ruby Kaigi, Tokyo, Japan
  Keynote
  Pragmatic Programmer Dave Thomas
• Jun 19–23, Ignite Outsourcing, Tel Aviv, Israel
  “Making Geographically Distributed Agile Work,” “Agile Program Management,” and “Agile for Executives: A Half-Day Briefing”
  Johanna Rothman, author of Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Jun 26–30, KSCOPE 11, Long Beach CA
  “SQL Injection Myths and Fallacies”
  Bill Karwin, author of SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming

O’Reilly Events

• Apr 11–14, MySQL Conference & Expo, Santa Clara, CA
  MySQL Conference & Expo: “The O’Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo is committed to spreading the latest and best knowledge on MySQL and related technologies to the global community of DBAs, developers, and managers. You’ll find answers to your questions about MySQL in an independent and inclusive environment. You’ll also find practical guidance to help you add value and manage costs to your project or organization.”
• Apr 19–21, Where 2.0, Santa Clara, CA
  O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference: “Where 2.0 brings together the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location ecosystem. Join with developers, technologists, CTOs, researchers, geographers, academics, business developers, and entrepreneurs to debate what’s critical now, and what’s pushing the boundaries of the location frontier.”
• May 16–19, RailsConf, Baltimore, MD
  RailsConf: “Co-produced by Ruby Central and O'Reilly Media, RailsConf is the official and largest gathering of the Ruby on Rails community. RailsConf incorporates keynotes, sessions, and tutorials to arm participants with the knowledge and skills they need to capitalize on the wealth of services and opportunities the Rails framework has to offer.”
• May 21–22, Maker Faire 2011, San Mateo, CA
  Maker Faire 2011: “A two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates arts, crafts, engineering, and science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It's for creative, resourceful people who like to tinker and love to make things. We call them Makers.”
• June 14–16, O’Reilly Velocity Conference, Santa Clara, CA
  Velocity: “Web performance and operations, once the secret sauce of elite Web companies, are now essential ingredients in every company’s online strategy. The business value of ‘fast and reliable’ has been established, and stakeholders are demanding more and better results now. Get the skills and tools you need to master this ever-shifting, increasingly complex domain at Velocity.”

USENIX Events

What’s coming from our USENIX friends.

• Apr 10–13, EuroSys11, Salzburg, Austria
  European Conference on Computer Systems: “The EuroSys conference series brings together professionals from academia and industry. It has a strong focus on systems research and development: operating systems, data base systems, real-time systems and middleware for networked, distributed, parallel, or embedded computing systems. EuroSys has become a premier forum for discussing various issues of systems software research and development, including implications related to hardware and applications.”
• May 8–10, HotOS XIII, Napa, CA
  HotOS XIII: “Three days of active interaction among innovative practitioners and researchers in computing systems, broadly construed. Continuing the HotOS tradition, participants will present and discuss new ideas about computer systems research and how technological advances and new applications are shaping our computational infrastructure.”
• May 26–27, HotPar '11, Berkeley, CA
  3rd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Parallelism: “HotPar '11 will bring together researchers and practitioners doing innovative work in the area of parallel computing. HotPar recognizes the broad impact of multicore computing and seeks relevant contributions in all fields, including application design, languages and compilers, systems, and architecture.”
• Jun 14, HotCloud '11, Portland, OR
  3rd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing: Part of 2011 USENIX Federated Conferences Week. “Back for 2011, USENIX is combining established conferences and new workshops into a week of research, trends, and community interaction.”
• June 14, HotStorage '11, Portland, OR
  3rd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems: Part of 2011 USENIX Federated Conferences Week. “Back for 2011, USENIX is combining established conferences and new workshops into a week of research, trends, and community interaction.”
• June 14, WIOV '11, Portland, OR
  3rd Workshop on I/O Virtualization: Part of 2011 USENIX Federated Conferences Week. “Back for 2011, USENIX is combining established conferences and new workshops into a week of research, trends, and community interaction.”
• June 15–17, USENIX ATC '11, Portland, OR
  2011 USENIX Annual Technical Conference: Part of 2011 USENIX Federated Conferences Week. “Back for 2011, USENIX is combining established conferences and new workshops into a week of research, trends, and community interaction.”
• Jun 15–16, WebApps '11, Portland, OR
  2nd USENIX Conference on Web Application Development: Part of 2011 USENIX Federated Conferences Week. “Back for 2011, USENIX is combining established conferences and new workshops into a week of research, trends, and community interaction.”
• Jun 20–21, TaPP '11, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
  3rd USENIX Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Provenance: “The workshop may cover any topic related to theoretical or practical aspects of provenance, including but not limited to: provenance in databases, work flows, programming languages, security, software engineering, or systems; provenance on the Web; or real-world applications of or requirements for provenance.”
• Jun 28–Jul 1, MobiSys 2011, Washington, DC
  The 9th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services: “MobiSys 2011 seeks to present innovative and significant research on the design, implementation, usage, and evaluation of mobile computing and wireless systems, applications, and services. It is jointly sponsored by ACM SIGMOBILE and the USENIX association in cooperation with ACM SIGOPS.”

Other Happenings

• Apr 4
  Larry Page takes over as Google CEO.
• Apr 5
  SATAN’s father, Dan Farmer, is 49.
• Apr 5
  Inventor Dean Kamen is 60.
• Apr 6
  MacOS co-creator Andy Hertzfeld is 58.
• Apr 9
  ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert was born on this date in 1919.
• Apr 9
  SQLite architect D. Richard Hipp is 50.
• Apr 14
  Ruby designer Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz) is 46.
• Apr 18
  PUGS project initiator Audrey Tang is 30.
• Apr 20
  Chief Yahoo David Filo is 45.
• Apr 22
  Psychedlic ruminant-fancying game designer Jeff Minter (Yak) is 49.
• Apr 24
  Champion of modelessness Larry Tesler is 66.
• Apr 28
  Mathematician Kurt Gödel was born on this date in 1906.
• Apr 30
  Information theory pioneer Claude Shannon was born on this date in 1916.
• Apr 30
  Colossal Cave Adventure creator Don Woods is 57.
• Apr 30
  The World Wide Web is 18.
• May
  In May, 1980, Erno Rubik’s puzzle started selling internationally under the name “Rubik’s Cube.”
• May 1
  2006 MacArthur Fellow Jim Fruchterman is 52.
• May 2
  Protoblogger Dave Winer is 56.
• May 3
  Simon Tatham, known for playing with PuTTY, is 34.
• May 8
  jQuery creator John Resig got to age 27 one day ahead of Mark Zuckerberg.
• May 9
  Red Hat founder Marc Ewing is 42.
• May 11
  Edsger Dijkstra’s 81st birthday.
• May 14
  Zillionaire entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg is 27.
• May 17
  Youthful Alan Kay is 71(!)
• May 19
  Today is the tenth anniversary of the opening of the first Apple retail stores. Also, Java daddy James Gosling is 56 today; Theo de Raadt, founding member of NetBSD and founder of OpenBSD and OpenSSH, is 43; SNOBOL creator Ralph Griswold would have turned 77 today; and CP/M inventor Gary Kildall would have turned 69.
• May 26
  Ward Cunningham is 62.
• May 27
  PEZ was trademarked on this date in 1952.
• May 28
  Networking hotshot Adam Dunkels is 33.
• May 29
  62nd birthday of shareware co-creator Bob Wallace.
• May 31
  John Kemeny was born on this day in 1926.
• June
  In this month in 2011, Facebook will move into former Sun Microsystems digs in Menlo Park, CA.
• June
  In this month in 1957, computer science legend Donald Knuth published his first article, “Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures,” in Mad Magazine.
• June 1
  Tim Paterson, whose operating system made Bill Gates a jillionaire, is 55.
• June 3
  One year ago today, Toro Iwatani was recognized by Guiness World Records for his game Pac-Man having the most coin-operated arcade machines installed worldwide: 293,822.
• June 8
  Tim Berners-Lee is 56.
• June 23
  Vint Cerf is 68.
• June 23
  Mathematica is 23.
• June 28
  Firefox co-creator Dave Hyatt is 29.
• June 30
  Lynne Jolitz is 50.