Author sightings, partner events, and other notable happenings.

Author Appearances

• 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,” Apprenticeship Birds of a Feather
  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 24–27, Tek 2011, Chicago, IL
  “Pragmatic Guide to Git,” “Git’s Meat Cleavers: Rebasing, bisecting, and other fun with Git”
  Travis Swicegood, author of Pragmatic Version Control Using Git
• 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
  “Hello! Groovy,” “Grails: Bringing Radical Productivity to the JVM,” Apprenticeship Birds of a Feather
  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 21–24, Open Source Bridge, Portland, OR
  “How 5 People with 4 Day Jobs in 3 Time Zones Enjoyed 2 Years Writing 1 Book” (solo) and “Give a Great Tech Talk” (with Josh Berkus)
  Ian Dees, author of Scripted Gui Testing with Ruby
• June 27–28, GR8 Conference, Minneapolis, MN
  Grails Workshop
  Dave Klein, author of Grails: A Quick-Start Guide
• June 28, Better Software 2011, Florence, Italy
  “Java Viene da Marte, Ruby da Venere” (in Italian)
  Paolo Perrotta, the author of Metaprogramming Ruby
• July 12–15, UberConf, Denver, CO
  “Uber Groovy,” “Grails: Bringing Radical Productivity to the JVM,” Apprenticeship Birds of a Feather
  Dave Klein, author of Grails: A Quick-Start Guide
• July 25–29, OSCON, Portland, OR
  “Projects and Community With Github”
  Andy Lester, author of Land the Tech Job You Love

O’Reilly Events

• 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.”
• July 25–29, OSCON, Portland, OR
  O’Reilly Open Source Convention: “Join today’s open source innovators, builders, and pioneers as they gather at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, to share their expertise and experience, explore new ideas, and inspire each other.”

USENIX Events

What’s coming from our USENIX friends.

• 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.”
• July 11–12, APSys 2011, Shanghai, China
  The 2nd ACM SIGOPS Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems “will be a forum for systems researchers and practitioners across the world to present their work in computer systems (broadly defined) and for locals in Asian/Pacific region to meet, interact, and collaborate with top researchers in the field.”

Other Happenings

• 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.
• July 2
  Gordon Letwin, one of first dozen Microsoft employees and lead Microsoft architect on OS/2, is 59.
• July 5
  Linguist Victor Yngve, creator of COMIT, the first string processing language, is 91.
• July 6
  Adi Shamir, the S of the RSA encryption algorithm, is 59.
• July 7
  Smalltalk co-creator Adele Goldberg is 66.
• July 8
  Weddings of titled Britons being much in the news recently, we thought we’d mention that on this day in 1835, Ada Augusta Byron, daughter of the poet Lord Byron and his wife, Anne Isabella “Annabella” Milbanke, Baroness Wentworth, married William King, 8th Baron King, later 1st Earl of Lovelace. Later, Ada Lovelace wrote a detailed method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers with irascible genius inventor Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which Wikipedia assures us “would have run correctly had the Analytical Engine been built.” Which makes Ada the world’s first computer programmer.
• July 9
  Marc Andreessen is 40.
• July 10
  Legendary game designer Scott Adams is 59.
• July 16
  Dan Bricklin is 60.
• July 22
  Alan Cox, early Linux kernel contributor, is 43.
• July 24
  Al Lowe, creator of Leisure Suit Larry series of computer games, is 65.
• July 26
  Hakon Wium Lie, creator of Cascading Style Sheets, is 46.
• July 29
  James Duncan Davidson is 41.