Advanced Perl Workshop

by Visiting Instructor Dr. Damian Conway

July 15-19, 2002 Kirkland, WA REGISTER ME

Seminars

This five day workshop consists of four unique seminars covering important Perl topics presented by one of the foremost experts on the language, Dr. Damian Conway. Students may register for any or all of the following seminars:

July 15-16 Advanced Object-Oriented Perl

July 17 Advanced Module Implementation Techniques

July 18 Programming in Perl 6

Location and Accommodations

The seminars will be held at the La Quinta Inn in Kirkland, WA. The special rate for students is $82/night (plus tax); just mention that you'll be attending a Consultix class in the SeaHawks room, and that you'd like the NWSTC rate.

Prices

The price for each seminar is $550/day. Companies registering three or more students for the same class and paying by check or P.O. on a single billing will receive a 10% discount.

Seat Raffle

Consultix has long been a major sponsor of The Perl Foundation's (TPF's) underwriting of Perl Gurus Damian Conway, Larry Wall, and Dan Sugalski. So to encourage other members of The Perl Community (that means you!) to make tax-deductible donations to this worthy cause, we're giving away some free training with The Damian.

Two contributors have already won free seminars, on the basis of donations of $10 and $71, respectively. We'll be giving away at least one more free seat for one of The Damian's July seminars in Seattle in a drawing taking place on 7/10 (one free seat for the first $1 - $300 in donations, another for the next $300, etc.).

To participate, call us with your charge-card info or mail us a check made out to The Perl Foundation, and provide your snail-mail address, Email address, and phone number to Consultix for receipt by 5pm July 10. (We need your contact info to ensure the tax-deduction receipt gets back to you.) We'll forward your check to TPF, and notify the winners after July 10. Those wishing to use courier services please contact us for addressing information.

Remember, for each dollar you donate, you get one chance in the drawing, so the more you give, the greater your chances of winning!
The Fine Print: Final awards of free seats subject to clearance of TPF donation checks. Each winner only receives a free seat in a seminar; any expenses incurred to attend are their responsibility. For each free training day with Damian Conway that becomes unavailable (e.g., due to his illness) winners will be given two days in any future Consultix class in exchange. Winners may designate others to receive their prizes. Terms subject to change.

Social Program: Cruise and Dinner

To help students to get acquainted with each other and with Damian, and to prove to out-of-towners that not all water in Seattle flows vertically downward, we arranged a cruise of Lake Washington for Sunday afternoon (7/14), followed by dinner.

Click on the following photos of the Damiathon 2002 Cruise participants for larger images.

BEFORE adult beverages Now, who wants another?

Who Should Attend

Generally, these seminars are intended for those with Intermediate to Advanced skills and recent practical experience in Perl programming. Click on the titles of the individual seminars above to see topic outlines and details on prerequisites.

Some students may wish to prepare for the workshop by taking the Consultix Object Oriented Perl Fundamentals course in the preceding week, which covers References, Complex Data Structures, Packages, Module Development, and OO Perl basics.

Author & Instructor

Professional Background

Dr. Damian Conway holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and is a Senior Research Fellow with the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

He is a member of the technical committee for The Perl Conference, a columnist for The Perl Journal, author of the book Object Oriented Perl, a senior member of the Perl 6 Design Team, and a popular lecturer on Perl topics.

Why Study with Damian?

Dr. Damian Conway is an extremely clever, creative, witty, and entertaining lecturer. He has been aptly characterized as a cross between Donald Knuth and Monty Python.
(if you know what I mean, nudge-nudge/wink-wink)

The ratings he receives from students are routinely about as high as they could possibly be, and his presentations and tutorials at The Perl Conference have become so popular that major changes in the scheduling and duration of that event have been necessitated to accommodate his audience!

So once again, why study with Damian? Because he's so smart, such a good teacher, and so knowledgeable about the latest developments in Perl, that you'll learn so much your head will hurt (but in a GOOD way!).

What are his Perlistic Achievements?

Dr. Conway is the author of numerous well-known Perl modules including: Class::Contract, Text::Autoformat, Parse::RecDescent, Text::Balanced, Lingua::EN::Inflect, Class::Multimethods, Switch, Quantum::Superpositions, NEXT, Filter::Simple, Attribute::Handlers, Inline::Files, and Coy (all available from CPAN.

Some of Damian's modules enhance Perl's basic capabilities in such significant ways and with such widespread applications that they have been accepted as core components of the language for subsequent versions.

Damian was the winner of the 1998, 1999, and 2000 Larry Wall Award competitions for the most practical Perl utility program. To give others a chance to compete, he graciously retired from this competition in 2001, and now serves as the judge for the new, eponymously named, Damian Conway Award.

Early on, Damian demonstrated a unique ability to rapidly produce hordes of world-class Perl modules that extended the language in significant, sometimes provocative, and often mind-blowingly outrageous ways. The response of the Perl community to this ostentatious display of Perl acumen and prolificity was a grass-roots fund-raising effort to hire Damian to work full-time on guiding Perl into the 21st century. So in early 2001, Damian received the first ever YAS Perl Development Grant and spent the year working on projects for the betterment of the Perl language and programming community. He is continuing this work in 2002 under a similar grant from The Perl Foundation, and Consultix is proud to be a major sponsor of this effort.

Consultix instructors, including Visiting Instructor Dr. Damian Conway, are renowned for their ability to communicate complex concepts in simple terms and to make the study of dry technical material enjoyable. We pride ourselves in providing training experiences that our customers rave about!

Other Courses

We have courses on many other Perl and UNIX/Linux topics!