A Boston Lisp Meeting will take place on Tuesday, May 26th 2009 at 1800 at MIT 34-401B, where Norman Ramsey will speak about Using Higher-Order Functions and Continuation-Passing Style to Make Dataflow Optimization Simple.

Additionally, we are still accepting proposals for up to two volunteers to each give of a 5-minute Lightning Talk (followed by 2-minute Q&A).

Also, there will be a buffet offered by ITA Software. Registration is not necessary but appreciated. See details below.

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Norman Ramsey will talk about Using Higher-Order Functions and Continuation-Passing Style to Make Dataflow Optimization Simple.

Norman Ramsey's research spans theory (a foundational model for probabilistic programming languages) and practice (methods for making code generators reusable). While he has contributed to a variety of topics in programming languages and software engineering, his primary interests lie in functional programming and programming-language infrastructure. His introduction to functional programming came on a Symbolics Lisp machine, but shortly afterward he was seduced by the beauty of algebraic data types and pattern matching. These days his favorite programmable programming systems are Haskell (look! it has Prolog in the type checker and will generate your code for you!) and Lua (the best of scripting, metaobjects, and C rolled up into a tiny package). He is currently Associate Professor of computer science at Tufts University, a job which he enjoys tremendously except that it does not leave him time for enough programming.

His website is at http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/

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Having observed the success of the formula at ILC'2009, we have instituted Lightning Talks at the Boston Lisp Meeting. At every meeting, before the main talk, there are two slots for strictly timed 5-minute talks followed by 2-minute for questions and answers.

The slots for next meeting are still open. Step up and come talk about your pet project!

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The Lisp Meeting will take place on Tuesday May 26th 2009 at 1800 (6pm) at MIT, Room 34-401B.

Note that the meeting will not take place as usual on the last Monday of the Month, but on the next day, Tuesday. Indeed, that last Monday of May is Memorial Day, a holiday, and the next day thus makes do as a "Virtual Monday".

As the numbers indicate, the room is in Building 34, on the 4th floor. This is the usual location, on 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge.

MIT map: http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?selection=34

Google map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=50+Vassar+St,+Cambridge,+MA+02139,+USA

Many thanks go to Alexey Radul for arranging for the room, and to MIT for welcoming us.

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Dinner : ITA Software, a fine employer of Lisp hackers (disclaimer: I work there), is kindly purchasing a buffet to accompany our monthly Boston Lisp meeting. Anyone who attends is welcome to partake.

We appreciate it if you let us know you're coming, and what food taboos you have, so that we can order the correct amount and kind of food. Tell us by sending email to boston-lisp-meeting-register at common-lisp.net . We won't send any acknowledgement unless requested; importantly, we'll keep your identity and address confidential and won't communicate any such information to anyone, not even to our sponsors.

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The previous Boston Lisp Meeting on April 27th had 35 participants. Noah Goodman gave a talk about Lambda the Ultimate Gamble. Alan Bawden also gave a Lightning Talk about a better proposed representation for quasiquotes.

In the near future, we expect to have Bruce Lewis on 2009-06-29 about BRL and ourdoings.com, Emmanuel Schanzer on 2009-08-31 about bootstrapworld.org, Christine Flood on some undetermined date about Fortress.

We're always looking for more speakers. The call for speakers and all the other details are at http://fare.livejournal.com/120393.html Volunteers to give Lightning Talks are also sought.

For more information, see our new web site boston-lisp.org. For posts related to the Boston Lisp meetings in general, follow this link: http://fare.livejournal.com/tag/boston-lisp-meeting or subscribe to our RSS feed: http://fare.livejournal.com/data/rss?tag=boston-lisp-meeting

Please forward this information to people you think would be interested. Please accept my apologies for your receiving this message multiple times. My apologies if this announce gets posted to a list where it shouldn't, or fails to get posted to a list where it should. My apologies for the lateness of this announcement. Feedback welcome by private email reply to fare@tunes.org.