This time next week we will all be enjoying the London Perl Workshop. I thought it was worth looking at what the day has in store.

As always (well, except that one time when they had no power) the LPW will take place at the Cavendish Campus of the University of Westminster. I’m told there are exams or something like that taking place on the same day, so it’s important to follow the signs when you get there or you might end up in the wrong place being forced to take an exam.

The workshop starts at 9am, but registration queues can be quite long, so I’d recommend getting there half an hour or so earlier than that. If you get lucky and register quickly, then why not look for an organiser and volunteer to help out for a while.

You’ll want to be in the main room for the welcome address at 9am – just in case there’s any important news about the day. But the talks start at 9:10.

My ‎Modern Perl Web Development‎ course starts then. Hopefully it will be in my usual classroom. Alteratively, Andrew Solomon’s Crash course on Perl, the Universe and Everything‎ starts at the same time and goes on much longer. Or you might want to see some shorter courses. If I wasn’t running my training, I’d want to see Tom Hukins talking about ‎Escaping Insanity‎ and Rick Deller on Developing Your Brand – from a job seeker , Business to sole contractor/consultant‎ – he assures me that his slides are no longer the shocking pink he has used in previous years.

At 11:00 there’s a coffee break sponsored by Evozon. My training finishes at that point, so I’m free to see a few talks. Unfortunately, I want to see all of the talks in the next slot. I suspect I’ll end up seeing Neil Bowers’ Boosting community engagement with CPAN‎ and Smylers’ ‎Don’t Do That: Code Interface Mistakes to Avoid‎, but I could well be tempted into Aaron Crane’s Write-once data: writing Perl like Haskell‎ instead. Or, back on the workshop track, there’s Dominic Humphries on From can to can’t: An intro to functional programming‎. Just before lunch, I think I’ll see Neil Bowers again. This time he’s talking about Dependencies and the River of CPAN‎.

After lunch there’s another session where I want to see everything. I’d love to see Stevan Little talking about his latest iteration of the p5-mop, but I suspect I’ll end up seeing Leon Brocard on Making your website seem faster‎ followed by Kaitlyn Parkhurst on Project Management For The Solo Developer‎. Dominic’s functional programming workshop continues after lunch and is joined by John Davies and Martin Berends talking about Parallel Processing Performed Properly in Perl on Pi‎.

The big talk after the next short break is going to be Matt Trout on A decade of dubious decisions‎ but it’s another I’ll miss as I’m talking about Conference Driven Publishing‎ in another room during the second half of it. During the first half I’d recommend Steve Mynott’s ‎Perl 6 Grammars‎. But, I saw him practice it at a recent London Perl Mongers technical meeting, so I’ll be seeing Andrew Solomon explaining How to grow a Perl team‎. In the workshop stream, Christian Jaeger will be covering Functional Programming on Perl‎.

Then there’s another coffee break (this time sponsored by Perl Careers) and then we’re into the last few sessions. In the first you have a choice between Jeff Goff on ‎From Regular Expressions to Parsing JavaScript: Learn Perl6 Grammars‎ and Theo van Hoesel on ‎Dancer2 REST assured‎. I think I’ll be in Theo’s talk.

These are followed by Jonathan Worthington’s keynote – The end of the beginning‎ and the lightning talks. It will, no doubt, be a great end to a fabulous day.

The London Perl Workshop is always a great day a learning about Perl and catching up with old friends. And because of the brilliant sponsors, it doesn’t cost the attendees a penny.

If you’re going to be near London next weekend and you have any interest in Perl, then why not register and come along?

Here’s a brief video of last year’s workshop.

Also published on Medium.