Last year was the first installment of this argentinian Smalltalk conference. Now, a group is preparing the 2008 version. This is the site (Seaside based) and annoucement:

Smalltalks 2008 – 2nd Argentinian Smalltalk Conference

This year’s conference will take place on the 13th, 14th and 15th of November on the Universidad Abierta Interamericana, Av. Montes de Oca 745, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Like the 2007 conference, the registration will be free of charge. This year we are willing to offer new activities. For this reason we open the calls for: Talks The conference will have two tracks, one on Scientific Research and other on Software Development for Industries. Programming Contest This year we will host a programming contest, encompassing all Smalltalks dialects. Keynotes Guest lectures by outstanding personalities. Hands on Tutorial sessions.

There is a call for papers (PDF version), about topics:

Aspects, Aspect Languages and Applications.

Ambient Intelligence, Ubiquitous / Pervasive Computing and Embedded Systems.

Compilation Technology, Optimization, Virtual Machines.

Educational Material.

Language Engineering, Extensions.

Model Driven Engineering / Development.

Meta-Modeling.

Programming in the Large, Design, Architectures and Components.

Programming Environments, Browsers, User Interfaces, UI Frameworks.

Reasoning About Code (Analyses, Refactoring, Type Inference, Metrics).

Reflection and Meta-programming.

Team management.

Testing, Extreme Programming / Practices.

Web Services, Internet Applications, Event-driven Programming.

Experience Reports.

Interesting, this year they are extending the scope of the research and educational track to include other dynamic languages, not only Smalltalk. They have an impressive Program Committee:

Federico Balaguer (LIFIA, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina)

Tulio Ballari (UTN, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Alexandre Bergel (INRIA, Lille, France)

Gilad Bracha (Cadence Design Systems, USA)

Johan Brichau (Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium)

Cecilia Challiol (LIFIA, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina)

Marcus Denker (SCG, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Fernando Dodino (UTN, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Stéphane Ducasse (INRIA, Lille, France)

Alejandra Garrido (LIFIA, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina)

Tudor Girba (SCG, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Orla Greevy (SCG, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Julián Grigera (LIFIA, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina)

Andy Kellens (PROG, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium)

Kim Mens (Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium)

Guillermo Adrián Molina (ESSI Projects, Spain)

Damien Pollet (INRIA, Lille, France)

David Röthlisberger (SCG, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Daniel Solmirano (UTN, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Tom Van Cutsem (PROG, Vrije Universeit Brussels, Belgium)

Roel Wuyts (IMEC, Belgium)

Smalltalk is a technology that, in my opinion, failed to crossing the chasm. At late 80s, early 90s, the community was divided in many diverging dialects and commercial implementations. But it has impetus and loyalty members, as was proved last year, here, in Argentina, with the success of the last year conference. I hope Smalltalk could integrate with other technologies, like .NET and Java, in order to gain more momentum and acceptance. See, as an example, F# adoption in scientific community: the access to a popular class framework is a key feature in today mainstream. Insisting in one world, one language attitude is not an option, nowadays. I celebrate, then, the open of the above call for papers to other dynamic languages.

Angel “Java” Lopez

http://www.ajlopez.com/en