C++ and Beyond

Microsoft’s Channel  9 has just published the panel that Herb, Andrei, and I held on concurrency and parallelism.  Enjoy!

Scott

There will be a C++ and Beyond in 2012!

It will probably be in early August, but keep reading.

To be honest, the fact that there will be an all-new C&B next year should be news of the “Well, duh” variety, because Herb and Andrei and I have all made clear that we’d like to do another one.  Because we’re in charge, you’d think that’d settle the matter.  Unfortunately, things aren’t so simple.  We each keep busy schedules with obligations booked months in advance, so trying to find dates when we’re all available was a challenge. Also, Andrei and Herb have day jobs at technology juggernauts, so they had to coordinate things with their corporate masters. And we have survey data from past C&B attendees regarding the best time of year to hold the event, so we wanted to do something consistent with that. Just last night, we agreed that a suitable time would be the first half of August, ideally either August 5-8 or 12-15, but, again, keep reading.

It’s nice that the three of us have found common scheduling ground, but it’s kind of important to make sure that the venue hosting the event has availability, too.  That means we need to know where we’ll be holding C&B 2012, and we don’t yet.  We have decided that we won’t hold it in either of our previous locations. We had a wonderful time at both of them, but the meeting space at The Salish (site of C&B 2010) isn’t large enough, and the Banff Springs Hotel (site of C&B 2011) isn’t inside the USA, which our survey data revealed to be an issue for some people.

You can help us figure out where to hold it. Our current thinking is to host C&B 2012 somewhere in the eastern part of the United States.  Practically speaking, we’re looking for a venue similar to The Salish and The BSH:  hotel with good meeting support, four-starish amenities, outdoorsey location with nearby hiking opportunities, not too far from a reasonable airport. Bonus points if there are likely to be fireflies present during the event, because (1) I like fireflies, (2) they don’t exist where I live (near Portland, Oregon, and my entomology friend tells me that we actually do have fireflies here, they simply don’t glow, but, please, like that counts…), and (3) it’s my turn to choose where to hold C&B.  (Herb chose in 2010, and Andrei chose last year.) If you have a hotel suggestion you think we should look into, let us know.  If you can do a cursory check to see if they have a room that can seat at least 300 people classroom-style, that would be helpful, because that’s the kind of room we need.  Not because we plan to host 300 people.  We don’t.  We need a room of that size because (1) we set up our seating at 2/3rds the listed capacity so that you won’t be elbow-to-elbow with your neighbors during the technical sessions and (2) we got spoiled by the rear-projection display system we used in Banff, and that means we’d like a bunch of empty space behind the screen to allow for rear-projection capability.  (For those of you who attended last year, the listed capacity for the room we were in is 300.)

Once we have a venue, we’ll post here with specific dates and details, but we’re not likely to have that information for a while.  It takes time to find candidate locations, investigate them, haggle over terms and conditions, and finally sign a contract.  In the meantime, please hold the first half of next August for C&B 2012, which we’re already plotting to make sure will be the best C&B ever.

Scott