Fellow North West Functional Programmers (ok, I live in Portland)

I hope some of you are aware of the annual Commercial Users of
Functional Programming workshop. If not, let me recommend it to you
as a great place to learn about how people are apply functional
programming to real world problems. If you've been working on real
world applications in a functional language I'd strongly encourage you
to consider giving a presentation on it.

This year the workshop is in Edinburgh, so, not local. Still, perhaps
microsofties on this list can figure out how to do it as a side trip
tacked on a visit to MSR Cambridge to learn more about F#.

Kind regards

Jim Grundy

Commercial Users of Functional Programming Workshop (CUFP) 2009

Functional Programming As a Means, Not an End

Call for Presentations

Sponsored by SIGPLAN
Co-located with ICFP 2009

Edinburgh, Scotland, 4 September 2009
__________________________________________________________

Presentation proposals due 15 May 2009

http://cufp.galois.com/2009/call.html
__________________________________________________________

Functional languages have been under academic development for
over 25 years, and remain fertile ground for programming
language research. Recently, however, developers in industrial,
governmental, and open-source projects have begun to use
functional programming successfully in practical applications.
In these settings, functional programming has often provided
dramatic leverage, including whole new ways of thinking about
the original problem.

The goal of the CUFP workshop is to act as a voice for these
users of functional programming. The workshop supports the
increasing viability of functional programming in the
commercial, governmental, and open-source space by providing a
forum for professionals to share their experiences and ideas,
whether those ideas are related to business, management, or
engineering. The workshop is also designed to enable the
formation and reinforcement of relationships that further the
commercial use of functional programming. Providing user
feedback to language designers and implementors is not a
primary goal of the workshop, though it will be welcome if it
occurs.

Speaking at CUFP

If you use functional programming as a means, rather than as an
end, we invite you to offer to give a talk at the workshop.
Alternatively, if you know someone who would give a good talk,
please nominate them!

Talks are typically 25 minutes long, but can be shorter. They
aim to inform participants about how functional programming
played out in real-world applications, focusing especially on
the re-usable lessons learned, or insights gained. Your talk
does not need to be highly technical; for this audience,
reflections on the commercial, management, or software
engineering aspects are, if anything, more important. You do
not need to submit a paper!

If you are interested in offering a talk, or nominating someone
to do so, send an e-mail to francesco(at)erlang-consulting(dot)com
or jim(dot)d(dot)grundy(at)intel(dot)com by 15 May 2009 with a
short description of what you'd like to talk about or what you
think your nominee should give a talk about. Such descriptions
should be about one page long.

Program Plans

CUFP 2009 will last a full day and feature a keynote
presentation from Bryan O'Sullivan, co-author of Real World
Haskell. The program will also include a mix of presentations
and discussion sessions. Topics will range over a wide area,
including:
* Case studies of successful and unsuccessful uses of functional
programming;
* Business opportunities and risks from using functional languages;
* Enablers for functional language use in a commercial setting;
* Barriers to the adoption of functional languages, and
* Mitigation strategies for overcoming limitations of functional
programming.

There will be no published proceedings, as the meeting is
intended to be more a discussion forum than a technical
interchange.

This will be the sixth CUFP, for more information - including
reports from attendees of previous events and video of recent
talks - see the workshop web site: http://cufp.galois.com/
__________________________________________________