On September 23-26 in Astoria, Oregon, I'll be participating in a C++ event that
I hope you'll find intriguing. The event is kind of hard to describe, because
it's sort of a conference, sort of a workshop, sort of a party.

Fundamentally, five people who know more about C++ than is probably healthy --
Andrei Alexandrescu, Dave Abrahams, Walter Bright, Eric Niebler, and me -- are
going to get together at a boutique hotel (the Hotel Elliot) and nifty meeting
space (the Banker's Suite) and talk serious C++ with the 55 people who choose to
attend. Breakfast is provided, so the talk starts early. After breakfast,
there will be some lecturing or interactive workshops (depending on who's
running the session). Topics are all over the C++ map: memory management,
expression templates, callbacks for C APIs, compiler internals, generic program
design. Then we'll have lunch. It's also provided, so there will be no
interruption to the flow of the conversation. After lunch, it's back to
immersive technical sessions. We'll all need a break after that, but in the
evenings something really interesting happens: we all return to the Banker's
Suite to hang out and talk. Or code. Or whatever. No formal sessions are
scheduled, but all five of us will be there, so if you want to talk code
generation with Walter, he'll be happy to do it. Want Eric to explain
expression templates to you -- or maybe his compile-time regex engine? He's on
board with that. Wonder what Andrei is doing for his PhD research or what new
tricks Dave has in mind for his Boost Python library? Ask 'em. I'll be there,
too, telling you what new book I'm hoping to write. (I'm always hoping to write
a new book, so this topic is always valid :-})

If this sounds like your kind of event, I encourage you to visit the Seminar web
site to learn more: http://www.astoriaseminar.com/ . Please note that
attendance is limited to 55, and we're not kidding, because the space won't hold
any more than that. This suggests that if you're interested, you'd best sign up
soon.

Astoria, by the way, is near the mouth of the Columbia River, so if you or your
family like the idea of a few days in a cute town near the Pacific Ocean, this
could be an opportunity for you to, er, photograph two seagulls with one camera
:-) The Seminar's evening hang-out sessions are optional and unstructured, so
if you'd rather build sand castles on the beach until the sun goes down (or
roast hot dogs and marshmallows on driftwood fires after it does), you can do
that, too.

Scott