Dynamic Languages Conference: it's an Edinburgh thing

On Friday August 26, The Dynamic Languages Conference, a free one-day event, rolls into Edinburgh. Reg developer Marco Fontani is a co-organiser, so the gig is bound to marvellous.

As well as a packed schedule of talks, the conference features Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman, who will deliver a lecture on copyright vs. community. So sign up on the DLC website early if you want to hear him speak.

Changing dynamics

Dynamic languages have helped shape system administration and the web the way it is today, from small scripts shared between co-workers, to full-blown webapps created, tweaked and deployed to the cloud in minutes.

Would we have the many different online forums (from Twitter to Stackoverflow and Wikipedia), the massive collection of online shared code (from github to cpan or even that (in)famous script archive) without these modern languages? Even video games these days come with built-in scripting languages.

The Dynamic Languages Conference is meant to get web developers, sysadmins and anyone else with an interest in the lingua franca of computers discussing the bigger and issues of the day. These include copyright (of course), the messy issues of (tech) communities, language design, platforms and environments.

If you've got any interest in any of the modern dynamic languages (Ruby, Python, PHP, Javascript, Objective-C, Perl - heck, even VBScript) this might be a good place to hang out, or to learn some more. Plus, it's free to attend.

The organisers are also trying to "reach out" across a broad range of techie interests, skillsets & languages to discuss and learn what works, what doesn't and how they can work together better and help us all get a bit more mileage from our technology.

So no matter your background, if you are around Edinburgh on 26 August and want to chip in with a talk or listen to Richard Stallman discussing technology in Big Society, sign up here.

If you're less interested in talking about the dirty world of open source & social issues with nerds in crumpled t-shirts and would rather pay money to listen to talks from more suited and booted tech luminaries, there is also the Turing Festival on around the same time. ®