Italian Perl Workshop 2008 looking tempting

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(Cross posted from my use.perl blog)

The Italian Perlmongers are finalising their preparations for
IPW 2008, Pisa. I managed to get to the last 2 while I was working in Florence, and the organizers have always managed to get a great venue, coffee breaks with unusually nice biscuits, and put on a fantastic mix of talks and a lively hallway track.

Like all the national conferences, talks in previous years have been largely in the local language, with maybe a handful in English from expats and visitors. This year though, the organizers have also managed to get great sponsorship from Opera, Booking.com and others and as well as making the conference free, they’re able to sponsor some fantastic guest speakers.

Bepi has already confirmed:

  • Marcus Ramberg of Catalyst fame (speaking in English. Or possibly Norwegian :-)
  • Rafael Garcia Suarez, Perl 5.10 pumpking (speaking in English… or French — or Spanish? ;-)
  • … other speakers to be advised (Update Oops, I pre-announced one of the speakers currently in discussion with Bepi, must have misunderstood the email, apologies to all, but I do hope that does get confirmed as it’s tremendously exciting).
  • And looking at the talk schedule, it looks like Andrew Shitov (ash) from Moscow.pm and organizer of the Russian Perl Workshop will be talking on distributed programming with WWW::Page and Gearman, as part of his European tour (also in English)

All in all, there has never been a better time to go to an Italian Perl Workshop as a visitor, even if you don’t speak Italian.
It’s all looking quite tempting, though I already have YAPC::EU the month before, hmmm…

Some notes on logistics if you’re thinking of travelling to Pisa from outside Italy:

  • Pisa airport flies various low-cost routes (Ryanair, Easyjet and others) as well as some real airlines (I like the Meridiana Gatwick-Pisa flight). Some airlines fly to nearby Florence, Bologna, or Rome, and Pisa is a convenient transport hub with trains from these cities, and Europe (Paris, Vienna, Geneva).
    The conference page summarizes travel options to Pisa.

  • Some useful links for accomodation in Pisa

  • The most important tourist sites in Pisa are conveniently clumped together in the “Campo dei Miracoli”: the leaning tower, the Duomo and the Baptistery.

  • Florence is about 1h30 away by train or coach. Damn I miss Florence…