QCon is a practitioner-driven conference designed for technical team leads, architects, and project managers who influence software innovation in their teams.

Damian Conway, Perl Boffin, Thoughtstream

Damian Conway

Biography: Damian Conway

Damian Conway is a well-known member of the international Perl community. A widely sought-after speaker and teacher, he is also the author of several technical books as well as numerous Perl software modules.

He runs an international IT training company - Thoughtstream - which provides programmer training from beginner to masterclass level throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia. Until 2010 he was also an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University.

Over the past decade most of his spare time has been spent working with Larry Wall on the design and promotion of the new Perl 6 programming language.

Other technical and academic areas in which he has published internationally include programming language design, programmer education, object orientation, software engineering, natural language generation, synthetic language generation, emergent systems, declarative programming, image morphing, human-computer interaction, geometric modelling, the psychophysics of perception, nanoscale simulation, and parsing.

Software Passion: Building smarter software with more graceful interfaces.
Website: damian.conway.org
Software: CPAN mirror
Books: "Object Oriented Perl", Manning Publications, 2001, "Perl Best Practices", O'Reilly Media, 2005, "Perl Hacks", O'Reilly Media, 2006 (co-author)

Presentation: Keynote: Fun With Dead Languages

Time: Wednesday 17:40 - 18:30 / Location: Fleming Room

Watch in mesmerized terror as Damian hacks code in several unrelated programming languages (none of them Perl). Along the way, you'll also discover what's wrong with modern CS education, why programmers shouldn't frequent casinos, the power of Thor's Law, the language of moisture vaporators, C++ mysticism, how to use the three shells, state machines on steroids, programming without variables or subroutines, a cheap and eco-friendly alternative for distributed persistent computation, what the Romans used instead of braces, the ancient probabilistic wisdom of bodkins, and the price of fish.

Presentation: Parallel KEYNOTE: Instantly Better Presentations - Churchill Auditorium Ground Floor

Time: Thursday 09:01 - 09:50 / Location: Churchill Auditorium

The best, most effective technical presentations capture the audience quickly, hold their interest effortlessly, educate and entertain them in equal measure, and sometimes even inspire them. This talk explores seven simple and effective techniques to help you achieve those goals in your own presentations.

Training: Presentation Aikido

Track: Training / Time: Tuesday 09:00 - 16:00 / Location: Henry Moore

Presenting technical information to an audience is one of the hardest tasks any I.T. professional can face. Presenting effectively is not a natural talent for most people. Indeed, many technical presentations utterly fail in their primary objective -- to convey a complex idea or argument clearly and convincingly.

This class explains -- and demonstrates -- the key techniques that combine to produce an effective and enjoyable technical presentation.