Category Theory/Haskell learning group in London

Peter Marks organised a BOF (Birds of a feather) session on Category Theory at Spa2008. To my surprise about twelve of us turned up. We discovered a shared intuition (bizarre though it seems) that Category Theory will somehow shape the next big thing in application development. Less surprisingly, we also discovered a common enthusiasm for Haskell.

We want to build on this. Most of us are based in London, or can reach it easily. We plan to meet regularly (about once a month) to explore these ideas and to help each other to learn.

I'll post more about this as soon as we have a date and location for our first meeting.

XPDay7 is shaping up; now on to SPA2008!

The programme committee for XPDay7 met last week to review session proposals. We'd received an outstanding collection of submissions, so there was no problem in filling the program with quality sessions. The hard part, as usual, was to decide which ones we would not include.

The meeting went very smoothly. Angela Martin and Ivan Moore are joint program chairs this year. They put a lot of hard work into preparation, and it really paid off.

If you've submitted a proposal for XPDay7, expect to hear from Angela or Ivan soon.

I'm now bending my mind to SPA2008. Ivan Moore and Eoin Woods are joint program chairs. As conference chair, I'm as keen as they are to see another outstanding programme.

If you submitted a proposal for XPDay7, consider submitting a session for SPA. We like a mix of new and proven sessions, so acceptance for XPay7 shouldn't stop you from submitting a similar proposal for SPA. Not should rejection - there were excellent submissions for which we just had no room, and they might well fit in the (longer) SPA programme.

The SPA deadline is Monday 17th September, but you don't need to submit finished material - just a proposal.