September 16-20, 2002 is the time, and Vancouver British Columbia Canada [http://www.vancouvertourist.com/] is the city (home of [ActiveState]) for the Ninth Annual Tcl/Tk Conference. Check http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2002/ for all the details. ---- [RS]: As one of the Tclers that cannot attend, I would be very happy if the lucky ones in Vancouver could let us know how it goes (maybe right here on this page?) [LV] I found an open terminal, and of course the second thing I did (after sending mail to the family) was stop in to update the page! I arrived yesterday pm. The tutorials are said to have gone well - I have talked to Ken Jones and Clif Flynt who were tired but pleased with the way their presentations went. Spent the afternoon talking with [stevel], [Steve Ball], [dkf], [aku], Clif, [Mark Roseman], [tclguy], [Mac Cody], [kennykb], and a number of others whom I have met over the past 3-4 conferences. It certainly is good to see them all again. Donal, Kevin, David Enry and myself grabbed a quick bite at a wonderful greek restraunt, then walked over to Activestate for the reception. Food, libations (for those who ate less than I at dinner), and loud music was the rule of the evening. I got to say hi to a number more Tcler's - like Matt Herdon of ActiveState - the tools manager - and [Richard Hipp], as well as others. After being on the go for about 20 hrs, I went back to the room, decellerated with a bit of tele time, and fell asleep. This morning, I'm up, chatting with the early birds (Mark informs me that Vancouver is a premeir place for Starbucks and other coffee shops...) and waiting for breakfast. We'll let you all know how things are going through the week. [Marty Backe] - Thanks for the update. Keep'em comin. [Dave Griffin] - Hello to all. Sorry I can't be there (again) this year. Sigh! [Ro] - Thanks - I wish I was there! Vancouver is far from Ottawa though ;( I can't wait to read Steve Landers' and Jean-Claude Wippler's papers! Anybody know if the talks are going to be available in mp3? I hope so! [stevel] - a copy of my paper might be at [http://www.digital-smarties.com/Tcl2002/tclkit.pdf] and JCW's slides at [http://www.equi4.com/tcl2k2/pres.htm] YES! Awesome Steve! I was going to go to sleep, but screw it now, I've got this to read! Your paper looks great => THANKS ''-- [ro]'' [LV] I don't notice anyone video or audio taping the sessions, so I must assume that the sessions will not be available to watch. I have not yet seen any word on availability of the papers online, nor of the wonderful Proceedings CD that is a part of the conference. This morning, we had a keynote by Mark, talking about his 10 years with Tcl/Tk and how it played an integral part in the acquisition of Teamwave, a talk by our own [jcw] about the wiki, and 2 talks (so far) on uses of Tcl in applications - one, by the author of http://www.starfishsystems.ca/ , a remote system admin package, and one by Hugh Dunne about testing high performance fiber optic switches. One more talk, and then time to go to lunch! Okay, the last talk of the morning was by [William Duquette], about his use of tcl in testing deep space network uplinks. I got a kick out of an exchange during the Q&A, where Will assured us that even though the energy used for the uplink is quite powerful, there are lots of safely locks to prevent the equipment from frying people or aircraft. That's nice to know! I would hate it if Tcl became known as the software with which to fry humans... [LV] A dozen or so of us went out to a nearby food court for lunch - sushi, Vietnamse, other Oriental, something from a French Crepes stand, and I saw at least one person eating Arbys... Back from Lunch, Jeff Hobbs presented a State of Tcl address [[Anyone have a URL for data from that paper]]? Mostly the same good info that Jeff presents - historical look back, recent release info, hope for the future. Jeff will, I hope, present results of his ''Oustervote'' poll. One piece of good news - MacOS download numbers appear to be slightly up recently. There's hope that a combo of the Tk Aqua port and [Tclkit]/[Starkit] will result in a new generation of user/developers on the Mac! But we need lots of people helping in all the areas. In the afternoon, [LV] was pressed into service (without any arm twisting) to chair the Tcl/Tk Extensions and Deployment sessions - or what he called '''Tcl Down Under''' due to the dominance of Aussie Tclers presenting in this session. [Harvey Davies] gave us a look at [nap] - if you are doing linear algebra, or data visualization, take a look at it; someone referred to it as APL (well, really J) in Tcl. Next came [Steve Ball] - always a pleasure to sit under his tutorage. Steve talked about the fantastic performance from libxml2 and the new binding to libxslt. More info on XML is coming today in the form of a paper and a Birds of a Feather (BOF) session tonite. Last, but certainly not least, was [stevel] - talking about Starkit and Starpack. There is quite a bit of enthusiasm here - [Brent Welch], [D. Richard Hipp], as well as some of our new acquaintences, are all thinking of interesting ways they can make use of all of these things. One of the tips that was mentioned was that our keynote, Mark Roseman, has been having some success combining TclPro compiled Tcl code with Starkits - to end up with the ability to '''slightly''' obfuscate small pieces of applications (perhaps like license managers). Obviously it isn't designed to be high-security - just something to make things a little more challenging for those whose delight is to beat the system. Next, we chatted a while and then moved on to the conference dinner, held here at the Crowne. A wonderful salad, samon with roasted veggies and a butter sauce, followed by cheesecake (and libations for those who wanted) was enjoyed by all with whom I spoke. After dinner, the ActiveState Active Awards presentations were held. [[I need a URL for the press release on this - doesn't appear to be available yet]]. [jcw] wins one of the awards! More on this in the press release! Following dinner, at least 2 BOFs were held. One was on [New features requested for wiki] and the other was on Tcl 8.4 features. Unfortunately, a combination of too little sleep and a migrane forced [LV] to retire earlier than he would prefer. Hopefully someone else will follow up on the remaining festivities last nite.