YAPC::NA 2006 has come and gone. On behalf of Chicago.pm I’d like to thank everyone for helping to make YAPC yet another success! The support of countless speakers and volunteers, both the willing and the drafted, ensure that the conference will continue to be a source of rich technical content at a reasonable price. The substantial support by our sponsors is another factor that makes the conference accessible to almost anyone. Please be sure to let the sponsors know that you appreciate their support of the Perl community.

We would like to congratulate Houston.pm for being selected as the host site for YAPC::NA 2007 and Vienna.pm for being selected as the host site for YAPC::EU 2007.

And finally, you probably noticed that we were recording many of the talks at YAPC::NA 2006. Those videos have yet to be released, but will be soon. Since the yapcchicago.org domain will be expiring soon, check Use Perl and Media Landscape for updates.

See you next year,
Josh

Online registration for YAPC will be closing at Midnight PST tonight. If you don’t make it in before we turn off the system, you can register at the door on the morning of the conference.

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa has created Planet YAPC Chicago to aggregate all of the online media for YAPC::NA 2006. Visit regularly or subscribe via RSS to keep up with all that happens during the conference.

Planet YAPC Chicago was created with Plagger. Plagger is a pluggable RSS/Atom feed aggregator written in Perl. Everything is implemented as a small plugin and you can mash them up together using Plagger core API and plugin hooks. You can think of Plagger as a blosxom or qpsmtpd for RSS aggregator.

Hear Tatsuhiko talk about Plagger on Tuesday at 4:15 p.m. in the Ballroom.

Also, John Wang create a blog badge image for the conference. You can find the badge and instructions on how to put it on your side at John’s Blog.

Techpodcasts.com gave YAPC a large portion of talk time on their monthly roundtable. If you’d like to see what myself, Adam Kennedy, and Randal Schwartz had to say, you can find the recording here.

Welcome to YAPC::NA 2006. We are hoping to have another great conference this year and that all begins with, well, getting you here and getting you checked in.

Conference Registration

Early registration for the conference will be held on Sunday June 25th from 5:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. in the State Street Village dorm. There will be a YAPC representative in the lobby of the dorm during those hours with conference packets and a registration list. This is a great opportunity for you to let us know that you’re here and to also pick up your conference materials so that you can plan for the first day of the conference.

Standard registration begins at 7:30 a.m. on Monday June 26th in the lobby of the Herman Hall. The registration center will be fully manned until around 9:00 a.m. when the conference officially begins. After that time, the registration table will be running short staffed during conference hours, so be sure to register first thing Monday
morning.

Your registration for the conference (not the master classes) includes a Tuesday night banquet and auction and Dave & Busters. We’ll have the entire first level of the place open for free game play for four hours, a few private pool tables, and a buffet. If you plan on bringing someone to the banquet that is not registered for the conference, the cost is $50 per person. Be sure to let us know that you want to do this as soon as possible so that we can reserve an extra spot.

Dorms, Meal Cards, Parking

If you are not staying on campus, you can pick up your parking passes and/or meal cards at the SSV lobby during early registration or in the conference center during standard registration.

If you are staying on campus, you can check into your respective dorm in the lobby of that dorm starting at noon on the day that you are scheduled to arrive. There will be an IIT representative manning the front desk of each of the dorms. They will have your room key, meal cards, and parking passes with them. If you are arriving early and need to check your bags, try checking into the dorms anyway… most likely they will let you in.

Master Classes

If you registered for any one of the master classes occurring on the 29th and 30th, you will be able to check in for that class 8:00 a.m. until 8:30 a.m. on Thursday June 29th in the room in which the class is being held. Books will be provided. The room assignments are:

- Learning Perl by brian d foy: Perlstein 109
- Intermediate Perl by Randal Schwartz: Wishnick 116
- Perl Best Practices by Damian Conway: Perlstein 108

Both the Perlstein and Wishnick buildings are beside Herman Hall.

Resources

A marked map of the IIT campus can be found at http://www.yapcchicago.org/media/iit_campus.jpg.

Instructions for getting to IIT can be found on the conference wiki at http://www.yapcchicago.org/wiki/index.cgi in the ‘Introductory Things->Getting Here’ section.

If you have any questions, there are a few great resources that you can try:
- The conference wiki http://www.yapcchicago.org/wiki/
- IRC #yapc on irc.perl.org
- The YAPC mailing list http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/yapc
- Email josh -at- yapcchicago.org

Best of luck getting here. I hope you’re ready for a great YAPC.

We would like to thank our latest sponsor, the Open Technology Group - North Carolina, for donating a great auction item to YAPC::NA 2006. OTG has a philosophy of providing the highest quality training by instructors with over a decade of experience at an affordable price. They are donating tuition for an open enrollment course. Tuition includes the class, books, materials, airfare, hotel, and a free shuttle between the airport, hotel, and training facility.

Thank you OTG!

As difficult as it is to believe, YAPC::NA 2006 is now less than one week away. Most likely many of you will be starting your journeys to the Windy City soon. Of course some of you will be blogging about it and some will be snapping photos and uploading to flickr along the way. In order to catch all of the talk about YAPC, we are asking that you use the tag ‘yapcna2006′ when tagging your entries and that you add your blog or website to our list of attendee blogs. Also, let us know where you are putting your tags, be it flickr, del.icio.us, or whatever.

There are a few YAPC photo projects that are being worked on, so if you are willing to license your content under a creative commons license that allows for reuse, please remember to note that when posting.

There are less than 24 hours to go to submit a Lightning Talk for YAPC::NA 2006. Speakers will be notified on Tuesday, June 20th about the status of their talk.

More information about Lightning Talks is available on the YAPC::NA 2006 wiki, which has a new look thanks to Ingy döt Net. Thanks, Ingy!

Techpodcasts.com has dedicated two of the three 20-minute segments of their monthly roundtable to YAPC::NA and Perl. The live event will be held tomorrow, June 17th, 2006 at 1:30 PM Pacific, 4:30 Eastern. If you are interested in attending you can sign up. If you are interested in helping to present, please let me know soon by sending an email to josh at yapcchicago.org.

If you’ve been holding out on deciding on whether or not you are staying in the dorms at IIT, don’t hold out any longer. We need to get our final room counts in to the University this week! After today, you’ll have to look elsewhere to find accommodations.

If you are staying off-campus, we encourage you to use the IIT discount at Club Quarters in Chicago. There are two Club Quarters locations in town. The one that we recommend is the Wacker and Michigan location. The hotel is a few blocks north of the Green ‘L’ line, which will take you to IIT. To book at Club Quarters, visit the hotel website and login with the password ‘illinois institute of technology’. Alternately, you can call 212-575-0006 or in Europe 44 (0) 20-7666-1616.

On the subject of meal cards, IIT is a little worried since only ~80 of our over three hundred attendees have purchased any pre-paid cards for the University cafeteria. The cards help them know how much food to purchase and prepare. They don’t want to run out of food with people standing in line, so if you think that you will be eating on campus, please put a little credit on a card ahead of time so that they will know that you are coming.

Thanks and see you at YAPC!