Meet Erlang inventors Joe, Mike and Robert in Palo Alto!

30 PLACES ADDED!

We are lucky to have all three Erlang co-inventors Joe Armstrong, Mike Williams and Robert Virding in town for the 2015 Erlang Factory (http://www.erlang-factory.com/sfbay2015). For those who want to meet them in the Palo Alto area, this is your opportunity. We are giving them 20 minutes each to present a topic of their choice which will highlight their strengths and explain why together, they are the dream team required when inventing a new language. Places are limited, and we expect this event to sell out. So register early, and if you can not make it, free your place so those on the waiting list are given a chance.

This meetup is kindly hosted by MachineZone (https://www.machinezone.com/), the leaders in free 2 play games, makers of Game of War and the next multi-billion dollar Erlang company! Please see instructions on how to get to their office at the end of this email.

Machine Zone is trying to arrange for a shuttle service from San Francisco to Palo Alto, the information is below:

Pick Up- Marines Memorial Hotel at 5:45pmDrop Off- Machine Zone- 1050 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto

Shuttle capacity: 31 people.

Abstracts

• Robert Virding, Implementing Languages on the BEAM
The BEAM, the Erlang VM, was designed to implement Erlang. This has led to that the features it provides and its limitations are different from most other VMs. In this talk we learn will why the BEAM looks like it does and how this affects the implementation of languages on it. We will also show the Erlang compiler workflow and how to use this when implementing languages. Finally we will show examples of how to "go beyond" the BEAM and implement features for which it was wasn't originally designed and the costs this can entail.

• Joe Armstrong, Fun with HTML and Erlang (work in progress)
In this talk I'll show how we can transform HTML pages into Erlang modules. Individual parts of an HTML file are transformed into Erlang functions which can then be evaluated. The same is true for CSS andJavascript. This programming model views HTML CSS and Javascript as funny kinds of Erlang functions. Once transformed everything is just Erlang which makes programming easy. The resulting system should be pretty fast, since no file system access is involved in serving up files - everything gets compiled into memory resident Erlang code.

• Mike Williams, Big software projects, small software projects and Erlang

How do we start and how do we go from the small to the larger team? It's all about people, how you recruit them and how do you keep them?

Bios

• Joe Armstrong is one of the inventors of Erlang. When at the Ericsson computer science lab in 1986, he was part of the team who designed and implemented the first version of Erlang. He has written several Erlang books including Programming Erlang. Joe held the first ever Erlang course and has taught Erlang to hundreds of programmers and held many lectures and keynotes describing the technology. Joe has a PhD in computer science from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden and is an expert in the construction of fault tolerant systems. Joe was the chief software architect of the project which produced the Erlang OTP system. He has worked as an entrepreneur in one of the first Erlang startups (Bluetail) and has worked for over 30 years in industry and research.

• Robert Virding is Principal Language Expert at Erlang Solutions Ltd. While at Ericsson AB, Robert was one of the original members of the Ericsson Computer Science Lab, and co-inventor of the Erlang language. He took part in the original system design and contributed much of the original libraries, as well as to the current compiler. While at the lab he also did a lot of work on the implementation of logic and functional languages and on garbage collection. He has also worked as an entrepreneur and was one of the co-founders of one of the first Erlang startups (Bluetail). Robert also worked a number of years at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) Modelling and Simulations Group. He co-authored the first book (Prentice-Hall) on Erlang, and is regularly invited to teach and present throughout the world.

• Mike Williams is originally from South Wales, but has in fact lived in Sweden longer than he has anywhere else.Way back in the 1960's after working as a Atheistic Missionary in Malawi, Mike went to Cambridge where he learnt a lot about drinking beer and rather less about "Mechanical Sciences". He then moved to Sweden in 1970 (guess why :-) and joined Ericsson as a hardware designer. The price of beer in Sweden being horrendously expensive enabled Mike to concentrate more on other things, He joined with Bjarne Dacker to found the Ericsson Computer Science Laboratory 1980. One of the things they did in the Computer Science lab was to "invent" Erlang. Mike's role was to develop the first Erlang virtual machine (Joe developed the compiler and machine architecture). He worked out the primitives for fault handling and dynamic code replacement. In 1990 Mike glided into management by a complete accident, and found he rather liked it. Since then he has been in charge of both large and small units within Ericsson which develop software. In 2012 Mike retired from Ericsson and joined the Board of Directors at Erlang Solutions.

How to get to Machine Zone

Guests/visitors must enter the Machine Zone office through the security entrance.

Directions

From 280 North: Exit Page Mill Road
Continue right onto Page Mill Road
Continue straight approximately 2 miles
Left onto Hansen (stoplight) drive past the visitor parking, follow the signs for "Additional Parking" and drive around the outside of the building, then park in the employee lot.
We are in Building One, please sign in and enter through the employee entrance.

From 280 South: Exit Page Mill Road East
Make a Left at the stop sign onto Page Mill Road, continue straight approximately 2 miles
Left onto Hansen (stoplight)
Drive past the visitor parking, follow the signs for "Additional Parking" and drive around the outside of the building, then park in the employee lot.
We are in Building One, please sign in and enter through the employee entrance.

From 101: Exit Embarcadero Road/Oregon Expressway
Continue onto Oregon Expressway and drive to Page Mill Road (~2 miles total)
Right onto Hansen (stoplight) drive past the visitor parking, follow the signs for "Additional Parking" and drive around the outside of the building, then park in the employee lot.
We are in Building One, please sign in and enter through the employee entrance.