Next year, I'll be keynoting a new C++ conference, C++ on Sea. I'm really looking forward to it. A little while ago, they ran a "tweet why you want to go" contest for a free ticket, and said that if the winner already had a ticket, the conference would help the winner give away the ticket.

Can you guess where this is going? I won the ticket. I already have one, so you can win mine. Here's what you need to do:

• Choose a way to "give back" to your community before, during and after attending. This might be blogging, tweeting, hosting a local meetup where you talk about what you saw and recommend specific talks for others to watch later, or even activities at the conference like giving a lightning talk.
• Gather supporting links - to your blog, your repo, your YouTube Channel, the meetup site, and so on
• If your plan won't fit in a tweet, put it somewhere that it will fit. Include lots of links - I want people to find your blog, channel, meetup etc even if you don't win
• Tweet me (@gregcons) with your plan or a link to it. I will retweet. Focus on what you will give if you are able to attend the conference.(It's not that I don't care whether you are deserving or can't afford to go or whatever, I do, but I am going to focus on how you will share your good fortune with others.)
  
• If you're not on Twitter, post on my public Facebook page. You can't just email me because the idea is to promote those links to blogs, channels, meetups, and suchlike.

That's it! I'll choose someone, probably by filtering to everyone who is offering to do something generous and then randomly choosing one, but I reserve the right to choose the single person who comes up with the most amazing plan. I'll tell the conference that you get my ticket.

Fine print: this is just admission to the conference. Not travel or hotel. Not paid time off work. You'll need to cover that yourself. I suggest that telling your boss you won the ticket because of your community involvement might be quite helpful as far as that is concerned . And while I can't force you to keep your promise, I will remember if you do, and that will probably be a good thing for you over and above the rewards of doing those good things for the community.

Good Luck!

Kate

Here's what's coming up over the next few quarters:

• August 27-30: NDC Techtown (two talks)
  
• Sept 23-29: CppCon (preconference day; main conference talks not yet announced)
• Oct 18th-19th: Pacific++ (two talks)
• Submissions are still open so if you want to join me in Sydney as a presenter, get on that!
• Nov 15th-17th: Meeting C++ - I will not be speaking here (I just can't fit it in), but I want you to know it's happening
• Feb 4th-6th 2019: C++ on Sea (keynote at this brand new conference)
• April 2019 - ACCU (nothing announced yet, but I plan to be there)

I consider it an absolutely marvelous problem that there are so many C++ conferences I can't go to them all! There are a number of smaller conferences that draw primarily from one country or region, and more meetups than I can keep track of. I'm open to talking at a meetup if I happen to be traveling to a city for business anyway, but I don't think I can get up above 5 or 6 conferences a year, especially if some of them involve keynotes, plenary sessions, or workshop days. It's a lot of work!

Hope I get to see plenty of people in these various places,

Kate

I had a very busy March and April, with travel and with preparing for those trips. So I forgot to mention that my latest Pluralsight course is now live! It's called C++ Fundamentals Including C++ 17 and it's an update of my C++ Fundamentals course. Here's what I changed:

• I made most of the demos a lot smaller, by breaking them into pieces or by putting some of the material on slides instead
• I made the slides less text-heavy, again mostly by splitting them up
• I added diagrams to explain things that needed them
• I added some C++ 14 and 17 content
• I switched to a consistent "const after" style (aka east const)
• I double checked every line of code for good style and consistency

I'm really pleased with the result. If you've already taken C++ Fundamentals you probably don't need to take it again, but I hope you'll recommend to others that they take the new one. I think it makes learning C++ less daunting than some other approaches do.

Kate

ps: don't have a Pluralsight subscription? There's a link over there ------->  for a free trial.

This year at CppCon, I'm doing a one-day pre-conference workshop. It's not just me, it's Andrei Alexandrescu, me, and Scott Meyers (everything at CppCon is alphabetical by first name, although for this particular triad we come out in the same order alphabetical by last name.) It's called Engage, Entertain, Educate: Technical Speaking that Works and that's what it's about. Because we're holding it the day before a conference, we're focusing on things you do when you actually get to the room and deliver your talk -- not on things like choosing a topic or writing an abstract. It's not a C++ workshop, though given who we are and who comes to CppCon, some C++ things are likely to be said from time to time. The focus is on technical speaking.

You will get a chance (three chances actually) to deliver a fragment of a presentation and get feedback. You'll also see other attendees doing the same - their feedback is likely to be relevant to you - and watch some talks from us (and some of our colleagues) along with some meta talk about why we did it like that.

So, when you register for CppCon, please consider attending our workshop, and booking your plane tickets accordingly. It's going to be fantastic.

Kate

More and more conferences are making talks available on YouTube. I've decided to put the links on a playlist to make them easier for me to find. You can use it too!

At the moment this includes 4 CppCon talks (2 in 2014, 1 in 2015, I missed 2016 for health reasons, and 1 in 2017), my Meeting C++ keynote, my Meeting C++ lightning talk, my ACCU 2018 talk on simplicity, and both parts of the Munich C++ Meetup version of the same talk. It's in two parts because we had a break in the middle for pizza.

When more of my videos get uploaded, I'll try to keep the playlist up to date.

Other recent appearances include episode 148 of CppCast.

Kate

The schedule for ACCU has now been released, and the Feb 20th early bird registration deadline is approaching, so I thought it was a good idea to mention my session there.

Simplicity: not just for beginners

Many people say that simple code is better code, but fewer put it into practice. In this talk I’ll spend a little time on why simpler is better, and why we resist simplicity. Then I’ll provide some specific approaches that are likely to make your code simpler, and discuss what you need to know and do in order to consistently write simpler code and reap the benefits of that simplicity. Code samples will be in C++ and some material will be C++-specific.

I'll be joined by dozens of amazing speakers and the topics will be wide-ranging. It's not all C++, and I'm looking forward to a little mind-expanding from some session I didn't expect to do so. The pub quiz and lightning talks will also be good fun. April 11th to 14th in Bristol - will I see you there?

Kate

In 2016 I didn't speak at conferences because I was ill. I really enjoyed getting "back in harness" at CppCon this year (my Guidelines talk has been uploaded already, if you missed it) and I am happily looking forward to my next two conferences.

In Berlin I will deliver one of the keynotes for Meeting C++. It will be one of those opinionated talks with stories in it, plus code of course. I love giving those kinds of talks and they're typically well-received, so I am expecting to have a great time. This will be my first time at Meeting C++ and I know it will be a great conference.

The next week, I will be at the 2017 C++ and System Software Summit in Beijing. 8 tracks and over 500 attendees; this is a big conference. I've never been to Asia before, so I am very excited to meet a lot of new people (and some I've known for a while, the speaker circuit is like that) as well as seeing new places and experiencing a new conference.

I'm still thinking about what I will submit to ACCU for the spring. I prefer to do a new talk for each conference or at least to update existing talks dramatically. I will need to make up my mind before I leave for China!

Kate