GUM, OTUG, 2GX, and Strange Loop, oh my!

I'm going to be out on the road September and October, talking about programming and testing and maybe trying to make people laugh a little. Here's my schedule so far:

September 8th - Minneapolis, MN - Groovy Users of MN - Groovy+OSGi Jumpstart
September 15th - St. Paul, MN - Object Technology User Group - Thinking in Functions
October 19th - 22 - New Orleans, LA - 2GX Groovy/Grails Conference - All 4 talks for 1 low price!
October 23rd - St. Louis, MO - Strange Loop - Groovy Compiler Metaprogramming for Fun and Profit

If you haven't registered for 2GX, get on the stick... early bird pricing ends soon. And if you haven't heard of Strange Loop, then be sure to check out this super affordable unique and esoteric event.

I'm definitely interested in practicing these talks as much as possible, so if you need a speaker for a JUG or work group just let me know. The legacy code talk has turned out to be a really fun event, and it can have as little or as much Groovy as you want. Southwest has super cheap airfare right now... all I need is an invite.

Here are the summaries for the talks:

Groovy Compiler Metaprogramming and AST Transformations (aka Groovy Compiler Metaprogramming for Fun and Profit)
'A language should have access to its own abstract syntax' John McCarthy, Father of Lisp. Well, now Groovy 1.6 does! This talk is about why AST transformations are important, what you can do with them, and where the language world is headed. We'll dive into some of the useful Groovy annotations and libraries being written that harness AST transformations, see how to write our own, and work with the AST tools coming out with the next version. At the end we'll prognosticate about the future of programming languages in general, and hypothesize about where the Groovy features fit into the history of languages. Fun!

Functional Groovy (aka Thinking in Functions)
For many, learning Groovy made you think differently about Java. Now it's time to think differently about Groovy. Although Groovy is not a functional language by many measures, it does support many of the common functional idioms and patterns. Come explore both how far functional programming can be pushed in Groovy, where functional programming can't currently go, and where functional programming is headed in future releases of both the language and the JVM. Learn about morphisms, option types, tail call optimization, pattern matching, and functional composition in the context of solving classic CS problems side-by-side with a more traditional functional language, and decide for yourself how terms like elegance and simplicity should drive your coding.

OSGi and Groovy Jump Start
OSGi, Jigsaw, modularity, service lifecycles, bundles... where do you start? This talk covers the basics of using OSGi and Groovy together. You'll be introduced to the OSGi framework by building a Groovy based application that introduces the core concepts of OSGi such as the module system, service registry, and service life cycles. We'll also cover common pitfalls encountered by mixing Groovy and OSGi, as well the latest OSGi tools available.

Legacy Code, Groovy, and You
Thinking about writing Groovy unit tests for your legacy Java code? This session is an honest discussion about what Groovy will gain youand what it won't. Come learn the engineering practices and tools that you can use to battle tight coupling, monolithic projects, and tangled dependencies, and then decide for yourself whether Groovy is the answer for your project. Plan on returning to work with a vision of what your team can do to write better software.