Thank you all for attending the 2015 DC-Baltimore Perl Workshop! We had a fairly major website outage starting the day before the workshop, but it didn't stop us from having a good time!

We hope to see you at YAPC::NA in Salt Lake City, and at other awesome Perl events in the near future. Follow us on The twitter (@dcbpw) to get workshop updates. And keep on Perlin'!

Several hotels in the area are sold out, since our conference corresponds with peak cherry blossom tree bloom (and thus peak DC tourism)! But there are a bunch of hotels in walking distance, and even more that are metro accessible, so you should be able to find something.

If you have any trouble finding a hotel, please email us! dcbpw-organizers@googlegroups.com -- we'll see what we can do.

Check out our <a href="http://dcbpw.org/dcbpw2015/schedule">schedule!</a> Lots of great talks.

Note that we have room for some lightning talks! Submit them just like other talks.

We're all looking forward to this weekend!

<a href="http://thinkgeek.com/"><img src="/dcbpw2015/sponsor/tg_color_small.png" align=right style="padding-left: 1em; width: 200px"></a>We welcome our latest sponsor, <a href="http://thinkgeek.com/">ThinkGeek</a>!

<i> ThinkGeek is the premier retailer for the global geek community. Since 1999, ThinkGeek has been creating a world where everyone can express their inner geek, embrace their passions, and connect with each other. Our obsession is creating and sharing unique and authentic product experiences that stimulate our fans' imaginations and fuel their geek core. We believe that there is a geek in everyone and that it should be celebrated. </i>

<i>ThinkGeek &lt;3’s Perl! In fact, our website and backend are written in Perl, so working here means you get to use it every day, from coding new features to integrating with third parties. We also contribute a lot of code to the open-source community, and have CPAN authors in our treehouse. If you’d like to come work with us, check out our booth! We’ll have business cards and other fun stuff, you never quite know what fun things we’ll to bring to the party.</i>

Here's a big thanks to <a href="http://www.perlfoundation.org/" target="_blank">The Perl Foundation (TPF)</a> and their very generous<a href="https://donate.perlfoundation.org/sponsors.html" target="_blank"> donors</a> for helping to ensure another successful Perl event! We couldn't do it without these generous sponsors:<BR> <a href="http://www.booking.com">Booking.com</a>, <a href="http://www.cpanel.net">cPanel</a>, <a href="http://www.bluehost.com">bluehost</a>, <a href="http://www.hostgator.com">HostGator</a>, <a href="http://www.pair.com">pair Networks, Inc.</a>, and <a href="http://www.grantstreet.com">Grant Street Group</a>

We welcome our latest sponsor, <a href="http://smartlogic.io/" target="_blank">SmartLogic</a>!

<i> At SmartLogic we build, test, deploy, and maintain custom software applications. We're always perfecting our development process, which leads to smarter software and a low-stress experience. </i>

<a href="http://www.proquest.com/"><img src="/dcbpw2015/sponsor/proquest_2015_200.png" align=right style="padding-left: 1em"></a>Thank you <a href="http://www.proquest.com" target="_blank">ProQuest</a> for your donation in support of a successful DCBPW 2015!

<i>ProQuest is committed to empowering researchers and librarians around the world. The company’s portfolio of assets -- including content, technologies and deep expertise -- drives better research outcomes for users and greater efficiency for the libraries and organizations that serve them.</i>

Great news! We're going to extend the early-bird admission fee of $25.00 through March 20th. Register and pay now before admission prices double!

Attention Speakers! You are invited to submit talks for the 2015 DC-Baltimore Perl Workshop, which will be held on Saturday April 11 2015, in <a href="http://dcbpw.org/dcbpw2015/venue.html">Silver Spring, MD</a>.

As in previous years, by default talks are 20-25 minutes, which we've found is a sweet spot for most topics. We get a great variety -- enough to get a dose of newness and not overwhelm. We also welcome proposals for more tutorial-style talks of around 50 minutes. We'll take the talks and build out a two-track schedule.

Speakers of all levels are welcome! This regional meetup is great for getting your first taste of giving a community talk, sharing projects or topics that you have experience with, or even doing a first run for a talk you'll be presenting at a larger conference such as <a href="http://www.yapcna.org/yn2015/">YAPC::NA 2015 in Salt Lake City</a>! All Perl-related topics are welcome -- from beginner to advanced, from technical to social.

No need to submit talks for the Sunday April 12 hackathon -- we'll have more info on that code and learning festival in future updates! And of course -- all are welcome to register for the conference; $25 for early-registration prior to March 1. Free registration for students and the unemployed.

If you have any questions, <a href="mailto:dcbpw-organizers@googlegroups.com">email us (dcbpw-organizers@googlegroups.com)</a>! We'll even be happy to help you tune your topic.

We are please to be putting on the 4th DC-Baltimore Perl Workshop!

This year we'll be hosting the workshop at the Silver Spring Civic Building, as we did last year. We will soon be calling for sponsors, speakers, and attendees!