Dear fellow LUV members, Compose::Melbourne is running again this year, coming up in just over a week: http://www.composeconference.org/ It's a two-day event, aimed at building and supporting the functional-programming community in Melbourne. So if you're at all interested in functional programming, newbie or expert, come along and learn and meet people sharing that interest. I know this is not Linux-specific, but most of the main functional-programming systems are FOSS (and Linux-friendly), and functional programming is being increasingly adopted in industry. See for example, Katie Miller's talk at linuxconfau last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlTO510zO78 So I figured it might be of interest to LUV members, in much the same way as PyConAU. Day One, Monday 28 August, is the conference, with about a dozen presentations on functional programming (FP) through the day, including keynote by Andrew Sorensen, "Sound Synthesis in the Computational Crucible". Day Two, Tuesday 29 August, is the "unconference": an informal day of getting together to share FP ideas and experience, although we will be running a few workshops and sessions, including an Introductory Haskell workshop for beginners. Day Two, the unconference, is a free event. No need to register, although it'd be a good idea to register for the Introductory Haskell workshop if you plan to attend that, since we expect it to be popular. And for that you'll need to bring a laptop with haskell-stack already installed. (If you run into trouble installing haskell-stack, we can help you on the day.) Day One, the conference, requires paid registration, $58.56 concession, $173.51 full price. We really want to help build the diversity of the FP community, so we have some free tickets available as well. Please contact the Compose::Melbourne committee on composemel-admin@googlegroups.com for details. Most information is on the website, but you're welcome to get in touch with me if you have any questions, via ljk+compose@ljk.id.au. — Smiles, Les (also Compose::Melbourne committee member).