Scalathon - how you can help

Today marks the "official" announcement of Scalathon, even though people have been eagerly tweeting about it for days now.

This event was born in no small part from my frustration in finding new projects and collaborators. I don't know how you all do it, but I never seem to find the right group to work with that wants to work with me too. I'm hoping Scalathon will change all that. Putting 100 of the best Scala developers in a room for two days should make it easy for anyone to give something back to the community. Or at the very least have a good time trying.

Some other idealistic goals for the event are:

• Improving scalac and scala-lib documentation. Once logistics are worked out with the core team I'm hoping to announce a documentation spree on Friday, July 15 for anyone who wants to make this shindig last 3 days. Stay tuned. Anything on Friday will be separate from the hackathon and totally optional.
• Putting a face on the core team. Until a few weeks ago I didn't even know who was *on* the core team. Sure there was Martin. And uh ... After Scalathon you'll know them, their favorite text editors, and their beers of choice. And what the hell does a Swiss accent sound like anyway?

The Scalathon organizers are doing everything they can to make this event a success. But you can help too:

• We need sponsors! We'd love to fly out the entire EPFL team, issue travel grants to student Scala hackers from Germany and Australia, provide meals at the event, etc. But that costs a lot more money then we're getting from the measly $35 registration fee. We're counting on the Scala community to try and hook us up with sponsors. Can you help us?
• Send someone to represent your Scala project. We'd like to have *every* major Scala library represented at the event. All you need to do is give a quick talk on Saturday aimed at helping newcomers develop your project.
• Volunteer to give a Sunday enrichment talk. Those NE Scala videos are pretty awesome, am I right? We'll be posting our talks too. Now we just need some more awesome speakers.

I want to thank PHASE, especially Brian Clapper and Jamie Allen for agreeing to be my co-conspirators. Also special thanks to Daniel Spiewak, whom we tricked into joining the organizers listserv and accepting assignments. Logo by Felice Ford. Finally, a big thank you to Martin Odersky and Josh Suereth for enthusiastically getting behind this idea.