[ Apologies for the circular; no doubt most people have already seen this -- though note that this Call for Papers contains important information about a financial incentive! With nothing to do for now but test and fix bugs, there should be loads of spare energy for writing papers... ]

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | 3rd European Lisp Workshop | | July 3 & 4 - Nantes, Frances - co-located with ECOOP 2006 | | Supported by ALU and Ravenbrook Limited | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Important News

* Nick Levine will be giving a keynote presentation at the workshop. He has been a professional Lisp consultant for over two decades and is the organizer of the upcoming International Lisp Conference in Cambridge, UK. We are grateful to Ravenbrook Limited for sponsoring the keynote presentation.

* The Association of Lisp Users has kindly sponsored a $500 prize fund for exceptional papers submitted to this year's workshop. Both the ALU and the workshop organizers are looking forward to your submissions.

Important Dates Submission deadline (papers & breakout groups): April 1, 2006 Notification of acceptance: May 1, 2006 ECOOP early registration deadline: May 23, 2006

For more information visit http://lisp-ecoop06.bknr.net/ Contact: Pascal Costanza, pc@p-cos.net

Organizers **********

Pascal Costanza, Programming Technology Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Theo D'Hondt, Programming Technology Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Arthur Lemmens, Independent Consultant, Amsterdam Christophe Rhodes, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Overview ********

"...Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language, Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list." -- Kent Pitman

Lisp is one of the oldest computer languages still in use today. In the decades of its existence, Lisp has been a fruitful basis for language design experiments as well as the preferred implementation language for applications in diverse fields.

The structure of Lisp makes it easy to extend the language or even to implement entirely new dialects without starting from scratch. Common Lisp, with the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), was the first object-oriented programming language to receive an ANSI standard and retains the most complete and advanced object system of any programming language, while influencing many other object-oriented programming languages that followed.

It is clear that Lisp is gaining momentum: there is a steadily growing interest in Lisp itself, with numerous user groups in existence worldwide, and in Lisp's metaprogramming notions which are being transferred to other languages, as for example in Aspect-Oriented Programming, support for Domain-Specific Languages, and so on.

This two-day workshop will address the near-future role of Lisp-based languages in research, industry and education. We solicit papers and suggestions for breakout groups that discuss the opportunities Lisp provides to capture and enhance the possibilities in software engineering. We want to promote lively discussion between researchers proposing new approaches and practitioners reporting on their experience with the strengths and limitations of current Lisp technologies.

The workshop will have two components on separate days; there will be a day for formally-presented talks, and a day for breakout groups discussing or working on particular topics. Additionally, there will be opportunities for short, informal talks and demonstrations on experience reports, underappreciated results, software under development, or other topics of interest.

Papers ******

Formal presentations in the workshop should take between 20 minutes and half an hour; additional time will be given for questions and answers. We encourage that papers be published on the website in order to provide background information in advance.

Suggested Topics

New language features or abstractions Experience reports or case studies Protocol Metaprogramming and Libraries Educational approaches Software Evolution Development Aids Persistent Systems Dynamic Optimization Implementation techniques Innovative Applications Hardware Support for Lisp systems Macro-, reflective-, meta- and/or rule-based development approaches Aspect-Oriented, Domain-Oriented and Generative Programming

Breakout Groups ***************

The workshop will provide for the opportunity to meet face to face and work on focused topics. We will organize these breakout groups and provide for rooms and infrastructure.

Suggested Topics for Breakout Groups

Lisp Infrastructure Development and Distribution Language Features (e.g. Predicate Dispatching) Environments for creating web applications Brainstorming sessions for new or existing open source projects Persistence Systems Compiler technology Lisp on bare metal / Lisp hardware / Lisp operating systems Compare and enhance curricula for computer science education

Submission Guidelines *********************

Potential attendees are encouraged to submit

* a long paper (10 pages) presenting scientific and/or empirical results about Lisp-based uses or new approaches for software engineering purposes;

* a short essay (5 pages) defending a position about where research, practice or education based on Lisp should be heading in the near future;

* a proposal for a breakout group (1-2 pages) describing the theme, an agenda and/or expected results.

Submissions should be mailed as PDF to Pascal Costanza (pc@p-cos.net) before the submission deadline.