We’ve previously announced keynotes by Bjarne Stroustrup, Herb Sutter, and Lisa Lippincott. This is the fourth of our six conference keynotes to be announced.

We’re happy to announce: Michael will be in Aurora live, in person to deliver a brand-new talk about inspiring and being inspired by the embedded world around us.

Michael Caisse started using C++ with embedded systems over 30 years ago. He continues to be passionate about combining his degree in Electrical Engineering with elegant software solutions and is always excited to share his discoveries with others.

Here is his talk description:

Less than 1% of microprocessors sold each year find their way into general purpose computers. Desktops, laptops, and servers of all sizes represent a very small fraction of the compute that surrounds us. We interact with a few of these systems but most go unnoticed. These invisible, unsung embedded devices offer lessons in engineering at all scales and can provide inspiration to seasoned practitioners and future technologists.

Join me as we learn from the embedded world and become inspired to inspire.

This talk is the Keynote talk for the Embedded Track.

The Main Program for CppCon 2021 is now live!

This year, CppCon is a hybrid format, so we are presenting four tracks for onsite attendees and five tracks for online attendees.

Online attendees will be able to participate in onsite sessions via “simul-cast” for most sessions. A few onsite sessions will be recorded and rebroadcast for online attendees. Rebroadcasted sessions will feature the presenters live in the session chat room and, time allowing, live Q&A at end of the session. (Online attendees will have the ability to view recorded versions of all sessions–onsite and online–shortly after they happen.)

We’ll have over seventy breakout sessions delivered onsite and sixty additional remote sessions by the best C++ presenters in the industry, many returning from previous years as well as some exciting new voices, some of whom are able to present only because we are offering a remote presenting possibility. In addition, we’ll present our traditional onsite plenary session every day and an online opening keynote. We’ve already announced our onsite Opening Keynote and will be announcing our other five headline talks here in coming days.

This year’s Main Program features three special tracks including the Back to Basics Track, the Embedded Track, and the band new Software Design Track.

In addition to the Main Program, we’ll have the panels, lightning talks, Open Content talks, BOFs, exhibitors, social events, and classes that attendees have enjoyed in past years. Note that all but one of our classes have been moved online to allow for greater participation.

Most of the program is published, but we are still working a few surprises, so keep checking back.

We’d like to thank the Program Committee, our speakers, and the many professionals who proposed talks which we, unfortunately, just couldn’t squeeze in this year. Thank you for your hard work and enthusiastic support for this year’s program!

We hope to see you all in less than a month so register now.

The CppCon 2021 Field Trip will be an adventure into the mountains to sample classic mountain cuisine from Beau Jo’s, followed by a train trip over the far-famed Georgetown Loop.

Spend a fun-filled Sunday on October 24 with fellow attendees as we ascend to 9,101 ft (2,774 m) via air-conditioned buses and railroad coaches. This trip will encompass Geologic, Historic, Natural, and Culinary wonders west of Denver.

This year’s field trip is sponsored by the North Denver Metro C++ Meetup. Jason Turner, one of the meetup’s organizers, recommends:

You cannot go wrong with a trip up to Georgetown and a stop at Beau Jo’s for a truly Colorado experience. You get a feel for the amazing Rocky Mountains, a look into the mining past that shaped this state, and a taste of a Colorado classic! Just be aware these Pizzas can be ridiculously huge (and crazy tasty)! We always take visiting family to one of the Beau Jo’s locations, and you cannot beat the original in Idaho Springs. There’s also a local brewery right next door with grab-and-go, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Beau Jo’s is a Colorado institution, where we will sample some of their wonderful mountain pizzas in Idaho Springs, a mining boom town, now a historic landmark near the heart of many outdoor adventures.

After lunch, we will venture higher to Georgetown, and board the steam-powered Georgetown Loop to wind around an amazing train trip up and over itself to climb the mountain valley into Silver Plume, a mining camp started in the 1860’s silver rush.

If you are arriving for CppCon 2021 by Sunday morning, this is your opportunity to get to know some of your fellow attendees while touring some of the inspiring wonders Colorado has to offer.

See the CppCon 2021 Field Trip page for details.

Register here!

We are very happy that CppCon 2021 can take place in person again this October, at the Gaylord Rockies, in Aurora, Colorado. We know that, by this fall, travel and onsite meetings will possible for at least part of our community to again engage safely in person.

But we’re also very aware that the pandemic won’t be “over” for everyone, everywhere by then, and we don’t want to leave anyone out, including people for whom travel is difficult even in normal times. So we’re announcing that CppCon 2021 will be a “hybrid” event with both in-person and online tracks.

We’re very pleased with the strong response to and success of CppCon 2020 online and plan to do something similar in 2021, integrated with the in-person event. We are still working out all the details for what a hybrid CppCon will look like, but we are confident that we can provide the CppCon engagement experience for both online and in-person attendees and we will let you know more details soon.

Here what’s next…

Soon we will be opening our Call for Submissions, for both online and in-person sessions. Even if you have never spoken at a conference before, why not submit a talk to CppCon, or encourage a colleague to do so when they have a cool perspective or technique to share?

Then, we’ll open Early Bird Registration for both online attendees and for in-person attendees who are vaccinated (or plan to be by October 1), with the goal of opening in-person registration further as we all learn more about what will be safe in October. Please consider whether your plans this fall can include joining us by connecting online, or traveling in-person to Aurora, Colorado, to be part of what will certainly be one of the most memorable CppCons ever this October 24-29.

Thank you very much for all your support for C++ and CppCon. We hope to see many of you in October, both online and in-person, and will have more details to share soon.

In this instructor interview, Kevin Carpenter welcomes Patrice Roy for a discussion of his CppCon Academy class, Managing Memory. Patrice has been a professor for over two decades and has been to every CppCon, but this is his first time at CppCon as a Ph.D graduate!

Patrice and Kevin discuss what attendees will get out of his class. This class is for people coming from other languages that want to do C++ right and for people who have been writing C++ that want to do it better, to get more control, more speed, and more resilience. There are a number of details of specialized knowledge, but they can be simple and fun. People will end the class knowing how to do things because they’ll have done them in the class.

In addition to his class, Patrice is also going to be presenting two talks for the Main Program. The idea for Some Things C++ Does Right comes from identifying the things about C++ that he misses most when teaching classes that use other languages.

The Surprising Costs of void() (and Other Not-Quite-Innocuous Evils) comes from the fact that as a professor grading the work of students he reads a lot of code written by bright people that are still learning, “so they do all sorts of weird things.” When he pointed these “weird things” out to other instructors he found that many knowledgable, experienced people don’t always recognizes some of these mistakes for what they are. This talk will give you a lot to think about.

In this instructor interview, Kevin Carpenter welcomes Andreas Fertig for a discussion of his CppCon Academy class, Modern C++: When Efficiency Matters. This is Andreas’ first time at CppCon.

Andreas and Kevin discuss what attendees will get out of his class and mention that Andreas’ lambda expression talk at Code Dive may give people a taste of what his class will be like.

Of course, they discuss Andreas’ delightful C++ Insights which he uses, along with Matt Godbolt’s Compiler Explore, in the class to help attendees visualize what the compiler is doing with their code.

In addition to his class, Andreas is also going to be presenting the two-part Back to Basics: Templates during the Main Program. He relates that when he teaches classes on modern C++, he frequently hears the comment from students that, although this wasn’t the point of the class, it made them believe in templates in way they’d not perviously. He will be sharing some of that material with attendees in the Back to Basics Track.