CppCon 2023 Wrap-up and CppCon 2024 Dates!

The above photo is from CppCon 2023 by CppCon’s photographer, Jonathan Phillips. Not only do I want to share this brilliant photo, I also want to announce CppCon 2024 dates, September 15 – 20 2024, save the dates now!

CppCon 2023 just wrapped up and was an amazing conference. For an early preview of what happened, see Bjarne’s keynote, Bret and Bill’s keynote, Laura’s keynote, Herb’s keynote, and Andrei’s keynote.

Videos of all our other Main Program sessions will start to be published on our YouTube channel, one a business day, starting in November. If you want access to CppCon 2023 videos as soon as they are available, then have we got something in store for you! Check out our new Early Video Access option.

Trip Reports

I’ll update this post as more trip reports are published. If you’d like your trip report to be included, please send it.

Thanks

A conference the size of CppCon doesn’t just happen. There are a lot of heroes that work hard to make this happen. You’ll find many of their names on our staff page which lists the organizers, program committee, volunteers, and vendors.

You’d find more names (and faces) on the presenters page for this year’s conference which lists presenters from the Main Program, panels, Open Content sessions, and lightning talks.

As much as all of these people work hard so that we are providing the best that we can in technical content, food, production values, live music, comfortable ambiance, and supportive environment, none of those is the most important part of CppCon.

Returning attendees know that the most important part of CppCon is the opportunity to engage with the attendees (including the presenters), who are tackling some of our most challenging problems, with creative and innovative techniques, using powerful tools provided by C++ and the C++ community.

CppCon 2023 Attendees

Over 700 People Passionate About C++ and Excited to be at CppCon

Above, you’ll see the faces of the most important part of CppCon, the attendees. (I’ve not matched faces to the registration list to verify that no one is missing, but I think most of us are in the photo.)

This year, more than any other, you are all my heroes.

I look forward to seeing you all next year.

Jon Kalb
Conference Chair

The Wild Animal Sanctuary Field Trip Announced

The CppCon 2023 Field Trip will be a Wild Animal Sanctuary adventure.

Join Us on an Inspiring Journey to a Wild Animal Sanctuary!

We are thrilled to extend a warm invitation to all fellow conference attendees to join us on an extraordinary adventure beyond the conference venue. As part of our commitment to fostering a well-rounded experience, we have organized a visit to a remarkable wild animal sanctuary that promises to be both educational and awe-inspiring.


North of the conference hotel, the Wild Animal Sanctuary offers an incredible 1,214 acres (4.9 km^2) of natural habitats for rescued animals to enjoy. ​One of the largest carnivore sanctuaries in the world, designed and built like no other in existence. Everything about the facility is designed to ensure the animals’ welfare remains top priority, even with the numerous modern comforts provided to guests.

The raised walkway gives an unmatched vantage to see great animals at ease, engaging in their large environments. During our visit, we will have the opportunity to witness firsthand the incredible conservation efforts that go into protecting and rehabilitating these remarkable animals. 

 

 

 

We sincerely hope that you will seize this opportunity to explore the wonders of the wild alongside your fellow conference attendees. Let us come together, learn from nature’s marvels, and create memories that will leave a lasting impact. Transportation and Lunch will be provided in a location to facilitate meeting your fellow conference attendees.

We look forward to sharing this remarkable experience with you!





 

Spend a fun-filled Sunday October 1st with fellow attendees to take a walk on the wild side.

If you are arriving for CppCon 2023 by Sunday morning, this is your opportunity to get to know some of your fellow attendees while experiencing an amazing wildlife experience.

See the CppCon 2023 Field Trip page for details.

Register here!


North Denver Metro C++ MeetupThis year’s field trip is sponsored by the North Denver Metro C++ Meetup.

 

 

 


CppCon 2023 Registration is Open

Registration is now open for CppCon 2023, an all-in-person conference being held at the Gaylord Rockies in Aurora, Colorado. A separate registration for CppCon Academy 2023 will be open soon. (We’ll have some online classes, but conference sessions will be onsite-only, recorded, and posted to the CppCon YouTube channel.)

Registration Desk

With your stay at the Gaylord Rockies, receive up to five days of lunch vouchers (one for each night of your stay, up to $30 per lunch) and free high-speed WiFi throughout the conference site. The same high-speed WiFi available in your room is also available throughout the entire conference space.

These benefits are exclusively for attendees staying at the Gaylord Rockies.

Maximize your conference experience with the comfort and convenience of staying onsite and the official CppCon hotel.

No special registration is required. Just register for the conference and book a room in your name at the Gaylord Rockies.

Registration details are available on our registration page, but the high points are:

  • Substantial savings are available for Early Bird registrations before the end of June 23rd.
  • The conference is onsite, but CppCon Academy will offer both onsite and online classes.
  • We are also offering an Economy registration that doesn’t include the “Meet the Presenters” Banquet, annual tee shirt, CppCache credit, or souvenir that are included in Full registration.
  • We have two options available for full-time students, Full and Economy.

Visa application support for non-US attendees is available.

As always, we offer support for academics and employees of non-profits and, thanks to the support of the C++ Alliance, child care.

CppCon 2021 Wrap-Up

Hybrid Success

Our first adventure with a hybrid conference was a success! Although a our onsite attendee numbers were down (way down, see the photo of many of us), our online-only attendee count was up from last year (even with many of last year’s attendees attending onsite this year) and our total attendance grew (a bit) from our record in 2019.

Trip Reports

But don’t take my word for it, read what some of our attendees are saying. I’ll update this post as more trip reports are published.

Videos

JetBrains, a CppCon YouTube Channel sponsor, is providing early access to some of our conference videos. In addition to the Fireside Chat with the C++ Standards Committee, JetBrains has posted all of our onsite plenary sessions (from Bjarne Stroustrup, Herb Sutter, Lisa Lippincott, Michael Caisse, and Sean Parent).

In the next few weeks, we’ll be posting session videos to the CppCon YouTube Channel and slides to our repository.

CppCon 2022

CppCon 2022 will be held September 11 – 16 at the Gaylord Rockies, in Aurora, Colorado. Watch this page for more details.

Thanks

We all knew pretty early last year that 2020 was going to be a horrible year.

But many of us, certainly I, had great hopes for 2021. This year would be so good, due to “pent up demand,” that we’d forget all about 2020. Except that it didn’t turn out that way. 2021 turned out to be the year of disappointment following disappointment.

In addition to having to cut many familiar conference features due to lack of attendees, money, and planning time, the process of organizing a hybrid conference proved much more difficult that I’d imagined that it would be. We scrapped our program schedule twice before we came up with something that made us happy.

I confess to having low expectations for this year’s event. It wasn’t because we didn’t have a great team preparing for it.

The organizers, including our department heads, volunteers, and vendors did an amazing job of preparing for the event under terrible circumstances. Our Program Committee reviewed a near record number of submissions. The online volunteers had to master several different software platforms in order to answer questions and provide technical support for online presenters and other attendees. The onsite volunteers were very, very short-handed. They worked longer shifts than we’ve asked of them in years past and were also required to master new platforms for delivering hybrid session.

Our vendors, including, Bash Films, Digital Medium, Gaylord Rockies, Jonathan Phillips, Krueger Event Management, and LSAV Powerhouse, all went above and beyond to create a hybrid CppCon for the first time.

I was, of course, delighted by the way about team came together to see our challenges as an opportunity to succeed in a new way rather than as an excuse to fail at delivering the best possible CppCon experience.

I was happy for the support of our sponsors and both online and onsite exhibitors.

Still, I was very worried.

But there was part of the CppCon team that I’d not counted on. Our attendees! At every closing I thank the attendees because, I tell them, without attendees, we don’t have a conference.

This year I learned the deepest truth of that. CppCon 2021 was a success in the only way that really matters. Those attending were delighted that they were attending.

The attendees came through for us. In a year when we could have heard a lot of complaining (about no posters, no bookstore or author signings, no live-captioning, no Tool Time, reduced social events), instead we heard about how delighted everyone was to be able to see old friends, meet new friends, and engage with the some of the best minds in C++. We had great engagement during sessions, at lightning talks, and in the all-important “hallway track.”

2021 Onsite Group Photo

You are all my heroes.

I look forward to seeing you all next year.

Jon Kalb
Conference Chair

CppCon 2021 Keynote: Value in a Procedural World by Lisa Lippincott Live, In Person

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

Lisa Lippincott

We’re happy to announce: Lisa Lippincott will be in Aurora live, in person to deliver a brand-new talk about a fundamental basis of understanding computer programs.

Lisa Lippincott designed the software architectures of Tanium and BigFix, two systems for managing large fleets of computers. She is chair of the numerics study group of the C++ standardization committee.

Here is her talk description:

What is a value? The most common conception is that values are inhabitants of a platonic mathematical world, too far away to be examined or subjected to experiment. As a basis for understanding computer programs, this conception is awkwardly non-local and disturbingly mystical.

In this lecture, I will present a functionalist conception of value, situated locally within the realm of procedural programming. I will show how values in this conception relate directly to program execution, and examine how events within program execution are related through the stability, substitutability, and repeatability of values.

This talk is the Keynote talk for the Software Design Track.

Registration is now open for what will certainly be one of the most memorable CppCons ever this October 24-29. Register today!

Tickets are now available for both online attendees and in-person attendees who are vaccinated.

Herb Sutter live in person at CppCon 2021

As already announced, CppCon 2021 will kick off on Monday, October 25 with Bjarne Stroustrup delivering the opening keynote live in person in Aurora, Colorado, USA.

We’re happy to announce another plenary talk: Herb Sutter will be there live in person to deliver a brand-new talk about post-C++20 C++ language evolution. Here is his talk description:

Extending and Simplifying C++: Pattern Matching using is and as

C++20 is a unique historic milestone: the first edition of Standard C++ that’s “D&E-complete,” with essentially all of the features Bjarne Stroustrup outlined in The Design and Evolution of C++ for C++’s evolution. That doesn’t mean evolution is done, however, and work continues on adding a few more important features in C++23 and beyond, including reflection and pattern matching.

Herb SutterIn this talk, I’ll show the C++ pattern matching libraries and language proposals we’ve considered, and present my own contribution that builds on them. My paper has two major aims: (1) to make the syntax clean and regular, and avoid inventing a little sublanguage that works only inside “inspect”; and (2) to make it generalizable so we can use it consistently throughout the language, because matching a pattern is a broadly useful feature that ideally should not be limited to “inspect” only… for example, we would love to express patterns in “if” and “requires” conditions too.

I hope that the most important contribution is that, if we add pattern matching in a way that also provides general “match” and “extract” support throughout the language in the form of generalized “is” constraints and “as” casts, the net result is that we can actually simplify C++… yes, even as we add new features and more expressive power. How can that be simpler? By letting programmers directly express their intent where they have to express it indirectly today, by making the language more regular with fewer special cases to learn, by unifying the syntax of existing standard library features that today have a gaggle of different and divergent styles (e.g., variant, optional), and by providing one general and expressive way to use patterns cleanly throughout C++.

Registration DeskRegistration is now open for what will certainly be one of the most memorable CppCons ever this October 24-29. Register today!

Tickets are now available for both online attendees and in-person attendees who are vaccinated, with the goal of opening registration further as we all learn more about what will be safe.

Big Update with Big Thanks for a Big Program

The deadline for Main Program submissions has passed with a near-record number of submissions!

The conference organizers are grateful for, and excited about, the almost-two-hundred submissions that we received. We are excited both by the quality of the submissions and by the fact that that the vast majority of submissions were for onsite presentations.

Our Program Committee is currently hard at work reviewing and rating each submission and we know that we’ll have an amazing program for both onsite and online attendees in Aurora in October. As you know, we’ve announced that Bjarne will be our opening keynote onsite. (We are anxious to make our next onsite keynote announcement but that isn’t quite ready yet.)

 

A peek behind the curtain for those of you that have not been part of the submission/review process: Each submission receives written evaluations by several members of the CppCon Program Committee. There are two goals of each committee member as they draft these evaluations. The most obvious is to select the best possible program for CppCon attendees. On the one hand, this is easy because with so many high-quality submissions, creating a great program comes out pretty naturally, but on the other hand, it is very hard because we know that our audience has come to have great expectations of a CppCon program, not just that every individual sessions is of high quality, but that the program as a whole provides coverage of the topics that matter to our attendees, and also because the competition is fierce. The quality of the submissions that we don’t accept is getting higher every year.

Which leads us to the second goal of members as they draft their evaluations. The evaluations are, of course, shared with the submitters, so each evaluation should also contain constructive advice on how to improve the submission. For submissions that are accepted, this leads to an even better program for attendees. For submissions that are not accepted, this leads to better submissions to future programs (both at CppCon and other conferences).

Our feeling is that all submissions, from the weakest to the strongest, can be improved in some way and comments that we’ve received from submitters (both those that have been accepted and those that have not) let us know that submitters appreciate thoughtful, constructive comments.

Creating multiple, thoughtful evaluations on almost two-hundred submissions touching on virtually every topic of C++ and software design in less than a month is a mammoth task, but we know that the CppCon 2021 Program that you’ll be seeing in Aurora and/or online, will be something that we as organizers, the Program Committee, and the presenters, will be proud to present.

Announcing CppCon Academy 2021 Classes

class attendeesRegistration is open for almost twenty CppCon Academy classes that will be held in the days before or after CppCon 2021 in October.

Four classes are open to online attendees and the rest will be offered to onsite attendees at the Gaylord Rockies in Aurora.

This year we are offering classes that range from those that are focused on updating you to the latest versions of C++, to those focusing on better code, testing, or design skills. This year we are offering a class on computing in mixed CPU/GPU/FPGA environments and two on embedded programming.

class instructor with studentsRead about all the offered classes on the CppCon Academy 2021 page. There are seven classes on Language Updates, four on Design, three on Better Code, two on Quality, two on Embedded Programming, and one on Heterogeneous Computing.

Online classes will be held either on the last three business days of the week before the conference or the first three business days of the week after the conference.

Onsite classes are held the weekends immediately before and after the conference.

class instructorMost of the classes feature two days (onsite) or three days (online) of class instruction and all feature hands-on opportunities to improve your programming skills.

CppCon instructors are selected from the best C++ instructors in the world. They feature rare combinations of deep technical knowledge, extensive development experience, and the ability to explain things in an approachable manner.

Reminder: Early Bird Registration ends at the end of July, so register now!

CppCon 2021 Call for Volunteers and Volunteer Grant Program

Be a part of making CppCon 2021 an exciting event.  Please join us as a volunteer.

As a hybrid conference for the first time, we anticipate new challenges. To meet these challenges we’ll need both onsite and online-only volunteers.

Delivering some of our content online this year will require more training of online volunteers to understand the content delivery technologies that we’ll be using.

If you want more information about volunteering, contact us at volunteers@cppcon.org.

For more information about volunteering and the Volunteer Grant Program, please see our Volunteer page.

Join a great team and be a part of history making in the C++ community, please complete the CppCon 2021 Volunteer Application Form. There will be other steps after completion, we will contact you to assist you with setup for the conference.

Thank you

Brett Searles

Please note that registration to be an onsite volunteer will be ending October 1st. Registration to be an online volunteer is closed.

Opening Keynote: Bjarne Stroustrup, live in person

As already announced, CppCon 2021 this October will be the full normal in-person conference now that many of us can meet safely, and are just bursting with anticipation to see each other again in person… and also a coordinated online conference for those who aren’t yet ready to engage in person or for whom travel is difficult. The Call for Submissions is open for both in-person and online sessions, and we are planning to make much of the in-person and online content available in near-real-time to online attendees… including the in-person keynotes, which brings us to the opening talk of the conference…

Meeting in personCppCon 2021 will kick off on Monday, October 25 with Bjarne Stroustrup delivering the opening keynote live in person in Aurora, Colorado, USA. This is Stroustrup’s first in-person talk in North America since C++20 was completed, just before the pandemic lockdowns began. His talk connects C++’s roots with all the things that make C++20 a historic milestone – it’s not only the biggest release of C++ in a decade, but also the first edition of Standard C++ ever that is “D&E-complete,”containing all of the features (except only unified function call syntax) that Stroustrup described a quarter-century ago in The Design and Evolution of C++ as his goals for C++’s future development, including concepts, coroutines, and modules which in 2021 are for the first time now available as actual realities in production C++ compilers.

CppCon 2021 is proud to be the forum for Dr. Stroustrup’s landmark talk, which he describes as follows:

C++20: Reaching for the Aims of C++

Out of necessity C++ has been an evolving language. I outline some early ideals for C++, some techniques for keeping the evolution directed, and show how C++20 comes close to many of those ideals. Specific topics include type-and-resource safe code, generic programming, modularity, and the elimination of the preprocessor. Naturally, over the years, C++ has acquired many “barnacles” that can become obstacles to developing elegant and efficient code. That has been a recognized problem since the early days of C – Dennis Ritchie and I talked about it – so we must distinguish between what can be done and what should be done. The C++ Core Guidelines is the current best effort in that direction. The talk will start with a sequence of early design aim statements, and then match them directly to working C++20 examples and the Core Guidelines.

Registration DeskEarly Bird Registration is now open for what will certainly be one of the most memorable CppCons ever this October 24-29. Register today!

Registration is now open for both online and in-person attendees. In-person attendees will require proof of being fully vaccinated, with the goal of further opening registration as we learn more about what will be safe in October.