CppCon 2018 Plenary: Patterns and Techniques Used in the Houdini 3D Graphics Application by Mark Elendt

Posted on 2018-07-05 by cppcon

Early Bird registration is almost at an end. Only three days (one US business days) remain before the deadline.

Plenary Speaker: Mark Elendt

Academy award-winner, Mark Elendt will be giving his first CppCon talk on Patterns and Techniques Used in the Houdini 3D Graphics Application.

Mark has been working at SideFX, the creators of Houdini for over 25 years and it was in recognition of this work and the value of Houdini to the motion picture industry that Mark and SideFX Software were given a Scientific and Technical Academy Award of Merit earlier this year.

From his talk’s description:

Not only has Houdini been used in all of the Visual Effects Academy Award winning films of the past 10 years, but it has also been used for television shows like Game of Thrones and Stranger Things as well as content creation for many AAA video games, and even for scientific visualization.

Houdini artists are tasked with creating amazing, never before seen visual effects. They constantly push both performance and scale in the software. Since the early 1990’s Houdini’s C++ architecture has provided a flexible platform that has enabled artists from around the world to
create their vision.

Mark will discuss some of the patterns and approaches that have been used in Houdini to meet the demands of production, from the early days of dealing with c-front to embracing modern features provided by modern C++.

CppCon 2018 Keynote: Simplicity: Not Just for Beginners by Kate Gregory

Posted on 2018-07-03 by cppcon

Don’t miss out on Early Bird registration. Only five days (two US business days) remain before the deadline.

Keynote Speaker: Kate Gregory

Kate Gregory is an author, sought-after conference speaker, trainer, Microsoft Regional Director, and partner at Gregory Consulting. She is also a frequent and popular speaker at CppCon and this year she be giving her first CppCon keynote address.

In her keynote, Simplicity: Not Just for Beginners, she will address the question, Why do so many people say that simple code is better code, but so few put it into practice?

From her talk’s description:

In this talk I’ll spend a little time on why simpler is better, and why we resist simplicity. Then I’ll provide some specific approaches that are likely to make your code simpler, and discuss what you need to know and do in order to consistently write simpler code and reap the benefits of that simplicity.

CppCon 2018 Plenary: Spectre: Secrets, Side-Channels, Sandboxes, and Security by Chandler Carruth

Posted on 2018-07-02 by cppcon

Chandler Carruth Less than a week remains for Early Bird registration. Only six days (three US business days) remain before the deadline.

Plenary Speaker: Chandler Carruth

Chandler, who leads the C++ and LLVM teams at Google and is one of the most popular speakers at CppCon, will tackle the new class of vulnerabilities in modern CPUs with his talk Spectre: Secrets, Side-Channels, Sandboxes, and Security. He is one of the lead engineers within Google and across the industry working to respond to these developments.

From his talk’s description:

The discovery of speculative execution side-channel attacks (called “Spectre”) fundamentally changes the security model of every modern superscalar microprocessor. Extracting secret data (credit cards, cryptographic keys) through side-channels is not new and has challenged the cryptographic community for decades. However, speculative execution attack techniques have fundamentally altered the ease and applicability of side-channels: far more code is impacted by these attacks and they can more reliably be weaponized. Responding to these issues has impacted CPU design, compiler design, library design, sandbox techniques and even the C++ programming language and standard.

This talk will explain how these kinds of attacks work at a high level and provide a clear set of terminology to describe these classes of vulnerabilities and attacks. It will show how the different variants work at the low level of modern hardware to give a detailed and precise understanding of the mechanics involved on CPUs today.

In addition to his plenary address, Chandler will participate in a panel discussion with other experts from across the industry who have helped lead this security incident response.

Early Bird Deadline | First Speaker Announcement

Posted on 2018-06-292018-06-29 by cppcon

Next week is the last opportunity for Early Bird registration. Only nine days (four US business days) remain before the deadline.

We’ll be counting down the days with announcements of this year’s plenary speakers, including today’s plenary speaker announcement.

Next Friday, the last business day of Early Bird registration, we’ll share a special goodie.

Plenary Speakers: Bjarne Stroustrup and Herb Sutter

Herb Sutter Bjarne Stroustrup

Two of our most popular speakers, Bjarne Stroustrup and Herb Sutter, are confirmed speakers for CppCon 2018. We are not yet ready to announce titles for these talks.

Call for Volunteers – Announcing Our New Volunteer Grant Program

Posted on 2018-06-122018-06-11 by cppcon

Volunteering at CppCon

If you would like to attend CppCon 2018, see great C++ content, and meet our speakers and attendees, but a week’s registration doesn’t fit your time or money budget, consider volunteering.

We are looking for volunteers to help run the conference. We need people to:

help assemble registration packets and badges,
register attendees,
assist speakers with Audio/Video (AV),
and, in general, be on hand to make things run smoothly.

In exchange, we’ll see to it that you’ll spend at least half of your time in sessions. It would be great if you could join us for the whole week, but if you can only make it for one or two days, we can work with that. We have information on our Volunteer Page. If you would like more information, please email volunteers@cppcon.org.

Announcing the Volunteer Grant Program, new for 2018

Most of the volunteers that we’ve had at CppCon have come from the local area. We are delighted with the support that we’ve received from the Northwest C++ Users’ Group and the Seattle area C++ community. The help that we’ve received running the conference for the last four years has been invaluable for the conference, but it is also a wonderful experience for anyone interested in C++. We’d like to make that opportunity available more broadly, so we are announcing a program to provide financial support that will make it possible for individuals to volunteer, even if they would have to incur travel and lodging expenses to attend the conference.

This program has grants to cover some or (in a few cases) all of the costs of lodging and travel for a limited number of volunteers. Grants will be awarded to applicants that can commit to volunteering for five days. Grant applications will be judged on the basis of participation and leadership in the C++ community.

If you:

are active in the C++ community on-line, in your local user group, or at C++ events,
are actively supporting C++ on StackOverflow or GitHub,
have worked on an Open Source C++ project like an Open Source library, CppReference, C++VAP,
write reviews for Open Source libraries on Boost, Boost Incubator, or C++ Reviews,
or, have a blog, podcast or YouTube channel on C++,

but have not attended CppCon because you can’t afford the travel and lodging, this is your opportunity.

For more information about the Volunteer Grant Program, read our Volunteer Page.

Registration for CppCon 2018 is Open

Posted on 2018-04-262018-04-26 by cppcon

Registration is now open for CppCon 2018 to be held September 23-28, 2018 at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington, USA.

CppCon is the annual, week-long face-to-face gathering for the entire C++ community. The conference is organized by the C++ community for the community. You will enjoy inspirational talks and a friendly atmosphere designed to help attendees learn from each other, meet interesting people, and generally have a stimulating experience. Taking place this year in the beautiful Seattle neighborhood and including multiple diverse tracks, the conference will appeal to anyone from C++ novices to experts.

Audience13

What you can expect at CppCon:

Pre and post-conference classes: Choose from these exciting classes:
- Engage, Entertain, Educate: Technical Speaking that Works with Andrei Alexandrescu, Kate Gregory, Scott Meyers (Class size strictly limited.)
- Advanced and Modern C++ Programming: The Tricky Parts with Nicolai Josuttis
- Concurrency with Modern C++ with Rainer Grimm
- Interface Design for Modern C++ with Bob Steagall
- Modern C++ Template Programming with Steve Dewhurst
- Modernizing your C++ with Michael Caisse
- Thinking Small with Patrice Roy
- Accelerated TDD: For More Productive C++ with Phil Nash (available as one-day or two day)
- C++ Best Practices with Jason Turner
- Leveraging Modern C++ for Embedded Systems with Ben Saks and Dan Saks
- Debugging and Profiling C++ Code on Linux with Thomas McGuire
- Essential C++ Design with Klaus Inglberger
- Generic Programming 2.0 with Concepts and Ranges with Christopher Di Bella
- Parallel Programming with Modern C++: from CPU to GPU with Gordon Brown and Michael Wong
- The Standard Library from Scratch with Arthur O’Dwyer
Invited talks and panels: Expect a week full of insight from some of the world’s leading experts in C++. Still have questions? Ask them at one of CppCon’s panels featuring those at the cutting edge of the language.
Presentations by the C++ community: What do embedded systems, game development, high frequency trading, and particle accelerators have in common? C++, of course! Expect talks from a broad range of domains experts focused on practical C++ techniques, libraries, and tools.
Lightning talks: Get informed at a fast pace during special sessions of short, less formal talks. Never presented at a conference before? This is your chance to share your thoughts on a C++-related topic in an informal setting.
Evening events, dinners, and “unconference” time: Relax, socialize with speakers and other attendees, or start an impromptu coding session.

CppCon’s goal is to encourage the best use of C++ while preserving the diversity of viewpoints and experiences. The conference is a project of the Standard C++ Foundation, a not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to support the C++ software developer community and promote the understanding and use of modern, standard C++ on all compilers and platforms.

CppCon 2018 Call for Submissions

Posted on 2018-04-022018-04-02 by cppcon

CppCon is the annual, week-long face-to-face gathering for the entire C++ community. The conference is organized by the C++ community for the community and so we invite you to present. The conference regular program consists of five days of seven tracks of one hour sessions.

Have you learned something interesting about C++, maybe a new technique possible in C++14/17? Or perhaps you have implemented something cool related to C++, maybe a new C++ library? If so, consider sharing it with other C++ enthusiasts by giving a regular program talk at CppCon 2018.

The submissions deadline is May 11 with decisions sent by July 1.

For topic ideas, possible formats, submission instructions and valuable advice on how to make the best possible submission, see the Submissions page.

Note: Calls for lightning talks and Open Content sessions will be made this summer. The deadline for these is the conference itself.

Inclusiveness, accessibility, and CppCon 2017 videos

Posted on 2018-01-182018-01-18 by Herb Sutter

CppCon has always aimed to be a welcoming environment for everyone, across the whole diverse worldwide C++ community. We made that a cornerstone of our very first blog post nearly four years ago, and since then we’ve invited speakers from as many industries and personal backgrounds as we could, tried to keep ticket prices affordable (nominal and free for students and volunteers, respectively, to help them attend), rolled out successively more detailed codes of conduct, and at last fall’s event we were excited for the first time to have sessions and events especially geared toward families and kids who are just learning how much fun programming can be… yes, in C++.

We’ve also always professionally recorded all talks and made the videos available to everyone in the world for free, so that as many people as possible can benefit. For CppCon 2017, that meant engaging the pros at Bash Films once again to shoot and produce 137 high-quality videos, which were posted on YouTube within a few weeks after the event.

Today we’re happy to announce that, as in previous years, all CppCon 2017 videos are now available on Channel 9 in addition to YouTube. This makes them available in more geographies where YouTube may not be readily available, and it makes it possible for you to download videos for offline viewing, making them even easier to watch during your commute time or whenever you don’t have a high-bandwidth connection. Thank you again to Google for hosting our videos on YouTube, and to Microsoft for hosting them on Channel 9!

Closed captioned But this year we’re very pleased to announce something new: Inclusiveness also includes doing what we can to make our content available to those in our C++ community who have disabilities or other barriers to benefiting fully from the recordings. So, for the first time this year, all CppCon 2017 videos are now professionally captioned; the captions are live now on the YouTube videos, and will be available soon also on the Channel 9 videos. We hope that this will help to make the content even more accessible to viewers who are hearing-impaired, and also help non-native English speakers follow the content more easily. Additionally, we hope this will make the job of the all-volunteer C++ Video Access Project effort that much easier, because English language captioning is also the first step to making videos accessible to non-English speakers via captioning in additional languages.

Closed captioning example

You don’t need to buy a CppCon ticket to watch any of the videos. However, if you have attended CppCon in person, let me say a personal thank you: because not only did you get the rich and full community experience that can only be had by being there, but these professionally-edited and -captioned videos are possible because a portion of every CppCon ticket sold goes to funding these for everyone (including for you after you get home, to watch again or to catch the ones you couldn’t attend because we nearly always have 6 or 7 tracks in progress). Thank you for your support.

In a few months, we’ll open registration for CppCon 2018. When we do, I’m pleased that exactly the same words we used in our very first blog post continue to accurately describe our event [emphasis original]:

“CppCon is the annual, week-long face-to-face gathering for the entire C++ community. The conference is organized by the C++ community for the community. You will enjoy inspirational talks and a friendly atmosphere designed to help attendees learn from each other, meet interesting people, and generally have a stimulating experience. Taking place this year in the beautiful Seattle neighborhood and including multiple diverse tracks, the conference will appeal to anyone from C++ novices to experts.”

I look forward to seeing many of you there again this fall to enjoy and benefit from the intensive community interaction that’s only available in person. But if you can’t make it this year, you can count on the professionally-recorded and -captioned videos being available again for free, within a few weeks after the conference, and accessible to as many people as we possibly can reach including the hearing-impaired and non-native English speakers.

On behalf of the Standard C++ Foundation, thank you again to everyone for your support for the C++ community and CppCon.

Call for Proposals for CppCon 2018 Classes

Posted on 2017-11-26 by cppcon

The conference is asking for instructors to submit proposals for pre- and post-conferences classes to be taught in conjunction with next September’s CppCon 2018.

If you are interested in teaching such a class, please contact us at info@cppcon.org and we’ll send you an instructors’ prospectus and address any questions that you might have. The deadline for submitting proposals is December 22nd, 2017.

Thanks / 2018 Dates / 2017 Trip Reports

Posted on 2017-10-062017-11-14 by Jon Kalb

Save the date for the week of September 23th next year in Bellevue, Washington. Building on the success of this year’s pre and post-conference classes, we will be offering classes on September 22nd-23rd and 29th-30th. The CppCon 2018 Registration Reception will be on the 23rd and sessions will be the 24th though the 28th.

In the meantime, look for slides and source code for your favorite CppCon 2017 sessions at our presentation material repository.

You can find the posters that were entered in the CppCon 2017 Poster Competition in the poster repository.

You can also watch CppCon 2017 session videos on YouTube and Channel 9. Some of them are already available on the CppCon YouTube channel in the CppCon 2017 playlist.

I want to say thanks very much to all the hundreds of people that made CppCon 2017 possible and, in particular, I want to thank those that have published trip reports:

A Beginner’s Guide to CPPCon 2017 by Eva Bunny Conti

CppCon 2017 Trip Report by Charles L. Wilcox

CppCon 2017 Trip Report by Ben Deane

CppCon 2017 by Oliver Smith

CppCon 2017 Trip Report by Matt Godbolt

CppCon 2017 trip report by Viktor Kirilov

CppCon 2017 Trip Report by Isabella Muerte

My CppCon 2017 Trip Report – 10 great talks to watch and learn from by Quentin Duval

A CppCon 2017 trip report by Jens Weller

CppCon 2017 For Fun and Profit by Tim van Deurzen

Trip report: the JetBrains C++ team at CppCon 2017 by Anastasia Kazakova

Trip Report: CppCon 2017 by Chloe Jandsten