REMINDER - Contributions to HC&A Report (May 2003 edition)

Dear Haskeller,

as you can see from the Report's topics page at

  http://www.haskell.org/communities/topics.html , 

both confirmations from well-known contributors and offers from new
contributors are still a bit sparse at this stage (not to mention
actual contributions:), although we're making progress. 

First, many thanks to those who simply write their reports and are
done with it! But, if the call for contributions should have caught
you in your extended Easter holidays, could you please let me know
as soon as possible how long that will delay your contributions?-)

I wouldn't want to extend the general target deadline by much, as
people should really get going on their Haskell Workshop papers soon
(hint!-), but we may be able to accomodate individual delays.  Just
keep in mind that this is really an informal exercise: it probably
takes less time to sit down and write an update of your report than
it takes to worry about delays and making time..

Otherwise, could everybody send in their individual reports 
** by the end of THIS week ** ? Please?-)

Thanks,
Claus

--
Haskell Communities and Activities Report (May 2003 edition)
Contributions are due in by the end of THIS week!
http://www.haskell.org/communities/


======================= original call for contributions follows

Dear Haskellers,

following the early reminder in the preface of the last edition,
you've probably been waiting already, contribution in hand, eager to
send it in for the May edition of our report (hey, editors can have
their dreams, too!-), so here it is: *your* invitation to contribute
to the fourth edition of the

  Haskell Communities & Activities Report
  http://www.haskell.org/communities/

These bi-annual HC&A Reports should give a birds-eye view of Haskell
development over the last 6 months, and perhaps an outlook over
concrete plans for the next 6 months. 

The current plan is to get contributions in by the end of April, and
to get the collective report out early next month (some of you will
find this an excellent opportunity to collect your thoughts about
what to submit to this year's Haskell Workshop, btw;-).

The general idea is to update all existing summaries (these reports
are really about recent/current activities), to drop any topics that
haven't had any activity for two consecutive 6-month periods, and to
add any new developments or topics for which no-one contributed
summaries to the previous edition, while trying to keep the whole
from blowing up (last time, we ended up with about 30 pages). 


New suggestions for current hot topics, activities, projects, ..
are welcome - especially with names and addresses of potential
contacts, but here is a non-exclusive list of likely topics:

  General Haskell developments; Haskell implementations; Haskell
  extensions; Standardization and documentation; Haskell tutorials,
  how-tos and wikis; Organisation of Haskell tool and library
  development; Haskell-related projects and publications; Feedback
  from specialist mailing lists to the Haskell community as a whole;
  Haskell libraries or tools; Applications of Haskell; Haskell
  announcements;          .. all (recent) things Haskell

  Announcements: if you've announced anything new on the Haskell
  list over the last six months, you'll want to make sure that is
  reflected in this edition.

  Project pings: if you're maintaining a Haskell tool/library/..,
  you'll want to let everyone know that it is still alive and
  actively maintained, even if there may have been no new additions.

  Tutorials: if you've fought with some previously undocumented
  corner of Haskell, and have been kind enough to write down how you
  did manage to build that networking program, or if you've written a
  tutorial about some useful programming techniques/patterns, this is
  your opportunity to spread the word (btw, short, topic-specific,
  and hands-on tutorials that only show how to achieve a certain
  practical task would do a lot to make things easier for new 
  Haskellers - Erlang and Perl folks seem to be good at this
  kind of thing, but why not have a similar effort for Haskell?)

  Applications: if you've been working quietly, using Haskell for
  some interesting project or application (commercial or otherwise),
  you might want to let others know about it, and about your
  experiences using the existing tools and libraries; are you using
  Haskell on your job?

  Feedback: if you're on one of the many specialist Haskell mailing
  lists, you'll want to report on whatever progress has been made
  there (GUI API discussions, library organisation, etc.)

  
If you're unsure whether a contact for your area of work has come
forward yet, have a look at the report's potential topics page, or
get in touch with me.  I've contacted last time's contributors,
hoping they will volunteer to provide updates of their reports, and
will update the contacts on the topics page fairly regularly.  But
where you don't yet see contacts listed for your own subject of
interest, you are very welcome to volunteer, or to remind your local
community/project team/mailing list/research group/etc.  that they
really ought to get their act together and let the Haskell community
as a whole know about what they've been doing!-)

A typical summary report about a tool/library/project/application/..
would be between 1 and 3 paragraphs of ASCII text (what's it about?
major topics and results since the last report?  current hot topics?
major goals for the next six months?) plus pointers to material for
further reading (typically to a home page, or to mailing list
archives, specifications and drafts, implementations, meetings,
minutes,..).  Browsing through previous editions should give you a
good idea.


Looking forward to your contributions,
Claus 

--
Haskell Communities and Activities Report (May 2003 edition)
All contributions are due in by the end of April 2003!
http://www.haskell.org/communities/


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