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Welcome to Camp Smalltalk. Like any static document, this is only a shell. The real activity is on the Wiki and the mailing list. On the Wiki it's particularly useful to look at the Recent Changes to see where the most recent activity has been.
Think "Camp David". Think "summer camp". Camp Smalltalk is a recurring event where a bunch of Smalltalkers gather to make the world a better place and have a great time. So, far Camp Smalltalk's have been held in
As of March 4, 2001, The next Camp will be held April 9-11 in Chicago at Smalltalk Solutions 2001. The one after that will be in Essen, Germany, August 25-31 in cooperation with the European Smalltalk User Group's Summer School (this one is both coding and conference). For up to date information, see the Wiki All Events page.
Camp Smalltalk is rather anarchic, and we're still kind of new at this, but we're noticing that there's a definite difference between a "coding" Camp Smalltalk like San Diego or Annapolis and a conference Camp Smalltalk like CS@OOPSLA. At a conference, people have lots of other stuff to do, so there's not nearly as much code written, but people get to touch base and to tell the world a bit about what they're working on. At an independent Camp Smalltalk there aren't nearly as many distractions, and they're of a different variety (like the beach) so there's less talk and more code. Both are valuable, and so, for that matter, is time at the beach. As Ralph Johnson said in the announcement for CS1. "We'll work on various projects that will benefit the entire Smalltalk community, but we'll take time to visit the beach. So, bring your computer and your swimming suit, and be prepared to write some great Smalltalk code at the same time as you improve your tan."
We will work on a set of concrete projects. Note that these projects are ones that can help all versions of Smalltalk. One of the goals of Camp Smalltalk is to unify the Smalltalk world, to help make the various versions of Smalltalk more compatible. We expect that a single project might have people working in Agents, Dolphin, Gemstone, MT, ObjectStudio, Smalltalk-X, Squeak, VisualAge, and VisualWorks. People who know lots of versions of Smalltalk are especially welcome! Or this might be a good way for you to improve your skills in a new version. One of the fringe benefits of being at Camp Smalltalk is seeing other ways of doing things and learning about other versions of Smalltalk.
Our goal is to produce useful working code. We won't always succeed, of course, and most projects will require a little cleaning up after Camp Smalltalk is over, but our goal is to produce something polished by the end of the week. Therefore, we aren't going to just talk about design, we'll write lots of tests, make sure the code passes them, and refactor the code until it shines.
Camp Smalltalk is normally run on a shoestring. (Think "Huck Fin and Tom Sawyer go camping.") At a conference there are usually good facilities available. Otherwise, we make our own. In San Diego we turned an innocent motel into a maze of CAT-5 cable running along hallways, over balconys and generally everywhere across four stories. Bring your own computer. We'll bring ethernet and hubs and perhaps a server or two. I expect a lot of work to be done two-on-a-computer, so not everybody will have to have a computer, but it would be a lot easier if most people brought one.
If you are interested in attending, send email to Ralph Johnson saying you want to attend. If I don't know you, describe your Smalltalk background and why you want to attend. If you aren't sure you would fit in, just send e-mail and we'll figure it out.
If you are interested, check out the attendance list.