Presentation proposal:

Type of talk (tutorial, long, short, or lightning):
    Long (40 min)
    (Could be stripped down, though, if necessary)
Category:
    Module guts and usage of any particular module
Title:
    "Date::Calc - Philosophy, examples, future"
A 200-300 word abstract:
    (See below)
One or two sentences on you and your affiliation:
    I am programming in Perl since 1995,
    and also submitted my first modules
    (Set::IntegerFast, Date::DateCalc) to CPAN
    in that year. I work for a 700 people software
    company which specializes in tailor-made individual
    software for all sorts of large companies and public
    entities (see www.sdm.de for more details).
    My web site and download page with my Perl modules
    is at http://sb.fluomedia.org/download/.
    More details about me can be found under the URL
    http://sb.fluomedia.org/whoami/.
Whether you will have course notes or other materials
(if you are proposing a tutorial):
    No, just slides. I suppose separate handouts wouldn't
    be a good idea given the great number of participants.
    Are you planning to make a brochure of all talks or
    to put the talks online before or after the event?
    (Please tell me if you want the slides ahead of time)
Any special presentation needs:
    A computer or laptop and a beamer would be great,
    an overhead projector would do.
    The computer should preferably have Perl installed,
    and my modules if possible.
    Please tell me if I can user PowerPoint (PerlPoint
    doesn't seem to be out of alpha state, is it?)

Abstract:

------------------------------------------------------------

    "Date::Calc - Philosophy, examples, future"

Date::Calc is a widely used module for date calculations using
the Gregorian calendar (the one used in all western countries
today), complying with all relevant standards (ISO/R 2015-1971,
DIN 1355 and ISO 8601, where applicable).

In contrast to other modules (like Date::Manip, for instance,
the most prominent one), this module does not try to provide
routines for every imaginable function, but tries to mimick the
Unix approach "keep it simple", "do just one thing, but be good
at it" and the Unix toolbox philosophy of little elementary building
blocks, which can be combined in many ways to solve any problem
at hand (e.g., elementary tools like cat, grep, sort etc., which
can be combined with pipes "|" to form larger and more powerful
commands).

The idea is to have a minimal set of functions which are computationally
complete, i.e., which allow to solve _any_ possible date calculation
problem.

The module achieves this high degree of interoperability by providing
functions which can be nested very easily (through their interface design),
and by using a canonical representation for dates, namely lists (or arrays)
always consisting of ($year,$month,$day) or something similarly obvious,
which are the "glue" (like the pipes "|" in Unix commands) that binds the
different functions together; these arrays or lists being the next best
thing to real objects. (For real date objects, read on.)

The talk will briefly present some of the functions offered by
this module, something in the style of
  http://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgabe/1998/09/Kalender/kalender.html
but much shorter.

The talk will also show some common problems and how to solve them
using this module; for instance:

 - How do I compare two dates?
 - How do I check whether a given date lies within a certain range of dates?
 - How do I verify whether someone has a certain age?
 - How can I send a reminder to members of a group on the day before
   a meeting which occurs every first Friday of a month?

etc.

In the last part of the talk, I will briefly discuss the development
of the next version (5.0) which is currently under way, and present
my ideas where the module will be going (e.g., an object oriented
front-end will allow to deal with dates in a much more comfortable
way, using overloaded operators for common tasks such as adding an
offset to a date, calculating tomorrow's or yesterday's date, etc.).

This will also be a good opportunity for the audience to submit additional
wishes and ideas.

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