Skycon is a computer society conference that punches well above its weight. In just two weeks, Skycon ‘09 will take place so book your train tickets now!

Speakers include Randall Munroe, ex-NASA contractor and creator of the famous xkcd comic, and David Malone, who works on IPv6 and Wireless Networking in the FreeBSD operating system.

Other speakers will include representatives of Microsoft’s XNA division (Martha Rotter), AIB’s Enterprise Systems & Technology division (Alan J. Guinane) and the Computer Science and Information Systems Faculty at the University of Limerick (Loraine Morgan). Irish companies represented at the event include Havok, creators of the physics engine used in games such as Sky Wars, and Daft.ie, one of the most popular websites in Ireland (Ciarán Maher).

There will also be talks by Evert Bopp (Open Coffee Club), John Lunney (C64 Demoscene), Christian van den Bosch (OpenStreetMap) and Mel Gorman (Linux Kernel). Click here for Skycon ‘09 timetable.

Check out the Skycon ‘09 site or add them as a friend on twitter for updates – http://twitter.com/Skycon. You can also email: skycon [at] skynet.ie. There is even a facebook event

Some logistics – there will be dinner on Saturday evening in the Kilmurray Lodge Hotel and there happens to be a nightclub downstairs. Tickets for the talks (which will be on in the UL CSIS building) cost €5 and dinner will cost €20. Pre-booking for both will be available on the site in the next few days.

***UPDATE***
Timetable addition: Jeff Gough from the University of Southampton will be talking on “Formica: Build your own swarm of robot overlords” (via twitter)