I got an e-mail last night suggesting that Jason Hoffman won't be able to attend the conference. It seems that this is indeed the case. These things happen, I suppose!
However, as a motivational speaker might tell you, these sort of things are not problems, but opportunities, and in fact, its all turning out rather well!
Instead ofJason, we can now hear from Fred George - a former ThoughtWorks Vice President, Agile Guru and someone with 40 years experience in IT - who has written code not just in Ruby, but 60 other languages!
"Fred George is a consultant with over 40 years experience in the
industry including over twenty years doing object programming and a
decade doing Agile/XP. He counts at least 60 languages with which he
has written code. A veteran of the IBM-Microsoft wars, Fred did early
work in computer networking, LAN's, GUI's and objects for IBM. He gave
the first Agile/XP experience report at OOPSLA about an embedded system
done in Java, and has mentored many clients in use of objects in Java
under an XP process. He has shared the stage at JavaOne with Martin
Fowler, acting as his foil, and assisted in XP Immersion sessions with
Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries, and Robert Martin. IN 2007, he joined an
Internet advertising firm, TrafficBroker.
He believes in objects, lean processes, fun in programming, and the
client's successes. He holds a bachelors degree from N. C. State
University in Computer Science, and a masters degree from MIT in the
Management of Technology. Oh, and he still writes code!"
More on Fred, by Jay Fields: http://java.dzone.com/news/lean-software-development