New Open-Enrollment Seminars Scheduled

After I announced the existence of my new training course, "What's New in
Effective C++?", several people wrote to ask when it would be available for
enrollment. One thing led to another, and now I've scheduled two new
open-enrollement seminars at OGI (in Beaverton, Oregon) in January:

18 Jan 2005: Better Software -- No Matter What
19 Jan 2005: What's New in Effective C++?

You'll find links to all the details on these seminars (as well as to the 15
December offering of "Effective C++ in an Embedded Environment") at my "Upcoming
Talks" page, http://www.aristeia.com/seminars_frames.html

I hope to see you at one or more of these seminars.

Scott

Wanted: Candidate reviewers for EC++/3E

I'm making decent headway on the next edition of Effective C++, but I have
a problem: I need to find a few good pre-publication reviewers to read my
draft and tell me how I can improve it. Now, I know all kinds of C++
experts, but the target audience for my book isn't experts, it's practicing
programmers who are at roughly an intermediate level of knowledge and
experience with the language. As somebody who subscribes to this mailing
list, it is highly likely that you do NOT qualify; you already know too
much. However, perhaps you know somebody who might qualify, somebody who
is comfortable with the basics of C++, but who is interested in knowing
more. If you do, and if that person would be willing to undertake the hard
work of reading 250-300 pages of not-fully-refined prose and offer detailed
suggestions on how the book could be improved (without regard for whether
they will hurt my feelings -- I *need* to know the bad stuff), and if that
person would be available for the task beginning sometime in January and
ending no more than about a month later, I'd appreciate it if you'd have
them contact me.

I don't need very many people for this -- maybe 2 or 3. My preference is
to have a small number of high-quality reviewers rather than a large number
of poorer-quality reviewers. But my need for this small number of
high-quality reviewers is great, because I can't produce a book that's
truly useful to its target audience if I don't get advance feedback from
people in that audience. Experts can help me identify subtle coding or
reasoning errors, but non-experts can tell me "I have no idea what you are
talking about in this paragraph," and that's the kind of thing I really
need to know.

There's no monetary compensation for this work. Rather, people who do it
get (1) a chance to make a real impact on the final version of the book,
(2) an autographed copy of the final book, possibly with a custom cover
that only a few people will get (I'm not sure about that last part, I have
to work it out with my publisher), and (3) my sincere gratitude.

People who are interested should contact me directly.

Thanks very much for your help with this.

Scott

New Training Course; Updated Projects List

I've added a new course to my "Training" page
(http://www.aristeia.com/whatsNewInEC_frames.html). It's a much more
detailed description of the "What's New in Effective C++?" seminar, which I
debuted last month in Germany. Good course, in my opinion, but I can't
claim to be fully objective :-)

BTW, if you took a look at my "Project Ideas" page
(http://www.aristeia.com/projects_frames.html) immediately after I sent out
the announcement about it, you may have missed the "Lint with autofix" and
"Detailed Exhibit Information" ideas that I added a few hours later. If
so, I encourage you to check out those projects now, as I'm especially
eager to see somebody pursue them.

Scott

New "Project Ideas" Page

From time to time, I come up with ideas for projects or articles that I'd
like to pursue, but which I know in my heart of hearts I'll never find time
for. Rather than let the ideas wither and die in my "Stuff I'd like to do
but never will" folder, I decided to put them at my web site, with the hope
that somebody else will pursue them and write up the results. You can find
the initial list of project ideas at
http://www.aristeia.com/projects_frames.html. Have at it!

Scott