[From the ACM press release]
"The brightest minds in computer science will be at ooPSLA 2007, convening in chic, sophisticated, metropolitan Montreal, Quebec. Peter Turchi, author of "Maps of the Imagination," will use examples from writing and cartography to explore the challenges of discovery, the challenges of presenting those discoveries, and how the presentation itself is often the key to discovery (think Impressionism). Jim Purbrick and Mark Lentczner, also known as Babbage Linden and Zero Linden, will step away from reality into the virtual world of Second Life. Two Turing Award winners, Fred Brooks and John McCarthy, will be giving talks. Brooks will talk about collaboration and telecollaboration in design.
McCarthy will be presenting Elephant 2000, a proposed programming language good for writing and verifying programs that interact with people (e.g., transaction processing) or interact with programs belonging to other organizations. Gregor Kiczales will deliver a talk on how different contexts affect developer perspectives on software. David Parnas examines the problem of documenting the behavior of systems and their components, and how precise documents can make validation and verification easier. Patti Maes, honored with the title "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum, will be speaking from her background in media arts and sciences. Also planned is a special reprise of Gabriel and Steele's keynote "50 in 50" from HOPL III. OOPSLA 2007 runs October 21 through 25"
But, I would highlight this:
Fred Brooks, Turing Award winner, Mythical Man Month, No Silver Bullet. He doesn't agree often to speak.
John McCarthy, Turing Award winner, Lisp, AI. He doesn't speak often, and he's getting old.
David Parnas, very early guy in software engineering, modularity, information hiding. Ornery. Doesn't speak much.
Jim Purbrick & Mark Lentczner, these are the Second Life guys.
Gregor Kiczales, Aspects, metaobjects, CLOS. Very good speaker. One of our most important thinkers.
Pattie Maes, reflection, ambient intelligence.
Guy Steele, Scheme, Fortress.
Brian Foote, Big Ball of Mud, one of the most entertaining speakers in computer science.
Richard Gabriel, Worse is Better
special surprise keynote:
Kathy Sierra, of creating passionate users fame.
Most conferences would consider themselves lucky to see any one of these people at their conference (except for me, of course). To have all of them is extraordinary. This is probably the best lineup of speakers at any CS conference in history.