Lots of software is already written and can solve your problems, if you can only get it to do what you need. Postmodern programming is about using code that already exists, and not writing much code yourself. This is usually in the form of gluing together or configuring other people's code. This is the reality of "enterprise" software today. Postmodern programmers recognise this fact and work with it rather than pretend that it isn't the case and come up with, for example, a programming language or paradigm that would solve all programming problems once and for all if only everybody does everything properly - that way - the one true way. There is no "one true way".

The aim of the conference is for attendees to learn stuff that they can really use. There will be more hands on programming than most conferences. It's neither academic nor vendor specific. It's not language or technology specific. There are only two sessions at this first postmodern programming conference - a keynote and a workshop. The keynote is by James Noble and Robert Biddle, whose OOPSLA 2002 paper "Notes on postmodern programming" challenged the software development world to recognise the reality of current software practice. The workshop, facilitated by Ivan Moore and Nat Pryce, is a re-run of "Scrapheap Challenge" that was very well received at OOPSLA 2005. Participants are given fun, non-trivial challenges to achieve and can construct solutions using any means available, including any software and services that they can find on the Internet.

This conference involves programming. It's for software development practitioners, not for the post-technical.