Hi everyone.

I'm glad to announce and invite you to the first OCaml/Reason (Compiler) Hacking
Session in Belgium which will be the first week-end of July (1-2 July) in my
appartment (yes, in my appartment for the moment. I hope I will have
a bigger place later). The registration are opened here[2]. The full location
will be given later. If you have any problem to come, we can find a solution if
you come in Brussels, don't worry about that. For info, you have to take
the train from Brussels to come and it lasts 1 hour. I will take you to the
station.

The event is opened 24/24 and the entire week-end. You can come the
entire week-end or only one day or few hours. If you want to stay to sleep, I
can host around 5 people (just take a sleeping bag). Just tell me if you come.

Thanks OCamlLabs for offering OCaml stickers to all participants!

### Motivation of the event.

I wrote an article on my blog[1] some weeks ago about the idea of organizing some
hacking events (specially about OCaml/Reason) in Belgium.
Since last year, I learnt and had some interesting experiences in the OCaml
community and I'm still more and more interested in collaborating and meeting other
OCaml developers I speak with on Twitter and GitHub or by email.

The main purpose of this event is to meet other people sharing the same
interests than me and sharing cultures and knowledge.

### Subjects

The subjects of this first event will be very large and will depend on coming
people. The only thing I would like to keep in mind is hacking. Hack
for me is discovering and understanding new subjects and build something new or
fix some issues. I hope other hackers like me, with the same mindset, will be
interested in this event and will come.

The (non-exhaustive) list of subjects is:

- hack on OCaml compiler. It can be fix some junior issues
(https://caml.inria.fr/mantis/my_view_page.php), understand the type system,
improve it, learn how type systems work, improve front-end, propose some
useful syntactic sugar, etc.

- hack on Reason front-end compiler. Reason changes the syntax of OCaml by
giving a syntax more friendly to people coming from other
languages like JavaScript. Reason community also builds very interesting tools
to interact with React or JavaScript world.

- hack Ocsigen. Ocsigen is a very interesting web framework and maybe the most
advanced web framework in terms of new ideas and concepts. The core team is
very small and doesn't have a lot of time to develop a lot of new features. As
there are not a lot of core developers, Ocsigen lacks some useful features
present in most web framework. The documentation and the website must be
updated and lots of issues must be fixed.

- hack on opam. opam is the main and the most used package manager for OCaml.
The release of opam 2.0 is coming soon and we can look after some last issues.

- hack on Mirage. In the world of unikernels, Mirage becomes popular and a
subject I would like to learn.

### About me

I will be able to help in the first three subjects.

- About the OCaml compiler, I work at INRIA for some months and I built typing and subtyping
algorithms based on the type system DOT for first-class modules in OCaml. I
think I will able to help for the type system and the front end. About multicore
or ASM code generation, I'm not an expert and don't have a deep knowledge about
it.
- About the Reason front-end compiler. I have some experience in lexing and
parsing.
- About the Ocsigen project, I work on Ocsigen Start for several months and had
some experience in Eliom.

About the two last, I don't have any hacking knowledge (I never use Mirage, but
it's on my TODO list).

### About drinks and foods.

I think drinks and food will be offered, to be confirmed depending on the
number of participants (don't trust the article on my blog). A special beer will be offered to all
participants (We are in Belgium, it's mandatory =)).

### Registration.

You can register on the Eventbrite link. Please register if you are only sure to come.
If you have a better solution than Eventbrite, tell me (I don't think Eventbrite is a good solution but I'm not an expert). The event is entirely free. If Eventbrite asks you to pay something, refuse and contact me.

### About next events.

I really want to create a community in Belgium around functional programming and specially about OCaml and Reason. I would like to create more hacking sessions. If you want to contribute or help to the organization of such event (by hosting for example), contact me.
I hope some institutions or companies will be interested in such events.

[1] https://blog.danny-willems.be/ocamlreason-compiler-hacking-sessions-first-announcement/
[2] https://www.eventbrite.fr/e/billets-ocaml-hacking-session-belgium-35217611825