Lambda the Ultimate

You would find your answer by reading the disclaimer on the page :)

And I don't think they are going for that, not with a one page format. We don't need anymore workshop on well established results, SPLASH is already dull enough with those. But who knows...a lot depends on who actually submits. How many crazy idea people are there that interact with objects? Enough to sustain a workshop? OOPSLA used to be quite eclectic with a weird crowd that has mostly gone away (though a few remain).

Indeed, not being familiar with the 1986 CFP, I did not get the joke (I read the remark on the similarity but did not look further in the PDF). If you don't get the joke, the present CFP just reads a bit serious and rather boring.

Maybe the point is to look to the beginning to find the future? The mid 80s to mid 90s underwent an explosion of interesting/wild/experimental research; crack open an OOPSLA proceedings from back then...you'll find more than a few papers whose ideas would be easily accepted as novel even today, and would have no chance getting in at any rate. And then the academics took over and the PL hippies left, grew into yuppies, or remained but were silenced by the need to be scientific and formal. PL is on its way to becoming as exciting and interesting as...databases...without the same potential economic upside.

Or it could just be a joke in the style of a Kiwi professor whose humor is a bit hard to interpret sometime, but I still appreciate it.

I like the idea of a "renaissance" and the reference to an old CFP is cute. However, (1) it is very hard to actually know what kind of content the workshop organizers expect as there is no "real CFP" and (2) the CFP as read literally feels a bit dry and boring, so I'm not sure it wasn't a bit too bold. They should have an explanatory comment somewhere that de-brief the joke and explain what they are looking for -- maybe I just missed it.

Taken at face value, I agree the CFP seems a bit insider-ish. Here is what I got from the chair, which might shed some light on it:

We are about to get the web site running and aim to have very lightweight process of calling for 1 page submissions due on the 1 September followed by extremely light decision process on which talks to accept with a notification on 7 September 2015.

The point is to highlight new research in novel OO languages such as Whiley, Pony, L42, Newspeak, Pyret as well as our own (Wyvern and Grace), and larger ones: Scala, Racket etc… As well as any new novel OO techniques which won't yet shape a paper. The proceedings are probably going to be unpublished and rather a workshop summary or these 1 pagers will be published as post proceedings with a potential to even having a special issue in ...

I personally see it as the potential start of a new OO movement (new objects, better objects, objects that won't make you cry), but I'm sort of biased in that this is something I want.

And that was left over from the OOPSLA '86 CFP I think :)