SPLASH had another keynote on pattern languages this year. The analogy from architecture to programming languages seemed strained at best - the speaker spent most of the talk on social programming, i.e., programming humans how to act in certain social situations and making design concepts more explicit and user-friendly. He made a big fuss about what a successful consultancy he built around running workshops and distributing baseball cards with different patterns printed on them. I found the whole thing self-aggrandizing and borderline charlatanry for an academic PL conference.