On 18/11/2013, at 11:12 AM, Tony Morris wrote:

Hello, I am from Brisbane, Australia and it is my mission to teach
functional programming to all and especially Australia. I am tasked with
this mission by my employer, NICTA, which is funded by the Australia
government.

With support from NICTA, I usually run (free) courses to assist in this
mission and have done so in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. However, I
often wonder about any interest in Canberra. I do not find any user
interest groups related to Functional Programming or language-specific
such as Haskell when I search, so I was hoping to seek out any
expressions of interest here.

Are any of you from Canberra? If so, are you interested in learning more
about functional programming? Would you be interested in attending a 2
or 3 day workshop? Do you have peers who would also be interested? If
these people exist, how might I contact them?

I am from Canberra originally.

On the academic side, talk to:

Clem Baker-Finch -- teaches programming languages at ANU.
http://people.cecs.anu.edu.au/user/3877
http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP3610/

Uwe Zimmer -- teaches first year programming in Haskell at ANU. 
https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/zimmer-ur
http://cs.anu.edu.au/student/comp1100/index.html

Also anyone who is tutoring for them.

There are also FP people in the RSISE/NICTA lab, but they are more experienced researchers that don't need 
the basics of functional programming taught to them. Eg: 

Michael Norrish -- is associated with the L4 verified project here in Sydney.
http://nicta.com.au/people/norrishm

At one time Alex Mason was organising some FP events from Canberra, but I haven't heard anything about him for a year or more. I suspect he's graduated by now (was an undergrad at ANU).

Ben.