Category — Perl Oasis

This is the first article based upon my Keynote that I presented this year and is part of a series of articles on the Terrible Things We All Must Do.

Meanwhile…

While I was writing this article I was also checking the web and eagerly awaiting the keynote from Apple and their possible latest release, I know I am such a fracking fanboi or something, or maybe I just like cool devices, slinky sci-fi-esque toys – look I am a child of the 70s, this is all futuristic to me man. Also, Bubble Wrap is 50 years old today, so much fun from something so simple as the “Tension Sheet”.

She links me yeah, yeah, yeah

In my Keynote at the Oasis Perl Workshop (see my post last week) I mentioned that I would like to see a giant daisy chain of Perl sites. What I meant by this was down to obvious things we must do and a significant element missing from many Ironman Posts.

The obvious thing is to remember to name drop sites and people in your blogs, Twitter et al., of the people and places, especially Perl related, that you have been-seen-done-wanted-heard-insertownthing. Not only that, you must also link to them, and if you’re link isn’t obvious from its context as to what it is then you better do this, you better link twice, ’cause otherwise you’ll be naughty not nice. As an example, consider the request Miyagawa made of us to mention the best Perl Web Server (Plack) – you see not only do I link the phrase to follow in context I also name the thing and link that as well.

The element missing from many Ironman posts is a link to the Ironman Competition itself and the Planet Homepage. This is fairly poor people. There will be other visitors to your sites, not just those from the Ironman site, a link (or even use the banner I made or one of your own) will be very useful. There are something over 7000 posts on the Ironman archive and only 6300 links to Ironman on the internet, so even if the links are only from Blogs on this site that is a shortfall. Personally I think there is probably about half of them that don’t link to here – so make sure you do link on every post. Also try to link to the sign-up page so we get new competitors.

Socialise…

We need to make sure we link to each other and to make those links relevant, it is a tool we can use to make sure things are found  by people searching for information. By using the social media sites to talk about Perl and the things happening in our universe we can promote and raise awareness of the tools and language we all hold dear.

btw, as a matter of yet more praise I have to say that there are people to whom I owe much regard as they already do this to a great extent, one of those is my business partner Matt S. Trout and another is the (afore praised as magnificent) Dave Cross. They are not on their own, there are many others and we should join with them.

</rant>

A further article in this series will follow (maybe next week)

-ttfn – Mark

Fun – fun – fun in the sun – sun – sun

Last Saturday was the Perl Oasis conference in Orlando Florida arranged, orchestrated and conducted by the Orlando Perl Mongers in the fleshy guise of Chris and Jamie (notice how those two names could be used by either of them?).

The Organisers looking busy

The conference is a relatively small affair attracting a core group of presenters and attendees numbering approximately 30 people, and one might think that this lessens the importance in the face of larger workshops and the continental YAPCs, but I say ‘nay’ and perhaps ‘pish and tosh’ to such fallacy. The truth is that this type of event is equally as important as any other. It has its own merits and shortfalls that nicely contrast with a larger event. It would be hard for anyone at a YAPC/similar sized event to be able to get to talk to almost every attendee, and comment to the speakers in person about their talks. It is also very easy to feel on the edge of a crowd, especially if new to conferences at a large event. Perl Oasis has no issues like this. The group size was large enough to gurantee a good range of talks on the schedule, a good number of opinions at the bar and let everyone socialise together. There were new faces at this conference who had not been to a Perl event before and suddenly they were drinking and discussing with the developers and authors of Moose, Plack and Dbic.

The Hallway track was well-attended

The Plays the thing…

I managed to see a good number of talks while at the event, as well as delivering my own rather ranty little keynote. I will get to see all the talks as I videoed the half I didn’t view on the day and will catch up with them during editing and posting online. Those I saw:

Stevan Little – Untitled Number 12 – Stevan brought us uptodate with his current thinking and work in the Perlverse and managed to talk about some of the other projects out and about and steal Miyagawa’s thunder at the same time by talking a lot about Plack.

Stevan points out where the screen is…

Shawn Moore – Surviving in the Cruel, Unforgiving World – What lengths a programmer will do to create a Perl powered bot to tackle a complex game.

Attendees in the talks – everyone has a laptop these days

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa – Plack: State of the art web framework superglue – Plack was a big thing in 2009 and will no doubt make greater impact in 2010, take a look at this exciting web framework/server interface tool. Make sure you click on this link to the Plack homepage and check this out.

Cory Watson – From Zero to CPAN – Adding a new product search to Magazines.com – although not primarily about Perl, Cory is a Perl user amongst other languages and a great conference speaker. He also sponsored this year’s event and was quite the demon for go-kart driving (except when someone killed his iPhone in a reportedly brutal collision).

Cory’s great presenting style – “it was this heavy”

Casey West – Writing a JQuery Plugin – another talk not really about Perl, but I attended to try and learn more about JQuery. Unfortunately for me it was aimed at people who already had a working knowledge. No matter as the talk was still good and Casey did move heaven and Earth to get there arriving late on the day of the conference and almost running into his presentation.

Devin Austin – Google a Summer of Code - Devin spoke about his experience completing the summer of code last year and how this has helped him develop. A good introduction as to why GSOC is important to Open Source and to Perl.

Matt S Trout – The Troll the God and the Mountain – In his indominable style Matt told us an epic story or he told us about developments in Dbic, nobody can be quite sure. My only complaint is that I have to now watch this again to learn about the Dbic stuff as the tale of the two Trolls was so interesting I missed the Perl A must see on the conference circuit or online this year.

It isn’t all fun and games…

The conference was fun and after it was over we retired into the night for the usual food and the Orlando Mongers’ preferred relaxation pursuit, Go Karts. Cory, Jay, Miyagawa, Stevan and mst had already been practicing the previous day (with Cory and Jay doing a lot of practice) and some injury had resulted (to Cory’s iPhone) – there were quite a few people who raced about the track, and some fun from the spectators as they sometimes spun out of control to end up in reverse or were taken by the kids.

Is this a conference organiser being beaten by a small boy?

Shaun, Cory and Jay, just before the infamous spin-out

So the conference was a great event and a good deal of congratulations, praise and general love should be poured onto Jamie and Chris for organising the event, making people happy and welcome and working their asses off to provide us with a great experience.

Shadowcat Systems expressed their gratritude by providing the Perl Mongers of Orlando with a mascot to keep them happy and agreeing to fund next year’s conference and pay towards the conference the year after (2011, 2012).

Niles (on right) and Aurelea (check spelling!) the Orlando PM mascot

Let’s see more of you….but not too many…then

-ttfn – Mark

A superband that will not split….

SO it is just a few short days, nerve-bitingly it is less than 3 days, to the wonderful Perl Oasis held in the – hopefully – sunny city of Orlando in Florida. I am biting my nails because I rather foolishly jumped into the fray and declared, “yes, I shall do a Keynote for you muhahahaha,” what a plonker.

So what is my keynote on? Well you might well ask and I might well answer. Actually I am sort of going to answer, maybe…

I have decided to talk a little about some of the ‘Horrible Things’ that we in the community must do, and the terrible word that links all of this. Some of you may have guessed what this is just by that short description, and the rest of you will have to wait until after the conference for me to tell you.

So why am I mentioning it here? Well I want you all to pay attention to the fact there is a conference. Be upset that you missed it. And resolve to make it there next year. I will, of course be talking about this conference in my blog next week where I may also start my campaign of Awful Things We ALL Must Do.

-ttfn – Mark

This week I am blogging from a line at Paris, Disney. Actually right now I am back in my room and typing this to you but I was in a line when I made notes about this. Why am I in Paris and why Disney? Well the Paris is easy, it is an exotic and beautiful city and visiting it at this time of year is wonderful, it was the first foreign location I went to alone with my wife when we were first dating and therefore holds a special place in my heart. Why Disney, well my wife, like her mother, is a Disneyphillic, she adores the place and her parents paid for us to be here, so again colour me uncomplaining, it is a nice Christmas present.

Perl in the Sun…

But, soon we shall have joy, we shall have fun and we shall discuss Perl in the sun (ouch bad) and this is me telling you all to come along to Perl Oasis in January. Sure it is in Orlando, sure it is soon after Christmas, but it is going to be a great event, except for maybe the keynote, I have some doubts about that, but there again I am writing that.

In fact I am writing my thoughts about it while I stand in these Disney lines. When I told Perigrin about this he thought it was rather apt as the Oasis is in the theme park capitol of the world.

Matt S. Trout and I will both be there from Shadowcat Systems representing the Enlightened Perl Organisation and the North West England Perl Mongers at this so enlightened of conferences.

So go here to the Perl Oasis site, and register.
Look at the great list of talks.
Or say nice things about Perigrin.

-ttfn – Mark