jonasbn writes "Copenhagen Perl Mongers are trying to arrange a Perl Workshop in Copenhagen, inspired by our German cousins. This workshop will be a two day event with a focus on Perl. The program will include a mixture of presentations, BOFs and social events.
If you are interested in attending such a Workshop as speaker or participant please mail us some information about yourself. The preliminary date for the workshop is 26-27th in April. Email: contact@copenhagen.pm.org"
With more conferences it's likely that the "Perl celebrities" such as Larry Wall, Damian Conway, Dan Sugalski (sp?), Michael G Schwern etc. will only be at certain conferences, and in general, the number of participants at each conference will be lower.
What do you all think? Should only two official YAPCs be allowed (with future expansion for Africa, Asia and China)?
Just wondering....
Re:Diluting conferences?
ethan on 2003-02-09T14:12:33
What do you all think? Should only two official YAPCs be allowed (with future expansion for Africa, Asia and China)?
I don't think that would be good (as a side note: how could you disallow it?). For my part, I'll be attending this year's German Perl Workshop together with Mark Overmeer. I am looking forward to this a lot even though Nicholas Clark appears to be the only one from the group of "Perl All-Stars" who will be there as well.
Personally I don't care much (even though, of course, meeting some of the others would be nice as well). First of all I'll meet a lot of people that I already know very well from the newsgroups or from personal (Perl-related) correspondence.
I think that's what these meetings really are about. Getting in touch. There is no danger that there might be too many conferences. I think the 'free market' will solve that (if there are too many, too few people will attend them and we all would know from that to slow down a bit).
Re:Diluting conferences?
jonasbn on 2003-02-09T18:31:12
This is a bit long, but it is the story behind the Copenhagen Perl Workshop.
In 2003 Copenhagen Perl Mongers went on their first organized trip to YAPC::Europe. The trip was a huge success and since the trip we have discussed the idea of hosting YAPC::Europe sometime in the future. But we all agree on that going from monthly meetings to hosting YAPC::Europe is a huge leap, and the concept behind YAPC::Europe is quite settled and sets a lot of requirements.
So the first goal and the idea of the workshop was to do something not quite a YAPC, but more aimed at getting experience with hosting an event larger than a group meeting and at the same time establishing some contacts to other groups in Scandinavia. Copenhagen is the center for a huge Linux User group (SSLUG), which has members from both Denmark and Sweden, and with base in this we have a good foundation for doing something extraordinary in our little region.
SSLUG and the local BSD uder group (BSD-DK) are together with the commercial Unix user group (DKUUG) hosting a conference called LinuxForum. The LinuxForum has been running for some years now, and it is a huge success, the tickets to years conference where sold out in 26 hours.
But there is not much space at this conference to squeeze in the amount of Perl that we would like too and that we think that we are capable of delivering, this year we have one presentation and stand where we can present our user group. YAPC::Europe as the LinuxForum is very focused on presentations etc. leaving not much time for BOFing and practising.
The Copenhagen Perl Workshop is not trying to replace the YAPCs or the LinuxForum in Copenhagen for that matter. The goal is simply to offer the Perl programmers in Copenhagen and vicinity to take part in something much more Perl related and supplemental to LinuxForum and YAPC::Europe. At the same time Copenhagen Perl Mongers need to get some experience in organising events before taking on YAPC::Europe.
It is my hope the workshop will be able to have more focus on a more practical approach than a conference. We have invited speakers from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Northern Germany and of course Denmark. But we will try to limit the number of presentations and at the same time having a selection of presentations that aim at the day to day use of Perl, leaving room for BOFing and developing.
At the same time the Workshop is completely open, so everybody are welcome and there is no requirement for in what language you can do your presentation or your BOF, Scandinavia might be small but we speak differing languages, and I think english will be the language of choice for most presentors and BOF initiators.
The Workshop will hopefully have the sideeffect of more people joining the Copenhagen Perl Mongers, or other Mongers groups from their respective areas. Which eventually will mean more attendees at the YAPCs since we in Copenhagen Perl Mongers will arrange going to YAPC::Europe together again this year, and I think that a Workshop like ours can have a similar effect on people.Re:Diluting conferences?
gabor on 2003-02-14T09:43:49
It depends, in general I don't think that having more conferences is a bad thing.I agree that having more conference will mean that the celebrities cannot go to all but that's OK. I think the point is that with such smaller, regional conference we can bring more people to the surface and new people will be able to become celebrities.
On one hand it is great to have a presentation by someone like Damian but then a lot of other, less experienced people will be shy to give their presentations as they will obviously compare themself to Damian. Besides I would hate to give a presentation in the same time as Damian does.
The hall would be empty. Even I would prefer to go to his presentation.Anyway, in places like Israel I don't have much hope to hold either YAPC::EU or YAPC::Asia, not even YAPC::ME (Middle East) in the near future.
I also hope - like the guys from Copenhagen - that having a larger event will boost our local PUG and raise the awareness to Perl in general.
And by the way, you are welcome to register at YAPC::Israel
