Lots of people won lots of things at Perl Conference 3.0, and I am not talking about swag, like the cool knives given out by Sendmail, Inc., the excellent yo-yos from amazon.com, or the Mr. Bunny's Internet Startup Games from Borders. No, these prizes actually required skill of some sort.
First was the Perl Bowl: Programmer Death Match, hosted by Ben Holzman. After qualifying, semifinals, and the finals (plus some, er, technical difficulties along the way), Jason Kruger was crowned the winner, and granted a 400MHz Celeron computer (6.4GB, 64MB, etc.) with monitor by VA Linux Systems for his efforts. VA Linux's Chris DiBona said they would offer the same prize for next year's contest.
The following day, Jon Orwant hosted the second annual Perl Quiz Show. This time, the grand prizes (lots of stuff donated by lots of groups, including the standard O'Reilly fare and half off stateroom accomodations on the Perl Whirl) were taken by London Perl Mongers Andy Wardley, Peter Haworth, Richard Clamp, and Nick Ing-Simmons.
Inspired by the award-winning Coy module, a haiku contest was organized. Kevin Hackman and Michael Schwern won the general contest. In order, their winning entries:
fall leaves blanket ground redmond dreams darkly -- beware! winter brings penguins
# Life ends with a crash require 'Coy.pm'; &laughter while $I, die;
There was also a contest after Damian Conway's Coy.pm presentation for haikus, with the winners taking home a copy of Conway's book. David Adler and Dean Hudson won with these pieces:
On the spot haiku Written on a ladies Back. Know we have pictures.
Your book entices, Fork it over, friend aussie. Jedi mind tricks work.
