Reposted from blogs.perl.org
San_Francisco.pm (SF.pm) started off 2009 with a bang! Fred Moyer took on the daunting role of President, and Joe Brenner stepped up to the unforgiving role of Speakers Co-Chair. Both leaders relieved X-President Quinn Weaver, who sheperded SF.pm for 6 years leading up to 2009.
A Meetup web portal was created at http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Perl-Mongers/ which served to facilitate organizing meetings. Six Apart generously donated a conference space for monthly meetings on the 4th Tuesday of the month (as has been a tradition for the last 10 years). Matt Lanier, the founder of SF.pm, liasoned with Six Apart to obtain this arrangement. We started off the year with a 35 person meeting on how not to use memcached - http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Perl-Mongers/calendar/9432356/
With 15 official events in 2009 (http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Perl-Mongers/calendar/past_list/) SF.pm had a banner year. We had a booth at OSCON, several celebrity speakers, lightning talks, and a growing membership as the year progressed. Tools developed in our forge such as App::PM::Announce allowed us to get out the message that SF Bay Area Perl was alive and on the move.
Red Hot Penguin Consulting LLC took care of the standard pizza fare, and Julian Cash Photography helped with soliciting food donations for the group from members (the monthly food/drink bill averaged $150 in 2009). SF.pm is still actively looking for a food and drink sponsor, so if you want to get your message out to SF.pm, the best way to our hearts is through our stomachs.
San Francisco Perl Mongers plans to continue steady growth throughout 2010 by focusing on what it did right in 2009. Regular meetings, growing membership, new and exciting talks, and some extra-perl-icular presences will help to solidify our presence as a stable and active technology group leader, and the pre-eminent Perl Mongers group in terms of regular events and attendance.
