If there is anyone out there who still doubts that London.pm is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, CPAN authors and CPAN users, developers, hackers, creators, designers, Londoners and out-of-Londoners - mongers who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of object-oriented programmers and procedural programmers: we are, and always will be, London Perl Mongers.
For completely selfish reasons, I think it would be extremely awesome if the 2009 London Perl Workshop was scheduled to be near in time to YAPC::EU. cog suggested this awesome idea back in 2006 that if many of the Perl Workshops could be scheduled in a similar time frame then people like Paul and I who are visiting YAPC::EU could get around to those others too.
Paul Fenwick and myself will be in Europe after OSCON up until the end of YAPC::EU (although we'd stay for another week and a bit if your workshop was on the following weekend). We'll try to make it to as many Perl events as we can.
Re:Suggested date for 2009's London Perl Workshop
Smylers on 2009-02-17T16:39:47
I think I disagree (and I did when Cog first mentioned it). A local Perl workshop is good if it engages local Perl users who aren't otherwise part of the community, those who don't make it to full conferences (or at least haven't done yet).
It's great if those only dabbling with Perl can see a few talks that are pitched at their level. It's splendid if somebody who's never presented at a conference-type-event before feels that it's a sufficiently friendly and low-key environment where they can give it a go.
As such, I reckon it's unhelpful if the usual Perl in-crowd see it as yet another social stop on their world tour, mainly a chance to hang out together. Or even if it could be perceived to be that, such that new attendees feel excluded (even if that isn't the case).
And it can be intimidating if most of the talks are being given by Perl luminaries (especially if they are doing so in English rather than the local language), or even aimed at them. Or if all those in the know are Twittering that trite line about the value of such events being the hallway meetings not the talks, undermining new speakers who've put lots of effort in.
Note none of the above is aimed personally at you (or Cog; and clearly the bit about English versus the local language doesn't apply to London). And there are lots of the Perl cognoscenti are very approachable and inclusive.
But I think they (we?) are the last group of people whose needs should be considered when designing a Perl workshop; we are already pretty well catered for by other events, so let's create workshops for those who aren't (then of course any Perl celebrities whose plans it happens to fit into are most welcome to come and be part of it).
