When I first read that Allison was stepping down as TPF president I was quite stunned. She has been doing such a great job of promoting the TPF and getting people together, that I hadn't thought that anyone else would even think they would want to do it. But times do change, and everyone needs to go off in a different direction to keep themselves inspired. I'm sure Allison has enjoyed her time going to all the conferences and meeting people, but it's been time away from working on Perl 6 and Parrot stuff, which she initially came to most people's awareness for. I know some have issues with the TPF, but I do think Allison has done a sterling job of dealing with those issues and getting things moving. From the notes Andy and Curtis have posted I think the TPF are going to be improving even more over the next year.
However, my second thought having read the announcement, was what about the personal profile? Allison has made great efforts to attend many of the Perl conferences to present a public face of the TPF. It has helped people get to know Allison as well as having someone they can collar informally to ask about the TPF. With the current roster on the steering committee, 15 of the 17 are based in the US. So US conferences are then pretty much covered, but what about elsewhere? Europe is currently a hotbed of Perl conferences and workshops, with those in Australia, Asia and South America increasing their prescence. Will members of the steering committee make efforts to ensure that a decent number of those conferences and workshops have a representative of the TPF attending?
I met Bill Odom at OSCON 2000 and had a great conversation with him about Perl stuff. However, many others are perhaps not so fortunate enough to know who he is. I've also met 9 others on the steering committee, although that is mostly because I've been to conferences in North America. The TPF needs to keep that public face going outside of North America, so I hope there are plans to have at least someone from the steering committee attend other conferences around the world.
I've posted a more specific question to the TPF announcement thread, so discussion is probably better placed there.
