Following this year's fantastic trip round the UK Perl user groups, Birmingham.pm have been thinking about what to do for next year. Seeing as we did a lot of social networking this year, we thought it might be more appropriate to do some speaking next year. We haven't got anything scheduled as yet, but we're now planning a trip to some of the technical meetings of the Perl user groups, with at least one of us offering a to do a talk for them. Talks are still to be defined, but we do have a few in the bag that we can put on at short notice.
So how about it? If you're a leader or meeting organiser for a UK Perl user group, get in touch (preferably by email) and we'll see what we can arrange. Any dates will have to fit around our own meetings and the annual conferences and workshops we plan to attend next year, but hopefully we can get at least a few trips arranged. There are at least 4 we hope to organise.
While we not be of the calibre to be entrants on the Invite A Guru list, we do have a decent knowledge of Perl between us. It might also help to encourage other groups to get more active if they know there are speakers who are willing to come and visit them. Might even start a trend of other Perl Monger groups to start their own tours. You don't have to be a guru to give a talk, and there are likely to many more people than you think willing to listen. And if anyone fancies coming along and giving a talk to Birmingham.pm next year, please free to drop me a line.
BTW you can now see all the assembled pictures from our 2006 Tour online.
Re:Nitpick
barbie on 2006-12-16T09:43:32
You have to be a fan of Billy Connolly to understand the joke
;) For those who aren't, several years ago (1994) he did a TV series called The World Tour of Scotland. It featured him visiting various locations around Scotland. He has since done 'Ireland, Wales & England', 'New Zealand' and 'Australia' so he can get away with these days, but we thought we'd continue the humour. I personally do plan to do a Europe, Australasia or US tour at some point in the future, but not just yet
:) Re:Nitpick
Qiang on 2006-12-16T14:28:58
well, at least you were in chicago for YAPC last year. that is outside of UK:-) Re:Nitpick
barbie on 2006-12-18T11:47:59
Quite true, and it was on our list on Festival^WConference dates
;) Although I've always hated how some non-UK bands consider a UK tour to consist of 1 London date. I've ended up missing the last few Rush tours (who have even missed out the UK altogether on some European tours) because they decided not to do full tours, although the last one they did tour the UK, but managed to gig in Brum around my 40th birthday celebrations
:( Still, next year there are plans afoot to do some European cities
:)
What about a LUG with lots of Perl users?
The Hants-LUG is a pretty large and active LUG with a lot of Debian and Perl users. In the new year we are having a joint meeting with our Surrey neighbours at Red Hat's UK head quaters, so the notion of joing meetings isn't an alien* idea.
Although we would prefer a deb, alien is only so good at dealing with rpms...
Re:LUG?
barbie on 2006-12-18T11:56:37
It's a possibility, as Nottingham.pm and Notts LUG always have joint meetings too.
However, you might want to run it past Popey first, as I've recently given him a ticking off for completely ignoring Birmingham Perl Mongers (organisers of a large technical conference this year) when asking for help from Brummies for GUADEC in 2007 (which will also be in Birmingham). I might not be too popular
;) Re:LUG?
ajt on 2006-12-19T10:50:18
Popey can be persuaded I'm sure. Plus we are a group not one individual, so even if he is Mr Grumpy on this topic the rest of us need not be.
