Last week at the Birmingham.pm social meeting, we started a membership drive for the group, which will hopefully swell our registered membership some what. As Birmingham Perl Mongers Limited is registered as a not-for-profit company, legally membership carries a more formal responsibility than just coming to meeting or joining the mailing list. Mostly this entails electing members to the board, voting on changes to our aims and similar.
However, by having the membership and a subscription, it now means we can have funds set aside for equipment repairs, travel expenses for guest speakers and the like. It should be noted though, that registered membership is purely voluntary and we still welcome anyone who might be interested enough to come along to the meetings.
When we were a small group, these things never seemed to matter. Now that we hold regular monthly technical meetings and are planning to hold another big technical event this year, it all helps to keep the group going and ensures we keep promoting Perl in Birmingham.
Next week we hold our first Annual General Meeting. It'll be interesting to recap on how we fared in our first year of incorporation and discuss our plans for the year ahead. We still have some loose ends to tie up from the conference, and we do need to start planning what we are going to do for our Perl event this year. Thankfully, this time around we have already had several people offer their help. Seems like the conference has given a healthy boost of enthusiasm to the group. :)
