In 1998 london.pm sprang into existance with me as its nominal leader. In 2001 after three... er... interesting years I decided that I wanted a bit of a rest and I passed the role over to Paul Mison.
The rest didn't last quite as long as I planned. In the summer of 2002 I went into a TPF BOF at OSCON and somehow came out as the Perl Mongers User Group Co-ordinator. I'm not 100% sure how it happened. It certainly wasn't what I had planned. My memories of the meeting are vague, but I strongly suspect I was stitched up by Nat Torkington :-)
So that's what I've been doing for the last four years or so. Cat herding on a massive scale. Trying to make some sense of the huge numbers of Perl Mongers groups listed on the pm.org site. I started by killing off about 200 groups that had just ceased to exist. I think I'll be remembered as the person who culled almost half of the Perl Monger groups.
But all good (and otherwise) things come to an end. I've been doing the job for four years and it's time that someone else had a go (and time that I tried something else).
So I'm standing down as Chief Perl Monger. Richard Dice (the Perl Foundation Steering Committee Chair) is organising the search for a replacement and I'm certainly not planning on vanishing until that process is complete and all my knowledge is handed over. If you watch use.perl and the TPF blog then you'll soon find out how the process will play out.
It's been a fantastic four years. I think the Perl Mongers movement is one of Perl's great strengths and it's been an honour to be so closely involved with it. I should point out that I couldn't have looked so efficient without the support of a number of people who beaver away behind the scenes - Robert and Ask who run the pm.org server (together with most of the Perl community infrastructure) and people like Wayne Walker and Jay Hannah who have been invaluable helping to keep the lists of groups up to date and ensuring that everything works. Thanks to all of them for their help.
I'm planning to take it easy for a while. But I won't be going away completely. And if last time is anything to go by, my rest won't be anywhere near as long as I'd like it to me. There's always something interesting to do in the Perl community.
