I've spent a lot of today trying to track down Perl Monger groups and update the definitive list of them which is stored in an XML file. Over the last couple of weeks I've been emailing all of the Perl Monger email addresses I can find and asking if the groups are still running.
I started off with 500 groups in the file, but one group was listed twice so that left me with 499. The current numbers are like this:
111 groups who are present and active
24 groups who are currently sleeping
7 groups that have died out
75 groups where the contact email I have has bounced back
282 groups where I've had no response at all
If you're the leader of a local Perl Monger group and you haven't heard from me in the last couple of weeks then please drop me a line.
Just a suggestion... thus far I have only seen the search for the real PM groups advertised on this site. Not everyone in the community reads use.perl regularly, if at all. It might be a good idea to run a small article (perhaps just something visible there -- I'd be willing to provide the prose if it's considered a good idea and they agree) on perl.com and if possible to advertise it on mailing lists or newsgroups, anywhere there may be perlians hanging out.
Email addresses go out of use frequently as people change jobs and the such, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of those 75 are still active to a certain degree.
Also, keep in mind that august is a month off in many countries that have four, five, or more weeks of holiday a year (eg France) and that many of those 282 may get back to you in two or three weeks once their back and on top of things again (a reminder in two weeks probably won't hurt there).
