If you have a look at the TPF blog you can see that a lot of Perl events are scheduled for 2007, YAPC::Europe foundation has even more listed. The German Perl Workshop is just over and the European Perl Hackathon is coming up together with the Dutch Perl Workshop...
I remember back when we organized one of the first Perl workshops in our end of the world, somebody raised the issue of all these events draining the energy of the Perl community in the sense that some of the celebrities would not be able to attend all of these events and their energy might be spent elsewhere, like at the a few bigger conferences, with better exposure and wider audience - I cannot remember everything correctly and I cannot find any trace of the discussion anywhere, so I am probably just making stuff or drawing conclusions :-/
Well anyway I remember to disagree and I still think that this will find a level of it's own. We cannot deplete the resources of Perl by having local social events all over the globe, on the contrary I think this helps to get Perl focus on a local scale, we have seen people at our workshops, who where not members of our local Monger groups, we have gotten a better network to the monger groups in our region, we have located companies in our city using Perl we did not know existed or used Perl.
If everybody just aim at having well organized workshops, YAPC's, hackathons or whatever they might come up with next and will not close up if Larry Wall or somebody equally high-profile turn down an invitation, there is no limit to what this can do for our community.
I just had a brief look at our attendee statistics for the forthcoming Nordic Perl Workshop:
14 Denmark
3 United Kingdom
2 Netherlands
2 Sweden
2 Germany
1 Brazil
1 France
1 Switzerland
1 United States
In the list are represented 9 countries and the administrators where even so kind as to
remove some Nigerian attendees, who apparently mistook our workshop for something on getting rich fast or something.
This looks great and it is symptomatic for the workshops we have had in our region, a wide presentation of the Perl community from a geographical perspective.
We have none of the VIPs as such and no pumpkings, but we have a range of CPAN contributors and people who are contributing to our community in other ways. We have invited speakers, we find interesting, we know have done interesting things, and we would love to invite more...
Everybody does something constructive with Perl, well we could discuss the nature of
apocalypses, but it is out of my league. But the way that one guy slices his onions might prove useful to another guy cooking a different dish, so in every Perl programmer is a potential talk or at least lightning talk and as long as this community continue to grow and stay alive, our resources will not be depleted.
The talks that will be presented are just as varied as the people attending, so I can only agree with Jim Brandt when he writes in the TPF blog:
Wow, that's a lot of Perl to talk about.Yes, there is a lot of Perl to talk about and all the time more evolves, more Perl jobs, more CPAN modules, more workshops and most important of all new collaborations, new opportunities and new friendships.
I am looking so much forward to the forthcoming Nordic Perl Workshop and I am happy so many Perl hackers from around the world are attending and most of them are giving presentations... I am just going to sit down and listen, until somebody yells beer and we are of to socialize, because after the event is over I will be supercharged with input, ideas and module names that I will not have time to anything but hack away.
Make more speakers!
brian_d_foy on 2007-02-27T18:31:37
No VIPs? *sniff*
:)
I certainly think that many, many events can put a drain on speakers. A super-star celebrity could go to a Perl event every month. The
TPR Community Calendar is getting quite full!I'd like to see more Perl speakers out there, instead of relying on the same stable of known names. By developing new speakers we're investing in the community.
I know that Randal and I now only pick a couple of conferences to attend. Some of that is from time or scheduling limitations, and some is the financial aspects of paying for our travel and lost-paid-hours to be there. Since we're a small business, that sutff really matters. When it was an OSCON and a YAPC, it was okay. To travel to multiple conferences or to those overseas was starting to hurt us, even though we really liked participating.
Fortunately, some kind soul is paying for my travel to the Nordic Perl Workshop.
:)
Otherwise, we're trying to set up low-cost trainings and other services around conferences to at least cover our hard expenses. IT worked pretty well for YAPC Chicago where Randal, Damian, and I taught low cost versions of our classes. I think we're doing that again at YAPC Houston, too.
Re:Make more speakers!
jonasbn on 2007-03-06T08:33:59
hehehe, ok you can be VIP, but do not expect special treatment ;)
We mentioned some of the speakers on our flyer for LinuxForum and somebody told me to put you topmost.
Looking forward to seeing you in Copenhagen
