So I am looking at the Perl track for OSCON, and I am wondering where the technical sessions are.
No offense to any of the speakers or topics, because I am only speaking personally, but I don't really care about most of the non-meaty topics, like Perl Bliss and so on. And I don't care about Perl 6. Feed Aggregation is so 5 years ago. I never pay extra for the tutorials.
Setting aside the standards -- Lightning Talks and The Conway Channel -- that leaves me with What's New in Perl DBI, Devel::Cover, Plagger: Pluggable RSS/Atom Aggregation, Mason Components for Ajax, A Relational Object Driver That Doesn't Suck, and Perl Hacks You Never Knew Existed.
I don't care about feed aggregation (well, I do, but not in any new tools to deal with it), I don't use Mason (although maybe I could learn something more about how to deal with Ajax), and I sure as hell don't need another DB abstraction layer (although it might be an interesting talk anyway, at least get me thinking about issues with our own custom layer?).
So being very generous with my interest, I could go to all the above sessions, which means four sessions Wednesday, three Thursday, and one Friday.
And that's with no options for other possibilities. So if one was a dud or I decided I really didn't care about a new syndication aggregation toolkit, I'd have nothing to go to.
Of course, I might very well find sessions in the Apache and MySQL tracks. And I will likely go to OSCON and do just that, and not feel like I've wasted my time or money.
But I want to go to a Perl conference, and frankly, I don't think OSCON qualifies.
Re:YAPC!
pudge on 2006-04-13T17:23:16
Yeah. But I hate travelling. And my boss only lets me go to one of these conferences a year. And Portland is closer and has my relatives there.
Maybe.
I wonder though if there shouldn't be a YAPC::NA::West, and have it the few days before or after OSCON, in the same city. Much more stripped-down, since it can piggy-back on OSCON.
Or heck, use the BOFs at OSCON for a YAPC.:-)
Re:YAPC!
mock on 2006-04-14T10:42:46
Rather than a YAPC::NA::West some of us are trying to get YAPC::NA to move west of the rockies. Given the relative lack of perl content at OSCON I think that the previous prejudice against having YAPC move west is now unwarranted.
I don't have any insider information to share, but my impression is that because no one will be going to OSCON for the Perl talks this year, there won't be very many Perl talks. It's the same reason not to publish books on Perl; no one bought the new Perl books not published in 2003 and 2004.
Re:No One Cares About Perl!
pudge on 2006-04-13T18:21:15
Except that I know a lot of people won't go to OSCON *because* it's been getting weaker in Perl content every year.
I don't know all the numbers, and am not blaming anyone. Just saying that it's unfortunate that The Perl Conference is, effectively, dead.
Re:No One Cares About Perl!
chromatic on 2006-04-13T19:33:45
Yes, and people stopped buying Perl books when publishers stopped publishing them, thus proving that people don't buy Perl books. You (not you as in Chris Nandor, but you as in my evil private corporate overloards) can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true, as long as you're willing to confuse cause and effect.
Re:No One Cares About Perl!
sigzero on 2006-04-14T12:35:10
Except "I" purchased a bunch of Perl books last year and this year probably won't be any different.
Re:No One Cares About Perl!
Alias on 2006-04-14T08:09:36
I went last year, because it was the first chance I had to get to the US, and so I could present. I really enjoyed it, and I thought there was quite a bit of meat there. I even ended up flitting between three Perl talks at the same time at one point.
I'm not going this year, not because of the talks, but because I can't afford to be out of the country for BOTH of OSCON and YAPC, and so having done one of them I decided I should probably see the other. Also, Chicago is a new place, and I like new places.
But next year I quite likely will have the time to go to both, but I'm going to have wonder if it will be worth it now. I'm not going this year for unrelated reasons, but the program for this year makes me wonder about next year...
Re:Who cares about the talks?
pudge on 2006-04-13T20:22:50
But then, I don't have to pay to do any of that. If it cost me anything, I wouldn't go.
Exactly.
I might go, but only because a. I am not paying, and b. I would see stuff other than Perl sessions.
Re:Who cares about the talks?
hfb on 2006-04-14T08:22:27
Indeed...paying money to hang out with you guys?!:D Maybe it's only us freeloading pub track people who go to TPC anymore...and that doesn't exactly pay the bills. Re:Who cares about the talks?
gnat on 2006-04-14T14:26:03
I think of it like this: if all you program in is Perl, and you never have to mess with Apache, MySQL, Linux, Javascript, Ruby, or PHP--then definitely go to YAPC. It's the best Perl conference there is, with a lot of great Perl content.
But if you deal with a lot of non-Perl topics, and you find them interesting, then consider coming to OSCON. We cater to that kind of diversity of interests and needs. There'll always be a better conference for every topic we cover, but those conferences only cover that single topic.
So if you want depth in one area, go to that specific conference. If you want breadth, come to OSCON and go to the talks. If you want breadth and depth, come to OSCON and talk to people. In short, OSCON is for you if breadth is what you're about.
I hear you (Pudge) saying, "I have a great time at OSCON, I talk to fun people, I go to a lot of interesting talks, it's just that they're not all Perl". And I say, "that's great. Enjoy it for what it is." If you want YAPC, you've got YAPC. You even say that you moved around between tracks in years past, so this year's program isn't different from past years in that respect. I'm not sure why you're harumphing.
I remember back when YAPC was just starting up. There was a lot of worry that The Perl Conference would be evil and crush YAPC. (And there was some worry within O'Reilly that YAPC would kill TPC). TPC is now basically a track within OSCON (albeit still the largest track), TPC doesn't compete with YAPC, and nobody crushes anybody because everyone has their own niche. I think that, on the whole, this is a good thing.
--Nat
Re:Who cares about the talks?
pudge on 2006-04-14T16:02:01
Gnat, I basically agree with you, except that while you think OSCON should not have more Perl content, I think it should. However, this is not what I do for a living, so I would not even think of telling you that you're wrong: you certainly know the economics (both fiscal and social) of this stuff better than I do, by far. But to answer your query:
I'm not sure why you're harumphing.
Because I think it is sad that The Perl Conference is effectively dead. I liked it, and am sorry to see it gone.
Perhaps you would not characterize it as "effectively dead," but I don't think I am nearly alone in asserting that it is. Well, maybe it's only sleeping.:-)
But again, that does not mean OSCON will not be a great conference. But it has become something -- well, not less than, but different from what I came to like and enjoy and look forward to every year since that first one. Obviously, we cannot go back to that first one, because the Perl community -- whatever that is -- has changed significantly, and Perl is not what it once was, in many respects.
But I guess the real point is simply as you said: if you want a Perl Conference, go to YAPC. And that is why I say TPC is dead.
Re:Who cares about the talks?
renodino on 2006-04-13T20:38:59
While I agree OSCON06 seems to be a bit "fluffy" wrt Perl, there's definitely a reason to be in Portland for the week (and weekend!):BTW: Who picks from the submitted topics ? Is the issue a lack of interesting submissions, or a preference for O'Reilly authors ? (not a knock, just wondering aloud...)
Re: Who cares about the talks?
Allison on 2006-04-13T21:35:13
BTW: Who picks from the submitted topics ? Is the issue a lack of interesting submissions, or a preference for O'Reilly authors?That would be me. I don't get to decide how many Perl talks the conference will have, but I rate them by preference. The talks you see there are the best of the lot. Best in the sense of interesting Perl developments, in the sense of well-written proposals (a good sign that the speaker can put together a reasonable session), and in presenting a good balance of subjects.
That said, I'd like to see The Perl Conference split back out into its own conference. (The reason there is only one track of Perl talks is that Perl shares conference space with all the other OSCON subjects.) But, to do that without losing money, O'Reilly would need to sell something like 1000 conferences passes at $1,000 a piece, and I can't make a good business case for it. YAPC::NA had 400 attendees last year at $85 per person. That's with very little marketing, so O'Reilly's conference team could boost the numbers, but the 10x price increase would drop the numbers back down again.
There's room for a middle road pure-Perl conference in there. Say, 500 people at $500 a head. It's not a space where O'Reilly can afford to operate, but a smaller organization could.
Re: Who cares about the talks?
Alias on 2006-04-14T08:03:44
A question on money if I may.
I've been to a couple of YAPCs, and I've even done a CeBIT (as an exhibitor).
But OSCON is probably the first time I've done a conference priced at that level (even though as a speaker I did not pay).
What I was really amazed about was that there were SO many conference workers that were just standing around doing nothing. I don't mean the O'Reilly people, who were just as busy as usual.
I mean the people on the doors. There was one or two at every room, and for the most part they seemed to just stand there and do nothing, or occasionally say hello to people.
I'm not entirely sure what they were for (although I understand why you might have someone in front of the tutorial sessions that cost extra) but it seemed an incredible extravagence to have what must have been 30 or 40 people paid to stand around doing nothing like that.
Just a comment, not a call to get rid of them, but I do wonder how much they cost...Re: Who cares about the talks?
mock on 2006-04-14T11:01:06
I'm not affiliated with OSCON in any way, but I do organize a few conferences, and can speak about costs a bit.
The biggest expense is generally catering, followed by A/V (unless like us you do it all in house), followed by the cost of the space, and then finally the cost of the the people standing around. Assuming catering is about $20 per head for each meal, plus $10 per head for coffee/breaks, you can see that is an assload of money. Compare with $20/hr * 12hrs * 5 days * 40 people. Still an assload of money, but probably an order of magnitude less.
Obviously I'm making some pretty big assumptions about costs, but I think they're pretty reasonable guesses given my experience.
As for why the people are there - if it's anything like the conferences I help put on, it's because the cost of having them stand around is cheaper than the cost of not having them around when something goes horribly awry - and something always goes awry. Also the first day of registration is always hell, and you need the bodies.Re: Who cares about the talks?
gnat on 2006-04-14T13:31:27
Mock's absolutely right about the order of the costs. I make it a point not to look at the conference budgets (I want to be focused on the program), but from the conversations I've had with the conferences staff the food and beverage budget is the biggest. To have an event in a big venue means you are forced to take the venue's caterer and their gouging rates. The Oregon Convention Center's rates are less gouging than a hotel's, but still well above what you'd expect to pay based on your shopping trips to Safeway.
Those door monitors, by the way, are to prevent people who haven't registered from sneaking in.
--Nat
Re: Who cares about the talks?
mock on 2006-04-14T11:11:08
Hmmm. I know this organization that does technical conferences of this size and might be interested.
(To those of you new to OSCON, I'm the program chair--I herd the committee that selects the talk and the buck stops with me over the quality or otherwise of the program)
As Allison said, the talks in there were those that the program committee voted for. The methodology this year was to put all the proposals into a big pile, vote on those that were relevant to you, and accept those with the best average vote. There was a problem last year (ironically!) with the quality of talks in some of the tracks, so I moved away from "there will be 20 Perl talks whether or not they're good!" to "I'll take all the good talks and if only 5 of them are Perl then so be it". As it happened, we got more Perl talks accepted than for any of the other programming language tracks.
To satisfy my curiosity, what topics would you like to see?
--Nat
Re:Selection of Talks
pudge on 2006-04-14T16:03:18
Gnat, maybe this question should be on your journal, or a story on the front page, so more people can have the opportunity to answer?
And I don't want to be presumptuous, but did you really mean that the conference organizers picked topics that were relevant to *them* personally? Because it seems to me that might be a rather flawed way of doing it.
Re:Selection of Talks
gnat on 2006-04-18T01:38:04
I'll wait for the front-page story until I am in a position to do something with the answers I get--the Perl track this year is set, I can't throw it out and start again. So in November or December, let's ask that question as a story.
But until then, I'd still love to know what you would consider good talks in a Perl track. I like to keep criticism constructive.
The program chairs picked talks that they thought the audience would be interested in. Often there's overlap between what a program chair wants to see and what they think the audience wants to see. If you're saying, as I suspect you are, that Allison (as Perl 6 whip cracker and program chair) stacked the conference with her Perl 6 stuff, I think you're wrong. The majority of the talks have nothing to do with Perl 6, and I know she could fill days with Perl 6 talks if she chose to.
I think that what you're seeing is caused by the lack of space, rather than editorial bias. Without a lot of room, we can't go deep into a lot of esoterica. Rest assured that, one way or another, this will be solved next year. We're already discussing internally how to change OSCON to ensure each technology gets a fair shake.
--Nat
Re:Selection of Talks
pudge on 2006-04-18T01:59:57
But until then, I'd still love to know what you would consider good talks in a Perl track. I like to keep criticism constructive.
Well... keep in mind, I was not so much saying that you should have done things differently. I told you some general notions I had, that I wanted more meaty topics, for example. But aside from my lack of interest in meaty topics, what you have there seems OK to me. I just want more.
Or are you saying you didn't have more because there weren't enough good topics? If so, then I'd have liked to see some stuff about Perl on Mac OS X for Intel, for example.:-)
Not that I am really complaining... I frankly don't have the time to really put into that talk, so I was more than a bit relieved that it was rejected. But I think it would have been interesting for a bunch of people, but the question you have to answer, that I do not, is to HOW MANY people would it be interesting? And this is why I am not really second-guessing you, and I don't even really think I am criticizing, as much as I am bemoaning the loss of an institution. if market forces kill it off necessarily, that does not make its passing any less a sad event.
Re:Selection of Talks
dha on 2006-04-18T18:50:28
"I don't even really think I am criticizing, as much as I am bemoaning the loss of an institution. if market forces kill it off necessarily, that does not make its passing any less a sad event."
I couldn't agree more. To me, the first TPC was where I first met people from the community and where the seeds were sown for Perl Mongers. The technical content was important, of course, but I see TPC1 as the beginning of the Perl community as we know it. On this, the 10th anniversary of that event, It would have been nice to see perl played up a bit more.
But, yes, this has little to do with the economic/scheduling/etc. realities of the situation. think of this as the sort of reaction one has when a favorite band breaks up.:-/ Re:Selection of Talks
renodino on 2006-04-15T21:35:52
To satisfy my curiosity, what topics would you like to see?It might be helpful to stimulate discussion if you posted a list of the submission titles ? (no names, and maybe scrubbing a few titles to protect the innocent).
Much of the following is general to OSCON as a whole...
I'd certainly like to see more useable content. PBP and HOP are swell and all, but I suspect most managers will find it hard to justify the expense of sending an employee to Portland for a week - including conference fees, travel expenses and loss of productivity - to hear about PBP, or to attend this sort of tutorial.
To learn more about using DBI ? Quite possibly. How to implement Scalable Internet Architectures ? Certainly. How to do Data mining with Python ? "Sounds intriguing, my organization might use that". But "Perl Bliss" ? "Sorry, we don't have the budget for that sort of thing..."
Where did all the mod_perl, Catalyst, bioperl, etc. sessions go ? I see interesting stuff being posted to CPAN all the time; why aren't there more sessions/tutorials on those sort of things ?
Perhaps, rather than what "was relevant to you" should be balanced with "what a manager is willing to pay for an employee to attend" ?
I'll probably attend, but mostly to take a leisurely summer drive from the Sierras through the Siskyous to the Cascades, to meet some acquaintences, and to write-off a trip to the OBF and a camping trip to Mt. Hood. And I have the luxury of being self-employed, so I only have to justify to myself...but thats a luxury many of the target audience don't have.
On a positive note, I was pleased to see more PostgreSQL coverage.
Re:Selection of Talks
gnat on 2006-04-18T01:51:54
It might be helpful to stimulate discussion if you posted a list of the submission titles ? (no names, and maybe scrubbing a few titles to protect the innocent).
No, that'd be figuring out what you wanted from what you were offered. But a key part of being program chair of a track is figuring out what you should have and reaching out to get it. So I really want to hear what you would want to see in a Perl track. That way we can get it next year. (In general, having this discussion buried deep in Pudge's comments doesn't work--we'll do it as part of a front-page story in November or December)
Thinking about how to structure that questionnaire in Nov/Dec, I guess the questions would be something like:
- Which elements of which CPAN projects would you like to see talks on? (e.g., not just "Catalyst" but "Scaling Catalyst" or "Debugging Catalyst" or "Writing XYZ Plugins for Catalyst")
- Which elements of pure Perl programming would you like to see talks on?
- Which business problems would you like to see sessions about, in the context of "how to solve this problem with Perl"?
- What kinds of case studies in general would you like to hear about?
That would structure the questions so as to give useful immediate actionable answers.
Thoughts?
--Nat
Re:Selection of Talks
renodino on 2006-04-22T05:32:14
It might be helpful to stimulate discussion if you posted a list of the submission titles ? (no names, and maybe scrubbing a few titles to protect the innocent).No, that'd be figuring out what you wanted from what you were offered.
Correction: that'd be what I wasn't offered.
Like the Pacific Ocean, Perl is big, deep, and diverse. Alas, much of what OSCON06 offers is of the "Isn't water great ?" variety. I (and I suspect many others) don't know what we don't know. We don't have the cycles to scan every possible CPAN offering to determine what might be interesting, so we rely (in part) on what OSCON and YAPC expose. You have the advantage of seeing what has been offered by potential contributors; the rest of us only see what has been selected.
However, in reply to your request for specifics: I'd like to see more about Perl for data visualization, esp. of the BI variety...which I'd think would be a nice topic given a recent O'Reilly publication (I'm certain I've seen a posting by Mr. O'Reilly himself indicating a serious interest in the topic; alas, I can't locate it). (Disclosure: Yes, I have more than a passing interest in the topic).
