It so appears that in the last few years we get less and less mod_perl talks and tutorials at the big (non-YAPC) conferences. And that's a bad trend. It certainly affects the number of mod_perl job offers, since those who decide which technology to choose for their next project go to those big conferences and chances are very high that they will pick the technology that had a dominating presense in terms of tutorials and presentations.
I have seen both you and Geoff give talks at various conferences, and have always learned something new. I would recommend talks and tutorials by either of you to anyone interested in learning more about mod_perl.
I don't see the same gloomy story in the conferences this year though. It seems likely to me that nearly every talk about web-related uses of Perl will talk about mod_perl in some way. Even Vivek's talk which has PersistentPerl in the title will probably mention whether or not the techniques are all equally applicable to mod_perl.
mod_perl is no longer a new tchnology that people need lots of help to understand; it is now the accepted standard for building any serious web application in Perl. The result is that there is less talk about mod_perl itself and more about what people are doing with it. This is partly due to the work that you and others have done over the last few years: good books and on-line documentation are now available to teach people mod_perl, and even survey books like Perl Cookbook cover it.
These days, nearly every web-related job posted on jobs.perl.org asks for mod_perl experience. That's a good sign of success to me, and is a lot different from how things were a few years ago. Thanks to you and Geoff for your ongoing efforts in support of mod_perl and this community.
- Perrin
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