NLPW - Dutch Perl Workshop 2014 - 25 April 2014

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

In 3 weeks the Dutch Perl Workshop will take place in Utrecht, the 
most central (and 4th largest city) of The Netherlands.


http://www.perlworkshop.nl/nlpw2014/

We will have two tracks: one (mostly) in Dutch, one in English.  The 
subjects will vary as always.  Among the speakers will be some 
well-known Perl Mongers.  To mention some: Jonathan Worthington, Matt 
S. Trout, DrForr, Sawyer X, Leon Timmermans, myself, Liz Mattijsen, Tux


http://www.perlworkshop.nl/nlpw2014/talks

Proposals for talks of 20 minutes and of 40 minutes and still welcome.
Send your proposals (and questions) to the main organiser,  Theo van 
Hoesel ( t...@perlworkshop.nl ).


The famous library of Perl-books will be there, as will be the 
camel.  There will be plenty of tuits, buttons, stickers and 
brochures for grabs.   There will be Perl-books for sale from 
O'Reilly, Wrox, No Starch and Onyx Neon, and also Mugs of Perl, toy 
soft camels.


The evening before, April 24th, we will have a nice eat and drink, 
and after the workshop we will have an even nicer eat & drink at 
Lebowski, a nice Grand Cafe.


Utrecht in The Netherlands is a nice old city, with canals, many 
(student-) bars and restaurants, pretty architecture, shops.  The 
workshop will take place in the University of Humanistic Studies of 
Utrecht, which is itself something very special (nice building, nice 
college rooms, extraordinary topics).


Hope to meet you there.  Visit the website, register, come, learn, 
teach, enjoy.


Kind regards,

Wendy van Dijk

Re: XP-Replacement for Parents

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 04:21 PM 3/27/2014, Smylers wrote:
>Note my concerns weren't about the OS's user interface, but scanner
>support and a couple of decades' worth of WordPerfect documents.

I'm on Ubunty, I switched over from Windows XP several years ago, and 
I do have quite an extensive amount of WordPerfect correspondence, 
some are  over 20 years old.  I can open most of them without any 
problem with LibreOffice Writer.  Sometimes I do have to change 
formatting, but they are legible.  My oldest WP files are WP 4.x for 
DOS.  I do right-click in a file manager on a file, "open as", select 
"WP", and almost ever it works fine.


Scanners  I never had luck with scanner support on Windows XP, 
always stupid errors.  This behaviour of idiots working on drivers at 
the scanner manufacturers is continued for support in Ubuntu.  It 
just sucks always.  Almost none of the extended options promised, 
ever work for me.  Not back than in XP, and not now in Ubuntu.  I 
just have to scan my shit to a USB stick, and copy the files to my 
computer later.  Universal law of conservation of suckdom.


But at least for most scanners Ubuntu has some support and some 
functions work.  Depends on the brand and type of scanner.


Greetz, Wendy

Perl at Fosdem in Brussels on Februari 1 & 2, 2014

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Hi all,

Read all about it.  Perl will be big at Fosdem in 
Brussels.  We have a big booth with tuits, 
buttons, stickers, toy camels, brochures, books 
for sale and of course the largest library of 
Perl-books in the world and the big Perl camel.


We have a nice devroom in the same building as 
the booth, and we have made a very nice schedule 
with some famous speakers and some excellent topics.


On Friday night it is beer night at Delirium Café.  It's heavy beer.

http://wendyga.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/fosdem-perl-devroom-schedule-1feb2014-and-booth-12feb2014/


We will have a nice dinner on both nights in 
excellent restaurants in Brussels.


http://wendyga.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/the-perl-community-goes-to-dinner-during-fosdem-in-brussels-1-2-feb-2014/


Hope to see you in Brussels.

Kind regards,

Wendy van Dijk

Re: Perl publishing and attracting new developers

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 05:21 PM 9/18/2013, gvim wrote:
>On 18/09/2013 16:10, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote:
>>
>> Don't forget Ovid's "Beginning Perl",
>http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781118013847.do  :-)
>>
>
>More generic Perl books. Exactly what we don't need.
>
>gvim

I disagree.  It is exactly what we need.  Not you personally, 
probably, but certainly we as a Perl-community on a whole.


A generic Perl book that covers programming Perl in a modern way for 
people who can't yet program at all, and for people who don't know 
Perl but who want to.  I have sold 52 of them in just a couple of 
months and got some replies from my customers that they love the book 
and they thank me very much.  And no, selling books is not my 
business, it's just something I do on the side.  So 52 is quite a nice number.


And I agree with you that we very much need updates on the Perl 
Cookbook and Object Oriented Perl (and Data Munging and so many more 
books need an update).  And seeing that Perl 6 is getting stable and 
mature tells me that a good book "Learning Perl 6" and "Programming 
Perl 6" would be good sellers as well.


Kind regards,

Wendy van Dijk

...(I hope some publishers (especially O'Reilly and Manning) read this.)...

Re: Fosdem 2013

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 05:43 PM 8/15/2013, Salve J Nilsen wrote:
>Wendy G.A. van Dijk said:
>> At 12:02 AM 8/15/2013, Duncan Garland wrote:
>>
>>> Is there going to be a Perl stall or a dev room at the next Fosdem? Duncan
>>
>> If it is up to me, yes, there will.  But the organisers of Fosdem did not
>> even yet send out mailings to react to, so we cannot yet apply for a booth
>> or a devroom.  But be assured that we will apply for both.
>
>Devrooms have been announced on the FOSDEM blog:
>
>  https://fosdem.org/2014/news/2013-08-06-call-for-participation/
>
>   "Developer room proposals should be emailed to 
devro...@fosdem.org and be as

>detailed as possible. In particular, coordinators should indicate their
>affinity with the topic being proposed and provide a rough idea of the
>content they plan to schedule."

W00T!  Thanks!  Work todo...Last year we got email with invitations 
to send in proposals...  This year I received nothing yet.



>Key dates:
>
> 15 September
> deadline for developer room proposals
> 1 October
> deadline for main track proposals
> accepted developer rooms announced

I will work together with Claudio Ramirez to apply for the booth and 
the devroom.


Wendy

Re: Fosdem 2013

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 12:02 AM 8/15/2013, Duncan Garland wrote:
>Is there going to be a Perl stall or a dev room at the next Fosdem?
>Duncan

If it is up to me, yes, there will.  But the organisers of Fosdem did 
not even yet send out mailings to react to, so we cannot yet apply 
for a booth or a devroom.  But be assured that we will apply for both.


Kind regards, Wendy

Re: New pet keeping rules in the Netherlands

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 11:36 PM 6/19/2013, Damian Conway wrote:
>> The discussion is in the Dutch Parliament and it's committees.  Maybe a bit
>> far out of reach for you  :-)
>
>Not really: I do live in New Holland, after all.
>(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Holland_%28Australia%29)
>
>;-)
>
>Damian

Even though the Dutch parliament is in the province of South-Holland, 
that parliament also contains people from other provinces that are 
not Holland.  Well, some are of North-Holland.  Most are from 
elsewhere, like Gelderland (our largest province, where I am from), 
Limburg (where we live now), Noord-Brabant (where Liz lived for 14 
years), Zeeland (where we really don't want to live) etc.  I am so 
not from Holland and so happy with it...


Wah, New Holland?  In the Dutch parliamant?  :-)

Wendy

Re: New pet keeping rules in the Netherlands

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 09:55 PM 6/19/2013, Paul Makepeace wrote:
>Wow, and I thought Oakland (California) was permissive allowing us, in
>a large (~1M pop.) city, to keep cows and horses. You need an acre
>minimum for a horse, but so long as you can demonstrate adequate
>manure processing capacity, cows are a go.
>
>Where is this fabulous discussion happening? Is there any urban
>precedent for water buffalo, or camels, in .NL?

The discussion is in the Dutch Parliament and it's committees.  Maybe 
a bit far out of reach for you  :-)

Fosdem - Beer Event on Friday, and Dinner on Saturday - Join us

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Fosdem on February 2 & 3 in Brussels.  It is not 
just conference and expo.  There is more.


Beer event on Friday evening, February 1st
=
https://fosdem.org/2013/practical/beerevent/
Impasse de la Fidélité 4, Brusels
http://www.deliriumcafe.be/
At 18:00 the Fosdem-people will go in (amazingly) 
large numbers into Delirium.  Delirium is a very 
large, very good organised and very interesting 
pub in Brussels.  You have to visit it at least 
once in your life.  Admire the beer tapping 
installations, they are magnificent (25 beers 
from draught!!!).  And their beer selection is at 
least as magnificent (0ver 2,000 different 
beers).  Don't drink to much...  delirium in 
Delirium, would probably not be the first person to have it.


We as a Perl group want to meet here too.  That 
means, we have to conquer some space and hold it 
in a friendly way.  We will be with at least 10 
people.  And whoever gets first, has to secure 
some stools, chairs, tables, and a corner.  And 
tell other Perl people about it: where can we 
find you.  Wearing Perl t-shirts might not be 
enough...   Don't be violent,  Be polite.  Be 
early.  And stay where you are, keep that 
corner.  Let's see if we can have some hours of fun together.


Oh, and we don't have a sponsor for the beer 
event. Please pay for yourself and your friends.  It's about being together.




Dinner on Saturday evening, February 2nd
=
After the Perl-devroom is done at 19:00  and 
cleaned and locked, and the Perl-booth is secured 
(the expensive stuff has to go back into the 
truck, the building will not be secure at night), 
a large group of us (more than 20 people at the 
moment) will go have dinner at 21:00 at La 
Porteause d'Eau.  You are welcome to join 
us.  There is no sponsor for this, so bring some 
cash (no idea about the creditcards).


Whoever gets first, is first, earlier than 21:00 
is fine, they know about us.  Mention the name 
"Perl" at the entrance, we have reserved a big 
section of the upper floor.  We cannot say what 
time we as organisers come in.  When the work is 
done.  No sooner.  Start with a drink, please, 
and have a good time amongs you earlybirds.  It 
seems the selection of beers at La Porteuse is quite good.


Please let us know if you plan to come as 
well.  We have to reserve enough space for the 
group.  Telling them "anything between 10-30 
people" will nog make them happy.  So please 
respond to this mail and tell me if you're going or not.


La Porteuse de lEau
http://www.laporteusedeau.be)
Avenue Jean Volders 48
1060 Bruxelles
The restaurant is a 3 minute walk from the Metro 
station Hallepoort / Porte d'Halle: http://goo.gl/maps/21zEu
Pay in cash, everybody pays his own (or maybe we 
will split the bill, maybe some sponsors will be 
present to ease the bill). Take a look at the 
menu for the prices (I don't know about the prices).

Small number of vegetarian menu items.
I have been here before, and it was nice.
The kitchen closes at 22:40, so don't be too late.

Re: Fosdem Perl-devroom AW1.126, Saturday, Feb 2nd, 11:00-19:00; Success! 14 speakers!

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 10:03 PM 1/27/2013, Nicholas Clark wrote:
>Wow, you've got a booth *and* a dev room. That's impressive.
>(But not as impressive as getting a schedule put together in 4 days)

We had a booth and a dev room in the previous two years!  They were 
the ones who thought it was a good idea to let other have our devroom 
this year, because, well those others don't bother to have a booth, 
but they want a devroom alright.  Ha.


Snakes...


>I'm curious if there's any easy way to work out which is more effective at
>breaking out of the echo chamber. I suspect that it's rather hard to
>measure.

What would work out of the echo chamber:
* attention in tv program or movie (which already happened couple of 
times with Perl code)

* actively mentioning Perl in tv program or movie
* somebody rich paying for ads in magazines, newspapers, tv programs, 
films  (very rich)
* all of us writing press releases about Perl Success Stories from 
our companies / institutes / organisations, and hold down the Perl 
specifics, but be sure to mention Perl Perl Perl (the Java people do so)
* do something cool like a Perl flashmob, or building a mega camel or 
onion, that makes the headlines


Guerilla marketing, it's called.
It takes creativity, boldness, timing and a bit of money (or a whole 
lot of money)

Fosdem Perl-devroom AW1.126, Saturday, Feb 2nd, 11:00-19:00; Success! 14 speakers!

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Hello all,

Fosdem.  https://fosdem.org/2013/   We made it.  We've got 14 
speakers with 14 talks, one for each speaker.  We even have 4 
lightning talks.  The schedule is craamed with Perly goodness, even 
without a lunchbreaks and with short 5-minutes breaks.  We even have 
3 speakers on standby who do not fit into the schedule, and 7 of the 
speakers proposed a second or sometimes a third talk, and they are on 
standby too.  We could have filled a second day with ease.


So, everybody is more than welcome in our very own devroom at the 
Fosdem in Brussels on Saturday, February 2nd.  Room AW1.126, starting 
at 11:00 to 19:00.  This night or tomorrow morning the schedule will 
be online: https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/track/perl/


At 11:00 we start with Curtis "Ovid" Poe, who will talk about 
Inheritance vs. Roles Other well-known names are Corion, Countzero, 
Maddingue, Carl Masak, ribasushi, Mark Overmeer, DuckDuckGo-Getty, 
inbetween some (relatively) unknown
outsiders and we end with Liz Mattijsen who will talk about Perl's 
Diaspora.  End of course come lightning talks.


On Saturday and Sunday, 2nd and 3rd February, we will have a 
Perl-booth in Building K, level 2, stand number 3.  At the booth you 
will find the largest library of Perl-books, the big Perl camel, 
goodies, brochures, tuits, and who knows what more.  Guest of honor 
at the booth will be: Curtis "Ovid" Poe.  He will present (and sign!) 
his brand new book "Beginning Perl", of which we will have a decent pile.


People who read this and who want to come over to Fosdem and who want 
to contribute something from their company, institutation, 
organisation, that has to do with Perl (or not), please please bring 
that with you.  Stickers, folders, brochutres, books, buttons, 
t-shirts, pens, dolls, stuffed animals, and more, all is welcome and 
will be used for Perl promotion.


Friday night is the famous Beer Event ( 
https://fosdem.org/2013/practical/beerevent/ ) at Delirium.  We know 
that a group of at least 10 Perl Mongers will come, and some will try 
to come early and conquer our own corner.  Pay for your own drinks...


Saturday night we want to have dinner with a large group of 
people.  We don;t know yet where that will be, ask at the booth.  We 
think it is a nice accomplishment that we got a devroom filled within 
4 days.  Even within the deadline, so we will be printed nicely with 
our schedule in the booklet that Fosdem prints.  And at first we did 
not even get a room, haha!!


Many thanks to all who have talked, thought, chatted, mailed with us, 
who proposed a talk, who helped spread the call for talks.  Excellent 
cooperation!


Hope to see you Friday, Saturday, Sunday, in Brussels, Belgium.

Kind regards,

Wendy van Dijk


Where? Free University Brussels, Campus Solbosh:
https://fosdem.org/2013/practical/transportation/

RE: We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for Papers!

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Hai Duncan,

At 06:44 PM 1/26/2013, Duncan Garland wrote:
>TPF posted a couple of days ago that it has £100,000 (or dollars or
>whatever) to distribute, so resources isn't the problem.

Money is not the issue.  If it were, I know 
enough people at TPF, YEF and elsewhere to ask for it.



>A couple of days ago Perl's official presence at Fosdem was minimal. I
>assume you didn't try very hard to get sponsorship because there was very
>little to sponsor.

When something is completely free, indeed, nothing to sponsor.


>Yesterday things changed and you suddenly needed half a dozen or a dozen
>good quality speakers to drop everything and head to Brussels at seven days
>notice.
>
>One of those days has now gone. How are you getting on?

We are getting quite a lot of proposals, and tomorrow we'll make a decision.
We are sort of half-way.  So anybody reading 
this: we can still use some help...


By now, this happened:
https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/welcome_to_perl_devroom/
We got it official online etc.


>I mentioned funding from TPF because I thought the speakers might require
>more funding than usual. They can't get cheap flights at short notice, they
>can't combine it with a business trip at short notice, they can't combine it
>with a family holiday at short notice.

At least one family decided to do just that for 
the Dutch Perl Workshop...  Which is on April 19 
this year, so a bit more in the future.  But 
they're adding a couple of days of The 
Netherlands especially for us.  Nice people, huh, Perl people!



>I assumed that you wouldn't be able to offer funding until you had
>sponsorship.
>
>I thought that if TPF put up £5000 immediately then that would solve the
>problem. Then if commercial sponsors come forward you can return some or all
>of the money.

The funny thing about many Perl people is that 
money is not too important for them.  A lot of 
them put a lot of time in working, traveling, 
hacking, discussing...  without any 
payment.  Same for conferences.  I did not yet 
receive one request for money to reimburse for 
travel and/or accomodation costs.  If I get such 
requests, I know where to ask...   My own company 
has done a couple of reimbursements in the past, 
so I know what i'm talking about.



>I've never been to Fosdem, but it looks important.

Yes and no.  I (and many with me) think it is 
important for Perl to show its face, its finest, its quality.
We haven't been at Fosdem for many years (Fosdem 
exists since 2000).  It is not to be compared 
with Oscon, it is not high-brow, slick, 
classy.  Wanna see a mixture of office type 
people and your average family people with real 
nerds, like they are protrayed in movies, Fosdem 
is your place, much more so than Oscon.  No 
classy lunch or dinner, no shiny handouts.  It's different.


So yes it is important for the image of Perl.  It 
may attract more people. But it also shows "Perl 
is not dead".  And believe me, I heard the opposite way too often...



>All the best.

Thanks.

RE: We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for Papers!

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Hi Duncan,

I salute you for this!  Well done, thank you for your support.
And I realise your question about Fosdem was a genuine question.
The answer I gave was not the right one.
I think the only right answer is:

The Perl community itself is the only right organisation to organise 
events like YAPC, workshops, hackathons, PM meetings, presence at 
Oscon and Fosdem.  Organisations like TPF, YEF YAPC Europe 
Foundation, EPO Enlightened Perl Organisation, SPPN Dutch Foundation 
for Perl Promotion, etc, are mostly here to assist.  Bring people 
together, and if needed, support financially.  Mention things on 
websites, press releases.  Try to mediate in case of arguments.


But TPF, YEF, EPO and SPPN have not enough people to organise or 
coordinate workshops or conferences themselves.


This is not meant patronising.  This is also a statement for many 
other people who have said the same as you did, I have heard and read 
ithis question before.


Kind regards,
Wendy van dijk


At 03:05 PM 1/26/2013, Duncan Garland wrote:
>Hi Leo,
>
>I ran a workshop at this year's LPW.
>
>I got the company I work for to sponsor LPW.
>
>All the sponsorship money went to LPW, I paid my own expenses.
>
>I'll know next week whether I've succeeded in getting some sponsorship for
>the QA Hackathon.
>
>I've been to 6 of the 9 LPWs. The last 5 plus one a couple of years before
>that.
>
>I'm active in both London PM and Southampton PM.
>
>Don't patronise me.
>
>Duncan
>
>-Original Message-
>From: london.pm-boun...@london.pm.org
>[mailto:london.pm-boun...@london.pm.org] On Behalf Of Leo Lapworth
>Sent: 26 January 2013 12:06
>To: London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers
>Subject: Re: We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for
>Papers!
>
>Hi Duncan,
>
>Please contact the TPF and let them know how many hours a week you are able
>to commit to helping co-ordinate this sort of thing.
>
>Leo
>
>
>
>On 26 Jan 2013, at 11:25, Duncan Garland 
>wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Isn't this something TPF should get behind?
>>
>> The Perl Community organises good conferences but they tend to be for
>> quite small audiences. I've been told that YAPC Tokyo is the biggest
>> with roughly
>> 800 attendees and the next biggest ones are grouped around the 300 mark.
>>
>> Fosdem claims to attract 5000.
>>
>> We always talk about breaking out of the echo chamber, but never seem
>> sure about how to do it. Isn't this an important opportunity?
>>
>> Shouldn't TPF commit to sponsoring this today and then launch a drive
>> to find a commercial sponsor to reimburse TPF?
>>
>> (Perl still isn't listed on https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/ as
>> having a developer room.)
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Duncan
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: london.pm-boun...@london.pm.org
>> [mailto:london.pm-boun...@london.pm.org] On Behalf Of Wendy G.A. van
>> Dijk
>> Sent: 25 January 2013 20:41
>> To: london.pm@london.pm.org
>> Subject: We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for Papers!
>>
>> Hello all,
>> We know it is late, but we still have to try to make this work.
>> Maybe to save the honour and pride of Perl!  :-) Would you like to
>> give a presentation in Brussels, please send me and/or Claudio a proposal.
>> Today or tomorrow please.
>> Thanks!
>> Kind regards,
>> Wendy van Dijk
>>
>> 
>>
>> Dear Perl Mongers,
>>
>> I have to make this short and simple.
>> Therefore most of this email is copied from last year's Call for Speakers.
>>
>> What?  Fosdem, Brussels, 2 & 3 february 2013 https://fosdem.org/2013/
>>
>> Where? Free University Brussels, Campus Solbosh:
>> https://fosdem.org/2013/practical/transportation/
>>
>> Why so late?
>> Because our dev-room request was denied at first.
>> They gave it to another programming language community.
>> Now another community could not fill their dev-room.
>> We are Perl, so we jumped in and we asked for this.
>> We got it.  Now we have to fill it.
>>
>> So be quick and send in your presentation proposal.
>>
>> To:
>> Claudio Ramirez (nxadm, email: padre.claudio at apt-get.be) and Wendy
>> van Dijk (email: nl.pm at wendy.org).
>>
>> Thank you.  Hope to meet you all in Brussels.
>>
>>
>> __
>>
>> Copied and adapted from last year's Call for Speakers:
>>
>>
>> Please forward to your Perl contacts.
>>
>> 

RE: We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for Papers!

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

And the reason why we are not mentioned yet on the page of Fosdem is 
because our dev-room is only semi-official yet.
Fosdem decided not to give us a dev-room, and give "our regular 
dev-room" to a friendly/competing programming language.

Another friendly/competing programming language could not fill their dev-room.
We heard about that 3 days ago.  We immediately decided to try to get 
that room.  Fosdem agreed the next day, 2 days ago.
We immediately started setting up texts, contacting people, sending 
out invitations.
Tmorrow, Sunday, Fosdem has a deadline for their printed booklets 
with the schedules of the presentations in the dev-rooms.
They half and half don't expect  us to succeed in filling our room, 
so that's why we are not yet on the site.

And I  f**king don't want to see this fail, because Perl is better than that.
Imagine how we can proof the world that Perl is very much alive.

Sorry for the language.
Thanks for your attention.

Kind regards,
Wendy van Dijk



At 12:20 PM 1/26/2013, Duncan Garland wrote:
>...
>(Perl still isn't listed on https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/ as having a
>developer room.)
>
>Regards
>
>Duncan

RE: We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for Papers!

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

And the reason why we are not mentioned yet on the page of Fosdem is 
because our dev-room is only semi-official yet.
Fosdem decided not to give us a dev-room, and give "our regular 
dev-room" to a friendly/competing programming language.

Another friendly/competing programming language could not fill their dev-room.
We heard about that 3 days ago.  We immediately decided to try to get 
that room.  Fosdem agreed the next day, 2 days ago.
We immediately started setting up texts, contacting people, sending 
out invitations.
Tmorrow, Sunday, Fosdem has a deadline for their printed booklets 
with the schedules of the presentations in the dev-rooms.
They half and half don't expect  us to succeed in filling our room, 
so that's why we are not yet on the site.

And I  f**king don't want to see this fail, because Perl is better than that.
Imagine how we can proof the world that Perl is very much alive.

Sorry for the language.
Thanks for your attention.

Kind regards,
Wendy van Dijk



At 12:20 PM 1/26/2013, Duncan Garland wrote:
>...
>(Perl still isn't listed on https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/ as having a
>developer room.)
>
>Regards
>
>Duncan

RE: We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for Papers!

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Hi Duncan,

Thank you for this plea for assistance.  Much appreciated!

The last several years, we, a small group of people who have been 
(co-)organizers of YAPC::Europe, Perl Workshops, hackathons and Perl 
Monger meetings, have set up a Fosdem presence.  If I recall 
correctly, after some pressure and with a lot of help and 
coordination by Gabor Szabo.  I know of previous attempts, I think 
Dave Cross once tried to find some people interested in have a 
presence.  And our presence at Fosdem did not go unnoticed.


Fosdem is large, indeed.  But it is not commercial.  It is even a bit 
chaotic, some people say messy, and it is seriously informal.  Don't 
compare this to Oscon, or a YAPC.  It is as widely open source as can 
be as Oscon.  And some really crazy things happen here.  Real fun.


Support by the Perl community is more than welcome.  Sponsoring is 
welcome.  Attendance is free, a booth is free, a dev-room is free, so 
money is only needed for accomodations, travel, marketing 
materials.  Sponsoring would mostly be people-time: people to be at 
the booth, speakers in the dev-room, people to assist in the dev-room.


So maybe for next year, if a professional organisation would like to 
take over to coordinate this, some of us organisers might like 
that.  It depends...


Maybe a nice start of a discussion.

Kind regards,
Wendy van Dijk





At 12:20 PM 1/26/2013, Duncan Garland wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Isn't this something TPF should get behind?
>
>The Perl Community organises good conferences but they tend to be for quite
>small audiences. I've been told that YAPC Tokyo is the biggest with roughly
>800 attendees and the next biggest ones are grouped around the 300 mark.
>
> Fosdem claims to attract 5000.
>
>We always talk about breaking out of the echo chamber, but never seem sure
>about how to do it. Isn't this an important opportunity?
>
>Shouldn't TPF commit to sponsoring this today and then launch a drive to
>find a commercial sponsor to reimburse TPF?
>
>(Perl still isn't listed on https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/ as having a
>developer room.)
>
>Regards
>
>Duncan
>
>-Original Message-----
>From: london.pm-boun...@london.pm.org
>[mailto:london.pm-boun...@london.pm.org] On Behalf Of Wendy G.A. van Dijk
>Sent: 25 January 2013 20:41
>To: london.pm@london.pm.org
>Subject: We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for Papers!
>
>Hello all,
>We know it is late, but we still have to try to make this work.
>Maybe to save the honour and pride of Perl!  :-) Would you like to give a
>presentation in Brussels, please send me and/or Claudio a proposal.
>Today or tomorrow please.
>Thanks!
>Kind regards,
>Wendy van Dijk
>
>
>
>Dear Perl Mongers,
>
>I have to make this short and simple.
>Therefore most of this email is copied from last year's Call for Speakers.
>
>What?  Fosdem, Brussels, 2 & 3 february 2013 https://fosdem.org/2013/
>
>Where? Free University Brussels, Campus Solbosh:
>https://fosdem.org/2013/practical/transportation/
>
>Why so late?
>Because our dev-room request was denied at first.
>They gave it to another programming language community.
>Now another community could not fill their dev-room.
>We are Perl, so we jumped in and we asked for this.
>We got it.  Now we have to fill it.
>
>So be quick and send in your presentation proposal.
>
>To:
>Claudio Ramirez (nxadm, email: padre.claudio at apt-get.be) and Wendy van
>Dijk (email: nl.pm at wendy.org).
>
>Thank you.  Hope to meet you all in Brussels.
>
>
>__
>
>Copied and adapted from last year's Call for Speakers:
>
>
>Please forward to your Perl contacts.
>
>__
>
>
>Taking place in the beautiful city of Brussels (Belgium), FOSDEM is the
>biggest free and non-commercial European event organized by and for the
>community. Its goal is to provide Free and Open Source developers a place to
>meet (see http://fosdem.org/2013/).
>
>Over the last years the Perl community had an increasing presence at FOSDEM.
>Over the last two years we managed to have both a booth and a dev-room. We
>collected an impressive positive return and wish to renew the experience.
>
>Our dev-room request for this upcoming edition (2013) was at first rejected,
>in favor of another programming language community.
>So we would only have a booth.  But another open source community could not
>fill their dev-room and we hastily requested it for the Perl-community.
>Yesterday we got approval.
>
>The stand request is approved some time ago.  The stand will be open
>throughout the weekend. The dev-room event will take place Saturday,
>February 2nd

We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for Papers!

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

If you need an URL for twitter and the like:
https://nxadm.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/perlfosdem2013-a-very-late-call-for-papers/

==

Hello all,
We know it is late, but we still have to try to make this work.
Maybe to save the honour and pride of Perl!  :-)
Would you like to give a presentation in Brussels, please send me 
and/or Claudio a proposal.

Today or tomorrow please.
Thanks!
Kind regards,
Wendy van Dijk

We get a dev-room at Fosdem after all. Emergency Call for Papers!

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Hello all,
We know it is late, but we still have to try to make this work.
Maybe to save the honour and pride of Perl!  :-)
Would you like to give a presentation in 
Brussels, please send me and/or Claudio a proposal.

Today or tomorrow please.
Thanks!
Kind regards,
Wendy van Dijk



Dear Perl Mongers,

I have to make this short and simple.
Therefore most of this email is copied from last year's
Call for Speakers.

What?  Fosdem, Brussels, 2 & 3 february 2013
https://fosdem.org/2013/

Where? Free University Brussels, Campus Solbosh:
https://fosdem.org/2013/practical/transportation/

Why so late?
Because our dev-room request was denied at first.
They gave it to another programming language community.
Now another community could not fill their dev-room.
We are Perl, so we jumped in and we asked for this.
We got it.  Now we have to fill it.

So be quick and send in your presentation proposal.

To:
Claudio Ramirez (nxadm, email: padre.claudio at apt-get.be)
and
Wendy van Dijk (email: nl.pm at wendy.org).

Thank you.  Hope to meet you all in Brussels.


__

Copied and adapted from last year's Call for Speakers:


Please forward to your Perl contacts.

__


Taking place in the beautiful city of Brussels (Belgium), FOSDEM is
the biggest free and non-commercial European event organized by and
for the community. Its goal is to provide Free and Open Source
developers a place to meet (see http://fosdem.org/2013/).

Over the last years the Perl community had an increasing presence at
FOSDEM. Over the last two years we managed to have both a booth and
a dev-room. We collected an impressive positive return and wish to
renew the experience.

Our dev-room request for this upcoming edition (2013) was at first
rejected, in favor of another programming language community.
So we would only have a booth.  But another open source community
could not fill their dev-room and we hastily requested it for
the Perl-community.  Yesterday we got approval.

The stand request is approved some time ago.  The stand will be open
throughout the weekend. The dev-room event will take place Saturday,
February 2nd 2013 , between 11:00 and 19:00, in room AW.126.
The room itself has 75 seats, WIFI and a VGA projector.

This environment, being a university classroom with raised seats,
lends itself perfectly for talks. This is a wonderful opportunity to
present your Perl project ­big and small­ or talk about subjects you
care about. We are looking for a variety of subjects on all levels:
starter and advanced, generic and specialized, core internals and
CPAN. We have 8 hours time, so we have the flexibility of using
different time formats: e.g. talks of 20 minutes, more classic talks
of 40 minutes or longer (although we learned from experience that
longer talks should be split into slices of 20 or 40 minutes).

Please don't doubt to send a proposal (information about yourself,
subject, short description and time needed). If you have several
subjects you are enthusiastic to talk about please send alternative
proposals. In the case more than one talk is not selected, your
proposal will help us when putting the schedule together and even have
backup talks in case someone cancels. Also mention your time
constraints (if any).

Please send your talk proposal by e-mail to the address below as soon
as you read this.  You will receive an answer within 2 days.
We will submit a definitive schedule on Sunday 2013-01-27
to the FOSDEM organizers.

Please forward / distribute this call as wide as possible (certainly to
your local mongers).

Claudio Ramirez (nxadm, email: padre.claudio at apt-get.be)
and
Wendy van Dijk (email: nl.pm at wendy.org).

NB1: This is a community event without sponsoring. We don't have the
means to pay for your trip and time. If you want to sponsor part of
the event, please feel free to contact us.

NB2: We'll also appreciate volunteers, booth and dev-room. Please tell
us your availabilities so we can also prepare a planning for this.

Perl booth on FOSDEM at 2&3 februari 2013 in Brussel

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Hi all,

Best words pre-end-of-year I had this week...  This is just in:

"I am pleased to inform you that your proposal for a stand at FOSDEM 
2013 has been accepted. We have assigned two tables to you."


Perl will have a booth at FOSDEM, 2&3 February 2013, Brussels, 
Belgium.  Perl people are welcome to help and enjoy.  Please submit 
talks for Perl talks and presentations.  Even though we do  not have 
a Perl devroom, we could still try to have talks in other rooms and 
show them what Perl means to the world.


https://fosdem.org/2013/

Kind regards
and best wishes for the hoolidays and a lot of success in 2013,

Wendy van Dijk

Re: Agenda Perl and open source events

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 09:52 PM 12/5/2012, Mark Fowler wrote:
>On Wednesday, 5 December 2012 at 15:12, Wendy G.A. van Dijk wrote:
>> In case anybody is interested. Not all these
>> dates are in other collections of events.
>
>For those that have firm dates, it would be great to get these
>published in all kinds of directories.  For example, pushing them into
>http://lanyd.com.  Would you be able to do that?

Ehrm, no: "This domain has been registered for a 123-reg customer".
Perl event dates should be kept at perl.org and yapceurope.org and 
such.  Since I'm doing booths at Fosdem and other open source 
conferences, I'm collecting dates like this a bit more active that 
other people...  I'm just mad like that.



> (and for those of you organising conferences, please bear in mind
>it's almost impossible to promote them without firm dates, and people
>are already deciding what time to book holidays, etc next year)

I think the organising people know that.  Organising things can be 
difficult enough.  Some people, like Andrew Shitov, Laurent Boivin 
and Mark Keating, they do it like it is making a cheese 
sandwich.  For me, organising an event with speakers, it is hell and 
it takes me forever.  So kudos to the organisers, and take your time, 
make it a nice one, and tell everybody about it, and maybe we all will come.


Wendy

Agenda Perl and open source events

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

In case anybody is interested.  Not all these 
dates are in other collections of events.  If 
anybody has additions, please contact me.  Thanks, Wendy


Perl and Perl-related Events
December 2012
2012.12.07~~09  Quack and Hack Europe   Paris, France
2012.12.04~~07  OSDC.au Sydney  Sydney, Australia
2012.12.18  Perl Birthday 1987  World

January 2013
2013.01.11~~13  Perl Oasis  Orlando, Florida

February 2013
2013.02.02  Bulgarian Perl Workshop Sofia, Bulgaria
2013.02.02&03   FOSDEM  Brussels, Belgium
2013.02.22~~24  Southern California Linux Expo  Los Angeles, 
California, USA
2013.02.24&25   Perl Workshop IsraelIsrael
2013.02.25~~03.01   ConFoo.Ca Web techno Conference Montreal, Canada

March 2013
2013.03.13~~15  Deutscher Perl Workshop Berlin, Germany

April 2013
2013.04.??? Dutch Perl Workshop Den 
Haag, Netherlands
2013.04.27&28   Linuxfest Northwest Bellingham, 
WA, USA

May 2013
2013.05-02~~04  Linuxwochen WienVienna, Austria
2013.05.04&5Barcelona Perl Workshop Barcelona, Spain

June 2013
2013.06.??? YAPC::NAAustin, 
Texas, USA
2013.06.??? French Perl WorkshopNancy, France
2013.06.22~~26  OSCON Open Source Convention 2013   Portland, Oregon, USA
2013.06.24~~27  DWX Developer Week 2013 Nürnberg, Germany

August 2013
2013.08.mid YAPC::Europe 2012   Kiev, 
Ukrain

Other events 2013, no date known yet
2013Swiss Perl Workshop 
Switzerland
2013Nordic Perl WorkshopCopenhagen, 
Denmark

Websites with calendars, details, information:
www.perl.org/events.html
www.yapceurope.org
www.socialtext.net/perl5/events

Re: Tuits at the LPW

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

You're welcome.
And I've got many more if you want more.
Greetz,
Wendy

At 05:50 PM 12/5/2012, Richard Foley wrote:
>I don't know who's idea the little round-Tuit's were, at the LPW last month,
>but they make excellent reminder tokens, a bit like knotting a hanky.
>
>Kudos!
>
>--
>Ciao
>
>Richard Foley
>
>http://www.rfi.net/books.html

Re: Perl outreach

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 07:07 PM 11/26/2012, Salve J Nilsen wrote:
>Daniel Mantovani said:
>>...
>> The solution is simple and we already know that, so let's start talk
>> how fantastic I can solve the problem foo in Perl in a Ruby event,
>> let's talk about Perl in a PostgreSQL event and so go on. And people
>> we will see Perl how Perl really are.
>
>FOSDEM might be a good place to do this. :)
>
>- Salve

We will not have a devroom this year at FOSDEM ( 
https://fosdem.org/2013/ ) because the organisers thought it would be 
honest to give it this year to the Python people.  Huh what?  Well, 
yeah, last year Perl did have a devroom and Python did not, so we 
decided to turn that around this year.


Sigh...

I applied again for a booth with 2 tables.  No response yet (decision 
will be made next week).  If we get the booth, the Dutch and Belgian 
Perl Mongers will be there.  Liz and I will be there with our camel 
and our library of Perl books.  And a lot of promotional 
material.  And several German Perl Mongers already promised to come as well.


Anyway...  Indeed, FOSDEM is a great place to show the greatness of 
Perl to other people.  FOSDEM is the largest open source event, even 
larger than OSCON.  Admission is free.


Greetz,
Wendy

Re: [London.PM] Draft for call for speakers @ FOSDEM, Brussels, Belgium

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Dave Cross is the wise man who is always right.  And when he is 
right, he is right.

Thanks for educating me.
Wendy

At 10:45 PM 12/5/2011, Dave Cross wrote:
>On 12/05/2011 09:00 PM, Wendy G.A. van Dijk wrote:
>
>> Two years ago, the Perl community was for the first time present at FOSDEM.
>
>That's not strictly true.
>
>I gave a talk in 2004[1] and we had a developers' room in 2005[2]. We
>then took four years off until Gabor galvanised us again in 2010 :)
>
>Dave...
>
>[1] http://archive.fosdem.org/2004/index/schedule.html
>[2] http://archive.fosdem.org/2005/index/dev_room_perl.html
>

[London.PM] Draft for call for speakers @ FOSDEM, Brussels, Belgium

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

Hi,


This is the draft of the call for speakers for 
FOSDEM 2012. Please give your comments, 
corrections and ideas regarding this texts. 
Specifically, I would very much appreciate your 
input regarding dates, deadlines and subjects of 
talks. Additionally, I am not too sure about the 
sponsoring part. We can remove it altogether for the text.


Claudio



THIS IS A DRAFT AND NOT THE DEFINTIVE CALL FOR SPEAKERS.

Taking place in the beautiful city of Brussels 
(Belgium), FOSDEM is the biggest free and 
non-commercial European event organized by and 
for the community. Its goal is to provide Free 
and Open Source developers a place to meet (see 
http://fosdem.org/2012/).


Two years ago, the Perl community was for the 
first time present at FOSDEM. Our presence –a 
booth– was very successful. It boosted our 
confidence and the following year we came back 
with a bigger group, a bigger stand and --for the 
first time-- a dev-room. The talks were varied, 
interesting... and well attended.


For this upcoming edition (2012), our dev-room 
request has been approved (the stand request is 
still pending and we foresee no problems there). 
The stand will be open throughout the weekend. 
The dev-room event will take place Sunday 
February 5th 2012 , between 9 and 17h.


We, the Perl community, are free to spent our 
time in the dev-room as we see fit (of course 
respecting the frame of Free and Open Source 
software). The room itself has 81 seats, WIFI and a VGA projector.


This environment, being a university classroom 
with raised seats, lends itself perfectly for talks and classes.


This is a wonderful opportunity to present your 
Perl project –big and small– or teach about 
subjects you care about. We are looking for a 
variety of subjects on all levels: starter and 
advanced, generic and specialised, core internals 
and CPAN. We have 8 hours time, so we have the 
flexibility of using different time formats: e.g. 
lightnings talks of 20 minutes, more classic 
talks of 40 minutes or longer, and classes of 1 
hour (or longer, depending on the complexity).


Please don't doubt to send a proposal 
(information about yourself, subject, short 
description and time needed) if you think you 
have the material. If you have several subjects 
you are enthusiastic to talk about please send 
alternative proposals. In the case more than one 
talk is not selected, your proposal will help us 
when putting the schedule together and even have 
“backup” talks in case someone cancels.


Please send your talk or class proposal before 
January 6th, 2012. We will confirm the 
talk/course as soon as possible, with Saturday 
2012-01-21 being our own deadline to send our 
schedule to the FOSDEM organizer. 


Claudio Ramirez (nxadm, 
padre.clau...@apt-get.be) 
and the Belgian Perl Mongers.


NB: This is a community event without sponsoring. 
We don't have the means to pay for your trip and 
time. If you want to sponsor part of the event, 
please feel free to contact us.


THIS IS A DRAFT AND NOT THE DEFINITIVE CALL FOR SPEAKERS.
_
___
Vlaanderen mailing list
vlaande...@pm.org
http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/vlaanderen  

Re: Perl Skills Test

[Wendy G.A. van Dijk]

At 03:14 PM 9/22/2011, Dave Cross wrote:
>Interesting question from a training client:
>
>"Do you know of a general Perl skills test (on-line or paper) that we could
>give to our Perl developers before you turn up.
>
>The idea is that the output could feed into the training you are doing for
>us."


I've got this very interesting book in my Perl 
library for quite a while.  It does contain 
interview questions about Perl.  Not all 
questions are excellent, but quite a bunch 
are.  In my opinion, many questions can be used 
to find out the skill of  interviewed prospective 
Perl developers.  So, it's not a test, but with 
these questions you can make several.


And with the help of some good Perl programmers, 
it should not be too difficult to make more 
questions like the ones in this book (to confuse 
the 
not-so-skilled-in-Perl-who-took-the-trouble-to-read-this-book-before-being-interviewed).


Perl Interview Questions: Perl Programming Frequently Asked Questions
Equity Press
http://itcookbook.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=1
2006, edited by Emilee Newman Bowles
ISBN 1-933804-48-3


Another book that might be considered useful 
(even though it contains no Perl related matter):


Conducting the Webmaster Job Interview
(IT Manager Guide with Webmaster Interview Questions)
Janet Burleson
Rampant TechPress
2004
ISBN 0-9745993-1-X
http://www.rampant-books.com/book_0401_job_web_master.htm


And another book by Burleson (I don't have ithis 
one just found the description on the Rampant website):


Conducting the Programmer Job Interview
(The IT Manager Guide with Java, J2EE, C, C++, 
UNIX, PHP and Oracle interview questions!)

Janet Burleson
Rampant TechPress
2004
ISBN: 978-0974599328
http://www.rampant-books.com/book_0401_job_programmer.htm


If you want more books like these, search Amazon 
for the books and check the section "Customers 
Who Bought This Item Also Bought".  Sometimes 
something reasonably interesting pops up.  I came on this page:

http://www.amazon.com/Conducting-Programmer-Job-Interview-interview/dp/0974599328/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317203912&sr=1-1
and I found this in the "alsoo bought" section:
Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job, 2nd Edition
(Programmer to Programmer)
John Mongan (Author), Noah Suojanen (Author), Eric Giguère (Author)
Wrox
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Interviews-Exposed-Secrets-Programmer/dp/047012167X/ref=pd_sim_b1


Have fun.

Greetz,
Wendy van Dijk



>I don't[1]. Does anyone else have any ideas? I suppose I could write
>something. But I don't really have time.
>
>I don't want to get into the whole certification issue. That's not
>what this is about at all.
>
>Dave...
>
>[1] Well, other than Brainbench but that costs money and the quality
>of the questions is somewhat dubious.
>