The harsh impression I have of TPF, is that it is opaque where it should be transparent. That it is influenced by a cliquey inner circle. It communicates poorly outside that circle, and that grant recipients tend to be awarded to friends of the inner circle.
These are the impressions I have either built for myself, gathered from other local perl mongers, or seen expressed in forums and/or mailing lists.
I do believe things have been getting better. Possibly they are better still, but I don't take much time out of my days to track TPF goings on. I have noticed the addition of the blog and occassionally wander over to check it out.
The best thing I think TPF could do, would be to make publicly accessible unedited archives of all correspondence, meeting minutes and IRC logs. I.e., no private mailing lists, etc.
I do know that TPF is significantly staffed through volunteer efforts. But I would recommend that TPF get a couple prominant programmers from the Eastern hemisphere on board like Audrey Tang and Tatsuhiko Miyagawa. And at least 1 or 2 prominant outsiders. Sam Ruby or one of the other-than-perl6 developers currently working on pugs or parrot.
It'd be nice if people who fund TPF played a role in some decision making process. Such as voting on awards and grant recipients. In the past I have contributed over $2000 to TPF. I am sure that the money was well spent supporting Damian Conway. But the lack of communication and the fact that there was no two-way discussion of how I wished my contributions to be spent have left me without the desire to renew funding.
I think the most important thing for TPF to focus on is the continued development of Perl 6, which is pretty obvious. But I would love to see TPF fund or help organize a better PR machine.
We need some notable Perl hackers and large users of Perl ( Amazon, Ticketmaster, Slashdot, etc. ) to promote Perl more. Mentioning it in trade press, conferences, etc. Talking about how not only is Perl not dead, but it is vibrant, alive, and getting better every day. I'm not talking about a few warm fuzzies posted on Perlmonks for our own community, it needs to be told to the programmers and suits outside the Perl community.
The computer industry as a whole needs to hear more about Perl, in non-Perl related sites, magazines, etc.
I think as a community we do a great job of taking care of the technology, we need to focus a bit more on the marketing.
Why be coy about the exciting stuff coming up? You want to know what the community would like you to do but you don't tell the community what you are doing.
John Wang said
I haven't been able to reach Bill Odom's email address listed at: http://www.perlfoundation.org/contacts.html
Hmm. Perhaps MT's spam filters aren't the only ones working overtime.
The Contacts page should reference my new TPF address anyway, so use it instead:
bill dot odom at perlfoundation dot org.
Adam Kennedy said: If at all possible, as soon as possible, can I suggest you get a copy of your talk from YAPC::NA, and post it for all to see.
Duly noted. Again. :-)
But yes, I agree. If getting the video (or at least a transcript) continues to be a problem for much longer, I'll be posting a roughly-equivalent essay version here soon.
Anonymous said: Why be coy about the exciting stuff coming up?
I wasn't trying to be coy, and I apologize if it seemed
that way. We just want to emphasize results over promises.
Real accomplishments count for so much more than the grandest
of plans (especially considering TPF's less-than-stellar
reputation).