A recent thread in the London.pm mailing list got people saying that they wanted to donate some time to The Perl Foundation, but didn't know where their efforts could be used. Here are two places to start: Jim Brandt, who organized YAPC::NA 2004 in Buffalo, is looking for volunteers to help with a Perl-based conference system. See his TPF blog post for details I'm looking for someone to write up

Every year the group of past recipients gives out three new "White Camel Awards":http://www.perl.org/advocacy/white_camel/ to recognize a few of the many people who give their time and energy to help the Perl community. Since we don't know nearly as many of the contributors and contributions as we'd like, we are looking for input on who should be considered. Keywords: Community service Unsung heroes better than well known ones

As TPF Conferences Chair, I try to help eager, excited organizers put together a YAPC. Ever since I ran YAPC in Buffalo in 2004 I've wanted to put together something called Conference::Toolkit that would solve all of the YAPC web-site needs. Well, given my TPF duties, I honestly don't have the time to do this right. And I want it done right. I want to put together the best conference

I've been remiss in noting that YAPC::Asia::2006 is right around the corner. But if you're in Tokyo and want to go, it appears you're a bit too late. They've sold out! They have a great line-up of talks and speakers If you're already registered, have fun!

This year YAPC::Brasil will be held April 19-22, 2006 in Porto Alegre/RS, Brazil in conjunction with the 7th International Free Software Forum From what I've heard, FISL

I have just received the first report for Nicholas Clark's grant. So far, things are going rather well. Read on to see what Nicholas has done. I've completed the planned typeglob structure shrinking. This turned out to be somewhat more complex than I expected. Specifically: Discovered that PVGVs use magic to perform stringification. Removed this need for magic, saving 24 bytes. Discovered that pads use PVGVs for storing C variable

One of the grants the grant committee approved last year was to extend PPI towards a refactoring editor. At that time, we didn't have procedures in place to take the grant reports and post them to a common spot. Now that we have this blog, our intention is to post these reports regularly so you can see the bang you're getting for your buck. What follows is Adam Kennedy's report

In Toronto last year, there was a pre-YAPC hack-a-thon that brought together many of the Perl 6 coders in person, which can be very productive. TPF provided $600 US to cover costs, and as you can tell by the amount, the group worked as low-budget as possible. Right now, the week before OSDC Israel they are

Only one grant was approved this quarter, but it's fantastic. Nicholas Clark, the current 5.8 Pumpking has applied for an $11,000 grant to improve Perl 5. Some of what he intends to do: Fix bugs affecting Unicode handling, Class::DBI, Tk and PAR. Allow relocatable Perl installations, which permits developers to distribute applications complete with a bundled Perl. Support source filters as part of code references in @INC

From time to time people decide to leave the grant committee and new members join. Recently, Nicholas Clark, a long-time grant committee member, decided to step down. He'll be missed as his knowledge of both Perl and the community are extensive. However, we wound up electing two new grant committee members, Thomas Klausner and Ben Tilly. On the off chance you don't know who they are, I suppose I should

Sometimes people might question the tangible value of going to a conference. You're out of the office for a few days, so you lose that work time. You attend a ton of sessions and you're drinking from a fire hose, so after about half a day you feel totally overwhelmed. Does any of it stick? I can tell you for sure that it does. The other day someone in my

This year the Toronto folks managed to record audio and video for the YAPC::NA conference sessions, as reported on use.perl.org After a few months of availability, Fulko Hew has shared his stats with me: 7 mail-orders 111 CD downloads 953 DVD downloads private duplications 4 Terabytes Given that the DVD was 4.23 Gig, that's a lot of bits, both for the sender and receiver. I don't think that

Our friend chromatic wrote up a summary of some of the things that happened in Perl last year. Oh, and happy new year everyone! :-D

As I mentioned previously, I recently attended the Gartner Open Source Summit. While there I participated in a new type of session Gartner has started moderating called a round table session, and I think it's a really cool idea. When you attend a Gartner conference, you are eligible to sign up for one-on-one sessions with the Gartner analysts. This is a nice perk, since you usually have to pay for

Ponie is the project name for Perl 5.12, a bridge between Perl 5 and Perl 6. Ponie will bring Perl 5 to Parrot, the virtual machine at the heart of Perl 6. A project of this size and complexity takes plenty of talent, and plenty of support, to complete. The first phase of the project has come to an end, and a new one is beginning. In July of 2003,