The dates for "YAPC::NA 2010":http://yapc2010.com/ were announced recently. The conference will be the week of June 20th 2010 at Knowlton Hall on the Campus of the Ohio State University. The primary conference days will be June 21st, 22nd, 23rd, but if history tells us anything, there will be events, classes, and hackathons spread out for days before and after the official conference. #perl-conference-yapc

I am pleased to announce that TPF will be represented for the first time this year at "CeBIT":http://www.cebit.de/homepage_e. The conference is taking place between the 2nd and 6th of March in Hannover, Germany. The events team is still looking for more volunteers to staff the booth. If you want to help out you'll find information on the "events mailing list":http://www.mail-archive.com/events@lists.perlfoundation.org/ and the "events wiki":http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?events.

Over the past few weeks discussions have been taking place on our Marketing list regarding different ways to promote Perl. One idea we are running with is promoting Perl at technical conferences where the main focus isn't Perl. Gabor has "announced":http://szabgab.com/blog/2009/12/1260171050.html that there will be a Perl booth at "FOSDEM":http://www.fosdem.org/2010/ in February next year. This is, hopefully, the first of many conferences that are targeted. To help co-ordinate our efforts

Eric Wilhelm has finished his grant "improving learn.perl.org":http://news.perlfoundation.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=18&tag=learn.perl.org&limit=20". He has written six tutorials from "Getting Started with Perl" to "Your First GUI Desktop Application". The six tutorials are "Getting Started with Perl":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/getting_started/ "Control, Structures, Scoping, and Subroutines":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/csss/ "Using and Creating Modules":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/modules/ "An Introduction to Objects":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/objects/ "Perl/CPAN Configuration Howto":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/configuration/ "Your First GUI Desktop Application":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/wxperl/ The tutorials are currently hosted "http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com, but if Eric finds a better permanent home for them, he

Follows the update from Vadim on his grant: I've implemented 'call' method for interpreter object, which takes already parsed parameters and passes them to tcl/tk interpreter. It is similar to 'eval' method, but it should be faster, and also safer to use, because there will be no need to protect/escape special characters before calls. Also, widget calls to tcl/tk library are based on this method. Also, 'tk' widgets could be

Eric Roode sent the following update: bq. The status is basically that the writing is taking much, much longer than I had expected. I had thought I'd be able to document a couple classes per hour; instead, it's taking me a few hours per class. I don't really know what to do to speed up the process, so I am just continuing to plug along. At the rate I'm going,

Given my high amount of work at the moment and the big number of grants not finished I decided to skip the fourth call for grants for 2009. I am sorry for any inconvenience.

As you might have seen already, www.perl.org got a new look thanks to Foxtons and Leo Lapworth, Stephen Morgan and Cameron Richmond.

Over the last two weeks, Eric has done a lot of things... bq. I've added the "CPAN and Perl Configuration Howto" to the site. Feedback so far has been good. I'm waiting to hear if there are stumbling points or if it leaves any important questions unanswered. bq. "http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/configuration/":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/configuration/ bq. The "Control, Structures, Scoping and Subroutines" tutorial is now complete. bq. "http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/csss/":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/csss/ bq. I've finished writing the tutorials and am

The "Frozen Perl 2010":http://www.frozen-perl.org/mpw2010/ workshop is scheduled for Saturday, February 6th at the University of Minnesota's McNamara Alumni Center in Minneapolis, MN. The organizers just put out their "call for speakers":http://www.frozen-perl.org/mpw2010/cfs.html a day or so ago. If you have no fear of freezing temperatures and want to attend or speak at a great Perl workshop, check it out. Also, the are still "looking for sponsors":http://www.frozen-perl.org/mpw2010/sponsorship.html if you'd like to help

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce, on behalf of Ricardo Signes, that the TPF-funded work on Pod::Elemental and Pod::Weaver is complete! Here's his final report: Just a few days after predicting that the months-old grant was half done, it became quite clear that the first half was much, much more difficult than the second. The initial grant proposal listed the following targets: clearly defined and

Eric sent me this update: bq. I've sent a handful of changes to Robert and have been asked not to change the page style as apparently there's some other initiative going on. bq. The perl-org-patches list has generated some conflicting changes for the new /tutorials/ page as well as the index.html and I'm trying to resolve that content. The "learnperl.scratchcomputing.com":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com front page has a sketch of where I'm wanting the

After a strong start, work on Pod::Elemental and Pod::Weaver was quickly derailed by conference season, and then by a few non-technical distractions. I've gotten back to work, though, and quite a lot of progress has been made. The second major goal, "extensive tests for Pod::Elemental," is basically complete. Pod::Elemental is fairly well defined, documented, and tested, and can now be used to perform significant document mangling. The "PodPurler" for Dist::Zilla

Now that I've joined the Board of Directors for the Perl Foundation, my first action was to propose a marketing committee be set up and the board approved the proposal. It's an ambitious goal, but a useful one. In the past, we've merely had a single PR person such as Andy Lester or Joshua McAdams. The problem with this approach is that there is simply too much for them to

Kieren Diment reports that the Perl Survey is ready for deployment. He's been hardening the application against abuse by bots, simplifying the original set of demographic questions, and writing new survey questions. Kieren hopes to be freer from distraction as work continues through the end of the year.