[Buffalo-pm] meeting topics

keith tarbell ikeith at earthlink.net
Thu Feb 23 10:21:49 PST 2006


Here's my two-cents (that doesn't even buy a gumball!):

Clearly, to bring in new people you will need to offer more basic material (as has already been noted), more so than would be of interest to the 'core' members.  The other problem is the need to stay up-to-date on other topics, with so little time to do it.  Perhaps the basic topics could not be limited to pure-Perl subjects but could include some that address Perl's role in other areas.  The Bioinformatics talk is a good example (the speaker admitted to saying very little about Perl).  The recent Prolog/Perl talk as well, but, for example, we could have seen more about Prolog and then a basic treatment of Perl's role (e.g. does it replace or augment).  

I'm using the Asterisk platform (PBX) on a project in telecommunications.  Can anyone talk about Perl's role in that area?  Maybe most of us have some programing experience/expertise, but not specifically in Perl.  We can get that from other means, but the talks can perhaps provide some insight for the basic paradigms of Perl.  What are the classic applications, where does it 'fit' best?  Can I use it for scientific analysis or machine-control?  Or is it best only as a text-processing tool?  Can Perl help with RSS, IM or podcasting (or whatever new way someone has thought of burning bandwidth)? (Rhetorical questions, of course, until someone comes up with a talk.) 

Ok the other thing is scheduling.  Too much basic stuff and you'll lose the interest of the more experienced members.  How about alternating  meetings (or every third) for a basic topic?  This seems more workable than splitting a single meeting into a basic and advanced topic, where more time may be needed by one or the other and sticking to the split would short-change both.

One more thing,  how about meeting on campus for coffee before the talk (say at 7, if the meeting will start at 8 now)?  An opportunity to pre-discuss the topic (formulate questions), network a bit (in the job sense), or just shoot the breeze ("yeah, I used Perl to analyze the Bills stats ....").

</keith>


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