From ngourlay at gmail.com Tue Mar 6 07:59:42 2007 From: ngourlay at gmail.com (Nigel Gourlay) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:59:42 +0300 Subject: [Qatar-pm] Taipei Perl Mongers Message-ID: <2379a820703060759q93d8127pe6dedb21cf62f00b@mail.gmail.com> Sir The following website has been blocked by the filter run by Internet Qatar: http://taipei.pm.org/ I feel that this blocking is in error. As far as I am aware, this site is devoted to discussing the merits of the Perl programming language, and supporting users who live in the Taipei area. I assume the site was blocked because your filtering software was designed for use by the Chinese government, and a simple rule has been enforced that blocks all Taipei sites. Many thanks Nigel Gourlay From ngourlay at gmail.com Sun Mar 18 22:47:41 2007 From: ngourlay at gmail.com (Nigel Gourlay) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:47:41 +0300 Subject: [Qatar-pm] QSTP TechTalk, 26 March Message-ID: <2379a820703182247x5c344f90h67435985bfe71fc@mail.gmail.com> I need a big disclaimer at the top of this email. My wife works for Hill and Knowlton, and her team has organized this event. However, she's refused to give me any insider information, and I've never met Andrew Bone, so I'm quite happy to indulge my natural eeyorish tendencies. I'm uneasy about PR companies getting into the blogging scene - it's more likely to backfire with claims of 'astroturfing' than it is to succeed. The commercialization of slashdot has been a failure, with negative affects on the reputation of Intel amongst the very people they were trying to reach. http://intel.vendors.slashdot.org/ The main difficulty is the balance between freedoms of community members and the reputation of those running the community. It is too tempting for a company to delete negative comments, or post press-releases as news stories. Unfortunately, most people can tell when they're being manipulated. Some people have said it's better for companies to succeed is to do nothing. If people want to build a community, they will do it without your help. Alternatively, support those who are loosely in agreement with your company's aims. http://www.mohamedn.com/2007/03/13/best-practices-for-enterprise-20/ Anyway, here's the advert. Hope to see you there. If you're lucky, you might find someone in the audience who's running a community site. --nigel >>>>> Social media isn't just teenagers sharing photos of their pets anymore. Corporate reputations are being made and broken as customers and peers go online with their opinions. Andrew Bone, regional director of PR firm Hill and Knowlton, believes companies in the Gulf can benefit enormously from social media - and must avoid the pitfalls that await the unprepared. Armed with case studies and practical tips, Andrew will discuss the business impacts of social media at the QSTP TECHtalks on 26 March. Please join us. Monday 26 March, 7.00pm, Diplomatic Club. RSVP by reply e-mail events at qstp.org.qa From ngourlay at gmail.com Mon Mar 26 08:04:09 2007 From: ngourlay at gmail.com (Nigel Gourlay) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:04:09 +0300 Subject: [Qatar-pm] iHorizons R&D at QSTP Message-ID: <2379a820703260804v16752b4bmb1876c415b495e06@mail.gmail.com> I'm only mentioning this here because Perl has traditionally been the starting point for any bioinformatics project. In the real world, that is. >From press-release here: http://tinyurl.com/35ym32 "One of the first technologies that iHorizons will explore is bioinformatics. It is talking to international biotechnology partners and aims to use its software engineering expertise to develop new applications. Bioinformatics is becoming an important technology in Qatar, with medical institutes such as Qatar Foundation's Specialty Teaching Hospital intending to use it in their research programs." This will be interesting to see. There's no .net bioinformatics libraries, and iHorizons are a Microsoft shop. I heard some rumours that they might start looking at open-source, but from their careers page it looks like they're not hiring coders any in Qatar, and the jobs they are advertising don't require bioinformatics skills. If they are going to use .net, they're going to have to reimplement a decade of work. For me, it's baffling that a content-management and localization firm is being lined up for a scientific project. If you wanted this to succeed, your best bet might be to relocate a complete team from a North-American university. In fact, almost all of the commercial bioinformatics firms are academic spinoffs. It's depressing that the expansion of Qatar's software industry is being subsidised by projects that are likely to fail. If you wanted to create a software industry in Qatar, why not push compsci grads towards localizing open-source applications. No one from outside Qatar is ever going to hire a Qatari firm for bioinformatics, but there is a niche in arabic software that local firms could fill. --nigel From ngourlay at gmail.com Mon Mar 26 21:15:50 2007 From: ngourlay at gmail.com (Nigel Gourlay) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2007 07:15:50 +0300 Subject: [Qatar-pm] YAPC::Europe: 5 days left to be an Early Bird In-Reply-To: <20070326195107.GQ807@domm2.zsi.at> References: <20070326195107.GQ807@domm2.zsi.at> Message-ID: <2379a820703262115x2375e084q64253414910cdbde@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Thomas Klausner Date: 26-Mar-2007 22:51 Subject: [pm_groups] YAPC::Europe: 5 days left to be an Early Bird To: pm_groups at pm.org Hi! Just a quick notice that there are only 5 days left to register for YAPC::Europe with the cheaper early bird tariff (saving 20 Euros) - you'll also have the chance to win one of two coffee table books on Vienna. Early Bird registration ends on 31st March, 23:59. Barbie was smart enough to discover a slight loophole in our pricing: If you submit a talk proposal and do not register as an early bird and have your proposal rejected, you'll loose 20 Euros (which is still better than submitting an proposal, paying the 80 Euros, and then have your proposal accepted and your ticket fee waived). So we clarify our rules: If you submit a talk proposal, you'll also be eligible to the reduced 80 Euros fee after March, 31st. Of course you can submit a talk and pay the regular or even the sponsor tariff :-) Oh, and don't forget that if you submit a talk proposal until March 31st, you're also in for the book-raffle! http://vienna.yapceurope.org -- #!/usr/bin/perl http://domm.zsi.at for(ref bless{},just'another'perl'hacker){s-:+-$"-g&&print$_.$/}