SPUG: The Dam-I-athon Done Endeth!

Tim Maher/CONSULTIX tim at consultix-inc.com
Sat Jul 8 11:27:35 CDT 2000


SPUG-skateers (*TM, David Patterson):

Thanks to all who took time out of their busy schedules to attend one
or more of the many events in the last 10 days featuring OO Perl expert
and Fair::Dinkum::Aussie Dr. Damian Conway, of Monash University, during
his first visit to Seattle.

Just to recap, "The Dam-I-athon" consisted of several Group Dinners,
a group Fireworks Viewing/Liver-Vibrating event at Ground-Zero in Lake
Union, inspirational SPUG (http://www.halcyon.com/spug) and E-SPUG
(http://espug.pm.org) talks each attended by about 50 deranged Perl
fanatics, and full-day seminars on "Adv. OOP" and "Text Parsing"
attended by 31 paying customers (http://www.consultix-inc.com).

Amazed Perl practitioners worldwide have been asking me "How Did
(?:E-)?SPUG Ever Land Such a 'BIG FISH' (albeit an exceedingly humble one)
In Our Pond?", so allow me to explain.

One typically rainy day (Nota Benissimo: Seattle sucks, please don't move
here if you're from California), I was minding my own business, doing my
job as SPUG leader by rubber-stamping requests to 'spug-list-owner' of the
form "approve [Ss]ubscribe spug-list 'rambo_force at pre-ipo.com' submitted by
'percy_milktoast at pre-ipo.com' ", when suddenly I was contacted by the
good people at NeoInformatics (http://www.neoinformatics.com).

They innocently expressed their willingness to fund a SPUG event such as
"bringing in a Special Speaker" for the sole purpose of supporting the
local Perl community, from which they hoped to recruit more new hires
(like SPUGster Sean Owens, who got his job from their ad on our list).

I thought for about 1.35 seconds about which Special Speaker would be
most desirable, quickly settled on "The Damian", thought for another
.15 seconds about whether I should put it to a SPUG-vote, immediately
squelched the idea as totally unnecessary and a Complete Waste of Time,
and furiously dashed off the quickest invitational email in history to
damian at conway.org.  Being the backward bumpkin that he is, one
nucleotide-pair away from a Crocodile Wrangler, he went for the bait and
fell into my trap! 9=}

The rest is history.  I know from my personal experience and from many
"unsolicited testimonials" that he inspired, informed, and entertained
huge throngs of SPUGsters during his visit, and that he even managed
to displace Cable-TV Celebrity Steve Erwin ("The Crocodile Hunter")
in the minds of many as the new "Australian Cultural Ambassador."

[As a side note, when I invited him I had no idea he'd be interested in
doing seminars here, but once I learned, being equipped to help stage
such events, I rallied to his aid.]

He is grateful for his warm reception and The Days The Sun Came Out,
and impressed with the size and sophistication of our local Perl community. 
If you agree with me that it would be great to have him back again soon,
<INCITEMENT_TO_PRAISE>
please don't hesitate to convey that message to:
		damian at conway.org
</INCITEMENT_TO_PRAISE>

-Tim
==========================================================
|  Tim Maher, Ph.D.           Tel: (206) 781-UNIX        |
|  SPUG Founder & Leader      Email: spug at halcyon.com    |
|  Seattle Perl Users Group   HTTP: www.halcyon.com/spug |
==========================================================

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