[Tallahassee-pm] Second meeting was great!

[James Tillman]

Hi all.  I just got back from the second meeting of the Tallahassee
PerlMongers Group and I feel like it was a great success.  We welcomed a
new member, Marie Duncan.  Others in attendance were Todd Cushard, Scott
Keller, and James Tillman (me!).

Thanks to all who came.  I love that we're forming such an open-minded,
free-thinking group.  And I'd like to put out a challenge to those who
couldn't make it this time to try to make it to the next meeting.

We had some good discussions about how to get started on learning Perl
and about learning unix-y things.  Marie's experience in learning
systems prompted a lot of talk about how we learn things in general, and
brought up some interesting ideas about how we remember what we learn
and how we each learn in different ways.  We probably discussed lots of
other things, but for some reason I can only remember the first 10
minutes and the last 10 minutes of the meeting...  ;-)

I brought up an opportunity I had noticed in the most recent issue of
the Perl.com email newsletter.  The Perl Foundation
(http://www.perlfoundation.org) provides funding for worthy projects,
and they are currently taking proposals.  I thought it might be nice to
submit an idea (or ideas) for consideration.  Even if we don't get
funding, we had already discussed the concept of a "group project" at
our last meeting.  Surely the possibility of a cash incentive would get
our creative juices flowing!

Talk mainly centered on projects that I've started in the past, but
which have fallen by the wayside due to lack of time and resources, but
which could be picked up and continued if we wished:

  * Guido:  http://guido.sf.net/
  * paix: http://sf.net/projects/paix/
  * CodeBank: http://codebank.sf.net/

But another idea for an implementation of Java's Ant for Perl came up,
as well.  I made it clear that my ideas should not be the only ones we
consider and that we should all put our thinking caps on.  We decided to
hash out our ideas on the mailing list and on the wiki, and vote later
on a couple to write proposals for.  I'll soon post the current list of
ideas on the wiki (unless someone beats me to it:  hint, hint, hint) Who
knows, we might get some actual funding to work on these great ideas!

So, whether you came to the meeting or not, whether you've been active
in the group up until now or not, please feel free to speak up with
opinions on the above ideas or your own brand new ideas and let us know
what you think.  Whatever floats your boat, drop us a note, and then
we'll all vote!

jpt