[Wellington-pm] Invitation to participate in perl.net.au

[Jacinta Richardson]

G'day Wellington PMers,

Last year Paul Fenwick and I were privileged enough to be involved in many 
different facets of the Australiasian Perl community.  We were able to attend 
Perl Mongers meetings across Australia, encouraging the reformation of a few, 
and teach both beginner and experienced programmers in Australia and New 
Zealand.  We became involved with businesses that either specialised in 
providing Perl services, or who use Perl for internal development and who 
regularly seek programmers.

Between all these groups, we discovered there was a common desire, for there to 
be more connections in the Australiasian Perl community.

"Where can I find a job working with Perl?"
"Where can I find Perl developers or consultants?"
"Who else in Australia are using Perl, and what for?"
"How can I show my clients that there is plenty of Perl support in Australia?"
"Does Perl exist in New Zealand?"
"I want to help with a local Perl project, where do I start?"

Having a more active and more interconnected Perl community is something that we 
feel would be of great benefit to us all.  As such, we have registered the 
domain perl.net.au, installed MediaWiki, and placed upon it the skeleton of a 
portal site.  It's our hope that perl.net.au will become a central meeting point 
for the Perl community in Australia and New Zealand.

PerlNet is at the very start of its life, and in order for it to become a 
success it needs the input and attention of the community.  I'm writing to you 
to ask for feedback, ideas, and contributions to PerlNet.

We're only notifying select groups to begin with, and this is intentional.  Many 
people will not return to PerlNet if their first experience is a bad one, and 
currently the site is very much under construction.  We want to be able to bring 
it up to speed before announcing it to the world.

If you have the time, I would appreciate it if you could go to
               http://perl.net.au/
and give your contributions, feedback, and ideas.  I also ask in particular that 
you read and respect the requests at:

     http://perl.net.au/wiki/PerlNet:Beta_phase

We especially want you to write about Wellington PM, Perl in Wellington, your 
businesses, your experiences with Perl and New Zealand in general.

While you may tell other *individuals* to whom you feel PerlNet has value, we 
ask that you do not otherwise publicise PerlNet.  Please do not mention PerlNet 
at (other) user groups, in your journal/blog, or in other media outlets.  Once 
the site has grown further with your help; we will be able make a proper 
announcement to the world.

I sincerely look forward to your feedback and contributions.  I would encourage 
you to provide these using the facilities on the site itself, in order to 
promote an open and transparent discussion.  However, if there are matters that 
you wish to communicate to me personally, feel free to do so by return e-mail.

All the very best,

        Jacinta and Paul

-- 
    ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._          |  Jacinta Richardson         |
     `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)  |  Perl Training Australia    |
     (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'   |      +61 3 9354 6001        |
   _..`--'_..-_/  /--'_.' ,'           | contact at perltraining.com.au |
  (il),-''  (li),'  ((!.-'             |   www.perltraining.com.au   |