[Za-pm] ZA.PM Updates

[Oskar Pearson]

Hi Nico

> Just a quick update - I will be in Helsinki next week to present an African 
> FLOSS report to the Finish Government. I will try to access my mail everyday, 
> but in the event that I do not - PLEASE don't break anything in here :)

Good stuff. Hope the report goes well.

> In the mean time, how about some introductions? I would like to know where you 
> all are ( physical city ) and what you do full time. This purely optional, 
> but might proof interesting none the less. It would also help me plan a 
> meeting later on - deciding on the city etc. I would also like to hear some 
> suggestions as to what you think about a general annual meeting. If our 
> numbers permit, I can also spread the za.pm workload in areas such as mailing 
> list admin, web site maintainer(s) etc - please give me your thoughts on 
> these issues.

International Perl meetup day is at http://perl.meetup.com/ - There are loads
of other things there, though. It's on the third Thursday of every month. The
site lets you organise where the event is - it's then coordinated with every
other town in every country. Quite cool :)

I've added myself as a host. If it doesn't work out to be the way we do
things, it doesn't work out - no biggie :)

> I an in Johannesburg and full time employee of First National Bank as a Perl 
> programmer in the Linux Team. The rest of the time I stay out of trouble by 
> working on various unfinished projects - and even try to spend some quality 
> time with my wife. 

I am one of the founders and shareholders of Qualica Technologies (Pty)
Ltd, a JHB based company of 13 people. The company specialises in Internet
performance analysis, Unix/Linux server infrastructure support, and software
development, especially in the Internet and accounting (money, not
traffic) spheres. I've been interested in Linux since the early days of
slackware on stiffy disk and run the linux.org.za domain, including the
technical stuff behind the glug list.

Some of my personal interests are:
o photography (and B&W developing),
o writing (squid-docs.sourceforge.net is one of my older, incomplete,
  projects),
o internet caching (an older interest),
o occasional free software code hacks,
o cryptography
o network security
o programming patterns (new interest),
o "the design of everyday things" - useability and the human
  conciousness,
o the software development process,
o social aspects of both personality and self,
o Yoga,
o Weights,
o NLP and other technologies of mind,
o social activisim is another of my new interests (EFF-type,
  e-government, etc),
o I throw in some maintenance of ftp.is.co.za when I get a chance,
o Science fiction (short stories - Robert Silverberg rocks),
o Reading mail (but seldom replying to it).
o Philosophising in general
o Currently learning java
o Peer to peer networks, and the change in culture that it's
  bringing about. I've been involved in p-grid.org to a very
  small extent, which is a yet-to-be-released peer2peer system
  developed by academics in an attempt to be incredibly efficient.

Perl is one of my favorite languages.

When I'm not doing these things, I'll generally be at Seattle coffee
shop or at Exclusive books, meeting friends.

Oskar
--
Oskar Pearson <oskar at qualica.com>
Qualica Technologies (Pty) Ltd
web: http://www.qualica.com/