[Buffalo-pm] Notes the 3rd Meeting of BPM, &c.

[Kevin Christopher]

ITEM ONE: NOTES FROM OUR THIRD MEETING
ITEM TWO: NEXT MEETING
ITEM THREE: FUTURE TALKS - WHAT DO *YOU* WANT?
ITEM FOUR: PLEASE, USE THIS MAILING LIST

ITEM ONE: Notes from the 3rd Meeting of Buffalo Perl Mongers
May 29, 2003

Jim Brandt's talk on Perl's Template Toolkit was an excellent
introduction to what is apparently one of the most comprehensive and
useful Web development modules in Perl's CPAN arsenal. It's a real
shame that only 4 of our 30 list members were able to make it to our
third meeting. Fortunately, Jim will be passing along his notes and
examples to post at http://buffalo.pm.org where absentees can see what
they missed.

I'll make sure from now on to send a reminder e-mail the day before our
future meetings.

Here is a summary of some of the changes and plans for Buffalo PM  that
we discussed at our 3rd meeting:

(1) We will move our meeting date to the ***second Thursday*** of each
month. The major motivation was that we wanted to make it easier for our
membership to participate in the meetings of the Toronto Perl Mongers,
and vice versa.

This means that we will meet on Thursday, June 12th, 7:00 p.m., at
Alternative Brews on 3488 Sheridan Drive in Amherst ( Take the 1-290 into
Amherst and exit at "Millersport South" Turn right at the second light -
Sheridan Drive - and you'll see Alternative Brews on your right ).

(2) We're adopting an order of business for our meetings:

- New people: Anyone new to the group could say who they are an why
they're attending.
- Perl News (Local Perl news; maybe something interesting
someone had done with Perl in the last month)
- Main presentation
- Suggestions for next presentation
- Follow up on business of previous meeting; Open floor to new business.

Since talks will generally have AV needs, we'll meet at UB North
Campus's Bell Hall. After the main presentation, we can go to
Alternative Brews (or some other place we agree on) to unwind and
carry on the discussion.

(3) We want to get the word out there to more people in the area
and draw them to our meetings. To that end we'll expand and improve
buffalo.pm.org as a resource for Perl users and those who want to
learn more about Perl. Once we get our online resources better
established, we'll start efforts in local media to bring BPM to the
attention of more programmers, Web developers, and IT professionals in WNY.

(4) We're soliciting ideas from BPM members for future talks, see ITEM 3.


ITEM TWO: OUR NEXT MEETING

To repeat what was mentioned above, we will meet on Thursday, June 12th,
at 7:00 p.m. at Alternative Brews on 3488 Sheridan Drive in Amherst ( Take
the 1-290 into Amherst and exit at "Millersport South" Turn right at the
second light - Sheridan Drive - up the street you'll see Alternative Brews
on your right ). We'll be following up on the plans outlined in this post,
talk shop, and brainstorm future BPM plans and projects.

ITEM THREE: FUTURE TALKS - WHAT DO YOU WANT?

A major activity of Perl Mongers Groups is providing members with a
regular series of talks discussing Perl, Perl modules, etc. This group
is no exception. So what do you want see a talk on? What do you want
get out of this group?

Maybe there's a module you'd like to use at work or for a personal site
and you'd like to hear someone else's experiences using it.

Maybe you've got the bare basics of Perl down, but want a live
tutorial/discussion on references, building modules, using CPAN, etc.

Maybe you're a sysadmin who uses Perl for administration tasks, but want
to know more about using it for Web development. Or vice versa.

Maybe you've used Perl on *nix for years but would like to find out more
about Active State's Perl for Win32 and Active State's Perl development
tools.

Whatever you'd like to see, send your ideas to me at kevin at binarymojo.net,
or come to our June 12 meeting and bring them up.


ITEM FOUR: PLEASE, USE THIS LIST

Meetings are once a month; this mailing list is 24-7; Use it! Found
something interesting in use.perl.org that your fellow BPMers might be
interested in? Post it to the list. Got a problem in your code? Post it
to the list. Want to know if anyone else has used a module you're
thinking of using? Post to the list.


That's it for now: hope to see you on June 12!

-Kevin