[grand-rapids-pm-list] Perlmongers

Thu Jul 26 06:58:08 PDT 2007

GR Perlmongers,

There will be no formal gr-pm meeting this month. I will be out of town tomorrow. But if anyone wants to gather for a social lunch, feel free to reply to the list and arrange it. See you in August for Catalyst (see below)!

I'd like to hold the September talk at a different location and time than usual. If someone would like to help arrange this, please contact me.

Has anyone outside of PriorityHealth had the problem where they do not receive the original message posted to the mailing list, but do receive any replies? If so, please let me know.

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Upcoming Events:

Fri, Aug 31 - 11:30 - 1:00 PM
Johnathan Rockway - Catalyst (Perl's "Ruby on Rails" environment)
Priority Health Conference Center

September (tbd)
Andy Lester - Things you may not know about Perl

October (tbd)
Matt Heusser - Intro to Perl

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"Where have all the young hackers gone?"

This topic was recently discussed on the pm_groups mailing list. The following questionnaire was forwarded and responses came from various pm groups around the world. Here are a couple of the more interesting ones (Portugal; Ruhrgebiet, Germany; Barcelona, Spain; Tokyo, Japan).

------ Forwarded Message
From: Edgar Bering <trizor at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:25:39 -0400
To: <pm_groups at pm.org>
Conversation: [pm_groups] Where have all the young hackers gone?
Subject: [pm_groups] Where have all the young hackers gone?

Dear PM leaders,

At YAPC::NA I brought up the issue that the Perl community lacked
members under 22 or so, and several reasons for this were discussed.

I would like to get more information regarding the issue, so I have a
few questions that I would like answered about every PM group:

1) At a typical meeting what percent of your members are under 25?

2) Are meetings typically held at open venues? (not bars or clubs that card)

3) Is there a college or university in your town?

If yes I have extra questions !

4) How far is the university from your meeting place ?

5) Does the university have a Computer Science program ?

Thank you for the replying, once I have the data I'll report and try
and find ways to recruit a new generation of Perl users.

------ End of Forwarded Message

------ Forwarded Message
From: Alberto Simoes <ambs at cpan.org>
Reply-To: <ambs at cpan.org>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:38:20 -0400
Cc: <pm_groups at pm.org>
Conversation: [pm_groups] Where have all the young hackers gone?
Subject: Re: [pm_groups] Where have all the young hackers gone?

Edgar Bering wrote:
> Dear PM leaders,

Hi

> 1) At a typical meeting what percent of your members are under 25?

On Tech-Meetings I would say, 50% (more should be said: about 10-15
persons attend)

> 2) Are meetings typically held at open venues? (not bars or clubs that card)
Yes

> 3) Is there a college or university in your town?
Yes

> If yes I have extra questions !
>
> 4) How far is the university from your meeting place ?
Same place :)

> 5) Does the university have a Computer Science program ?
Two, in fact.
And there are two (optional) courses that use Perl. A "scripting"
approach to programming course, and a Natural Language Processing course.

Cheers
ambs (braga.pm, Portugal)

------ End of Forwarded Message

------ Forwarded Message
From: Veit Wahlich <cru at zodia.de>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:34:41 -0400
To: Edgar Bering <trizor at gmail.com>
Cc: <pm_groups at pm.org>
Conversation: [pm_groups] Where have all the young hackers gone? [scanned]
Subject: Re: [pm_groups] Where have all the young hackers gone? [scanned]

Hi Edgar && list,

this is for Ruhr.pm, Germany:

Am Freitag, den 20.07.2007, 20:25 +0200 schrieb Edgar Bering:
> 1) At a typical meeting what percent of your members are under 25?

33% average for the last 12 months and
27% of the persons who were present for at least 10 of those 12
meetings.

> 2) Are meetings typically held at open venues? (not bars or clubs that card)

No.

> 3) Is there a college or university in your town?

Yes, University of Duisburg-Essen, campi Essen.

> 4) How far is the university from your meeting place ?

Within walking distance or using public transports:
- from main campus closest edge:
  ~1.2 km/~0.8 miles (~10 minutes on foot)
- from main campus opposed edge:
  ~2.5 km/~1.6 miles (~12 minutes by underground, tram and on foot)
- from Engineering campus && computer centre:
  ~0.8 km/~0.5 miles (~7 minutes on foot)
- from Computer Science outpost:
  ~3.5 km/~2.2 miles (~10 minutes by tram and on foot)
- from Experimental Mathematics and Systems Engineering outpost:
  ~4.0 km/2.5 miles (~10 minutes by tram and on foot)

> 5) Does the university have a Computer Science program ?

Yes, several.
Besides, Perl is also used for research in Bio Informatics, Bio
Engineering and Medical Informatics.

Best regards,
// Veit
--
Ruhr.pm
Perl Mongers im Ruhrgebiet
http://ruhr.pm.org/

------ End of Forwarded Message

------ Forwarded Message
From: Joel Pinckheard <pincky at soon.com>
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:53:24 -0400
To: Edgar Bering <trizor at gmail.com>
Cc: <pm_groups at pm.org>
Conversation: [pm_groups] Where have all the young hackers gone?
Subject: Re: [pm_groups] Where have all the young hackers gone?

Responding for Barcelona.PM

> 1) At a typical meeting what percent of your members are under 25?

33%  2-3 out of 7-9.

> 2) Are meetings typically held at open venues? (not bars or clubs that card)

Yes.

> 3) Is there a college or university in your town?

Three major ones and several smaller ones plus the UOC.es (distance learning)

One of the major ones is more technical (UPC.es) than the other two (ub.es and uab.es).

> 4) How far is the university from your meeting place ?

UB has a campus next door.
UPC is about two km away.
UAB is about 45 minutes away by train.

> 5) Does the university have a Computer Science program ?

All three of the major ones have at least one course, UPC has several
and they use perl in at least one.

--
  Joel Pinckheard   http://www.pincky.com

------ End of Forwarded Message

------ Forwarded Message
From: Tatsuhiko Miyagawa <miyagawa at bulknews.net>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:47:59 -0400
To: <pm_groups at pm.org>
Conversation: [pm_groups]  Where have all the young hackers gone?
Subject: [pm_groups]  Where have all the young hackers gone?

Based on my 4 years expericne as Shibuya.pm (Tokyo, JAPAN) chair ...

On 7/20/07, Edgar Bering <trizor at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) At a typical meeting what percent of your members are under 25?

I don't have an accurate number but it'd be 30-40% out of 120-150 people.

> 2) Are meetings typically held at open venues? (not bars or clubs that card)

Yeah, but because our tech meeting is very popular, we do RSVPs and it
gets full in a few days.

> 3) Is there a college or university in your town?

Sure we do. Tokyo is a small town full of people, bunch of schools.

> 4) How far is the university from your meeting place ?

In an hour of commuting you can go to any universities/colleges in
Tokyo from anywhere.

> 5) Does the university have a Computer Science program ?

Obviously. One interesting news that might get attention would be the
University of Tokyo, one of the most well-known University (where I'm
actually from) is going to adopt Ruby as their programing language to
train their 1st grade newbies, starting 2008 or something.

--
Tatsuhiko Miyagawa

------ End of Forwarded Message

Sincerely,

Ed Eddington
President GR Perlmongers
email: ed.eddington at priorityhealth.com
Ph 616.566.2462

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