LPM: Lexington.pm meeting - 5/12/1999

[Rich Bowen]

We had 8 people show up for lunch at Jo Beth this afternoon. Some people
did not attend due to lame excuses like being in Ecuador (sorry, Ken),
so this was a little less than last time.

The good news is that we actually got some stuff decided, and had a
reasonable discussion to boot. (We also discussed using Perl to reboot.
I guess you had to be there.)

So, without further ado, here's some of the stuff discussed/decided
upon.

The main topic of discussion was basically along these lines: While it
is very cool to gather and dine with fellow geeks on a monthly basis,
there needs to be some justification for calling ourselves Perl Mongers.
So, what do we want this local chapter of the Perl Mongers to offer to
make it worthwhile for other Perl hackers to come dine with us?

1) The lexington-pm-list at hfg.pm.org mailing list as Help Desk. Think of
this list as your local version of comp.lang.perl.m(isc|od) without the
flames. This should be a safe place to ask Perl questions, and, if
nobody here knows the answer, then someone can play the sacrificial lamb
and offer it up to c.l.p.m, since that would probably mean that it is a
question worthy of getting flamed for.

2) Lexington.pm monthly meetings should be a place where you can come to
learn something useful. On the list, we will propose topics, and discuss
what areas of those topics might be worth learning more about, and which
someone here has some expertise in, and then at the meetings, we will
get a 10-20 minute talk on the subject.

On that note ... 

At our meeting next month (time and place to be decided, but tentatively
June 9th, 12:30 pm, Joseph Beth Cafe) Mik Firestone will tell us some
stuff about Regular Expressions.  More details as they become available.

Other topics that people expressed interest in were:
	Extension modules in C
	mod_perl
	taint
	OO Perl

3) Announcement: Nathan "Nat" Torkington, co-author of The Perl
Cookbook, will be in town 2 weeks from now to do some Perl training at
Lexmark. The Lexington Perl Mongers are going to take him somewhere (The
Lexington Brewery?) for dinner and/or a beer one of the days while he is
here. Time and date to be decided when we know more, and based on Nat's
schedule.

4) We elected/press-ganged two persons into thankless service. Patrick
Gardella was elected the Grand Poobah, by virtue of "he started it, it's
his fault." Rich Bowen (that's me) was elected secretary, so that I can
write history as best suits my need for personal aggrandizement.

So, things that still need to be hashed out on the list are:
1) What do you most want to know about regular expressions?
2) Is the above-proposed date, time, and location for next month's
meeting acceptable? If not, suggest something else.
3) Nat will be here most of the week. Is there any night that
particularly does NOT work for you to have dinner with Nat? (Thursday's
bad for me, but I'd be willing if that were the only time available.)

Did I miss anything?

Rich

p.s. Oh, yeah ... if any of you ever go to the UK campus, please let me
know. Or LCC. I'd like to put up some posters there before the next
meeting, jut to see what kind of resposnse we get. Apparently there's a
Perl class being taught at LCC this year.
-- 
You can surrender without a prayer,
but never really pray without surrender.  
          --Rush, 'Resist' (Test for Echo, 1996)