[tpm] 2013: Moving forward

[Olaf Alders]

For those of you who weren't able to attend last night either in person or virtually, I just wanted to mention that the Google Hangout worked out quite well and there was a unanimous decision to continue with the Hangouts moving forward.  We also made some decisions about talks for the rest of 2013.  I ran everything past Jordan this morning and his request was for me to post all the dates on the web site and then let people provide feedback on those, just to make sure everyone is on board with the plan.

So, I'll update the website and then let you all know when that has been done.  Essentially here is the lineup:

July: Michelle Warren (Hangout will depend on whether Michelle is comfortable with this format)

August: Damian is here. No regular talk. Richard will let us know if/when this talk is confirmed.

September: (Hangout Event) lightning talks.  So far we have the following speakers, but are still looking for more.

* Abram
* Mark
* Matt
* Olaf
* Mike
* Tom
* Alex
* Dave

I should note that Abram will be giving his lightning talk via Google Hangout.  So, keeping this in mind, you won't need to be physically present to present a talk.


October:  (Hangout Event) Tom Legrady speaks about perl5i
        Olaf speaks on how to install the new MetaCPAN VM

November:  (Hangout Event) Group hacking on the MetaCPAN VM we installed in October (Olaf)

December: social event

One thing we discussed was doing a bit more hacking together -- like we did for the web site.  There was some feeling that there was not enough prep going into the website night last year.  So, for the November hacking session we'll actually do some prep as part of the October meeting.  Tom will present and then after that we can get our MetaCPAN VMs set up.  That then gives us all a month to play with the VMs and then do some serious hacking for the November meeting.

* I'm going to set up a TPM twitter account
* I think we can manage our TODO items as Github issues
* If anyone would like to do a book review, get in touch with me and I'll see if O'Reilly will get you a free review copy.  This could be presented in person at a following meeting
* Dave is going to look into setting up a web based IRC something on the TPM site
* Mark is going to look into making the site more responsive.  Maybe just a bootstrap update will fix some things.
* After the lightning talks in September we will plan meetings for the first 6 months of 2014 before we head to the social part of the evening.  So, we will have a roadmap of talks to the end of June 2014 by the end of September 2014.  I think we can be flexible and there are bound to be conflicts, cancellations etc, but it's important that we are prepared in general as that will make dealing with the hiccups easier.

Probably a very simple reason that we've had some low attendance is because the talks aren't always planned far enough in advance for people to plan to attend.  The simple fix to this is to plan the talks well in advance.  As of yesterday, this has been addressed.  Getting the word out may be easier via a Meetup group.  Dave has bravely volunteered to set this up for us.

Talks in general don't have to focus on Perl or even be Perl-related if they're generally of interest.  So, keep this in mind if you know people who may want to speak to us.

There is some talk of a "Maker" night.  This does not need to fall on a regular meeting night and could even be done in addition to a regular meeting in a given month.  To quote Jordan:

> "Impromptu meetups that do NOT occur on the Last Thursdays, are of a slightly tangential nature have received warm receptions. Please state your intent ahead of time, so we can plan for a great gig.  We just want a firm headcount for planning purposes, so +/- a couple of people is cool. Ideas include:  hackerspace field trip, smaller barcamps, non-Perl tech, etc"


If you'd like to speak on any given night, September still has some slots, so that would be the obvious place to start.

Thinking of speaking?

* You don't have to be an expert on a subject in order to speak about it
* You don't have to be physically present to speak
* There is no minimum length.  If you want to give a 5 minute talk, we can probably fit that into most of the already planned evenings

I think this covers the bulk of what we discussed.  Let me know if I missed anything?

Olaf

--
Olaf Alders
olaf.alders at gmail.com

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