[Wellington-pm] Wellington Perl Mongers 2017

[Florent Mara]

Hi Mongers and Grant,

First, many thanks to Grant for organizing Perl Mongers Wellington for so
many years and for making many of us feel so welcomed.

As a regular attendee in the past few years, I too noticed the reduced
attendance - often padded by Grant himself, thank you for the great talks
on the fly - but definitely think it is worth continuing.

As an attendee, the format works for me but I understand it might not be
the case for everyone. At least, I make it work.
As a speaker, preparing for ~1 hour talk is a little bit daunting. Maybe a
shorter talk time with a pre-arranged discussion/question/entract would
attract more speakers.

I have heard and seen several non-perl talks so I don't think having
non-perl talks is really a question. From my experience, the meeting always
appeared welcoming to technology talks in general.

I would love Perl 5 / Perl 6 filled evening, there is still plenty to
present with either technologies. There has been little about Perl 6 at the
Wellington Perl Mongers and I am sure many people have a pile of
interesting knowledge on Perl 5, if only they were keen to share. By far, I
would favor an evening combining like minded user groups with one of them
being Perl related than no more Perl mongers. Maybe a combined evening of
with python and / or Wellylug  could be popular. Pretty sure there is a
cross in attendees. Maybe 3x30 minutes talks with 10 minutes between each
could work. Maybe some 'ops' talks as well, 'devops' being the new rage.
Lunchtime talks would be a real challenge for me since the earthquake
relocated my work out of town but still worth considering if it increases
audience. Beginners / intermediate / experts talks are all welcomed for me,
there is always more to learn.

I can be ready for lightning talk on Tuesday, no problem. I might actually
have 2 lightning talks ready if it is pushed to March. ;-)
For the year, I am planning to talk about testing in Perl. I write a lot of
[ too many ]  tests in Perl and even enjoy it so I might be doing a few
things right in that space. Hopefully, I would do a talk later in the year
on my next steps with Perl 6 but I am having a surprising amount of success
with Mojolicious lately so might choose to trumpet that success instead,
who knows.

I am also happy to help and support Grant in organizing Wellington Perl
Mongers. I am not 100% sure what it means but ready to give it a go.

Hope this helps.
Cheers, Florent

On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 4:53 PM, Richard Hector <richard at walnut.gen.nz>
wrote:

> On 07/02/17 21:43, Grant McLean wrote:
> > Hi Mongers
> >
> > We need to talk about the future of Wellington Perl Mongers ...
> >
> > Do people want to continue to have monthly technical meetings?
>
> I enjoy them when I can get to them :-)
>
> > Throughout 2016, attendance levels were low and I really found it a
> > struggle from month to month to find people willing to do a talk - so
> > huge thanks to everyone who did speak last year!  I'm leaning towards
> > the conclusion that it's not worth bothering any more - convince me I'm
> > wrong :-)
>
> I do feel a bit guilty that I've only done one (IIRC). Unfortunately my
> day job suffers from both fairly boring code and some restrictions on
> how much I can talk about it .. and my hobby coding ends up with huge
> gaps between efforts, so I mostly end up trying to figure out what I did
> last time. I definitely appreciate others' talks, though many are a
> little beyond me.
>
> > The format we have been following is by no means set in stone.  If you
> > have ideas for how to make it better and how to boost attendance then
> > please reply on the list and we can talk about them.
>
> I note that other meetings involve pizza ... I usually try to cram in
> food before I come, because it's a little late for me by the end.
> Perhaps we could do something like a curry pre-order, the way I've seen
> it done in a certain workplace at lunchtime in the past?
>
> > Are any of you keen to come along but have other commitments that clash?
> > The schedule can be changed.  Would you be more or less likely to attend
> > if meetings were every two months?
>
> I've rearranged one monthly meeting that I organise to not clash :-) I'm
> also trying to get out of running that one altogether ... But Tuesdays
> do seem to be popular for meetings. (I rescheduled to Mondays, so doing
> the same with PM would be a pain ...)
>
> Meetings every 2 months could only reduce the number I can get to. What
> effect it would have on the number I _do_ get to is less clear.
>
> > What type of talks would get you coming back?  More beginner /
> > intermediate talks or more advanced topics?  Any specific topics you'd
> > like to see covered.
>
> I guess I'm keen on not particularly 'beginner', but common.
> Unfortunately that probably means 'the stuff that most people already
> know about' - web development principles, efficiency of database access
> etc.
>
> > Will you be volunteering to talk this year?  If so, what about?  If not,
> > why not?
>
> Um ... maybe? Experiments in session handling?
>
> > Is there something that I'm doing (or not doing) that puts you off
> > attending?  If there is, I need to know so I can fix that - please tell
> > me.
>
> Not that I can think of. But do we need a pool of organisers, rather
> than just you? A ... committee? Is it easy enough for a non-Catalyst
> person to arrange meetings? I guess a list of 'keyholders' (ie
> Catalyst-employed regular participants) would be easy enough to arrange.
>
> I occasionally have a theory that people are more committed to an
> organisation if it's more formal and they pay a sub. But obviously there
> are many who like the informal nature, and a sub would end up needing to
> be spent on something ...
>
> > Traditionally, the first meeting of the year is a lightning talk meeting
> > on the second Tuesday of February - that would be next Tuesday (also, by
> > coincidence this year that's also Valentines day, does that matter?).
> >
> > Can we actually pull together a lightning talk meeting in one week?  If
> > you think we can and want to take part, then email me to book a 5 minute
> > talk slot.  If you think delaying until March would help then say so.
>
> I will try to be there if I can, but can't think of anything to talk
> about :-(
>
> Richard
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