I have just renewed my membership of the Enlightened Perl Organisation (EPO). The ordinary membership fee is £100.  The EPO is responsible for community initiatives such as Send a Newbie and has provided financial support to a number of projects including CPAN Testers and the QA Hackathon.  As a member I don’t have to do anything other than vote occasionally on how money should be spent.  It’s a lot less work than my involvement with other Perl organisations, and I do believe that all the projects it supports are worthwhile.

The Perl Foundation is going to be taking part in the next round of the Free and Open Source Outreach Program for Women.  I’m incredibly pleased about that.   They are starting with one intern, but hopefully the program can be expanded in the future.   And it started thanks to a tweet from Dave Cross.

Last week I went to YAPC::Asia in Tokyo. One of the many good things about this conference is the amount of blogging that happens around it, but I have been finding it difficult to think of anything to write. This was the seventh YAPC::Asia that I have attended and the conferences have been incredibly consistent. Having a core group of people who are involved in the conference every year does mean that some things just work. The registration is efficient, the signs are wonderful, and the talk schedule runs like clockwork.

There were a number of things that I really liked. This conference, like the other YAPC conferences, is very cheap to attend. My “two day pass with t-shirt” cost me 5,000 円 (40 GBP, 64 USD). But it was also possible to become an individual sponsor of the conference by buying a ticket that started at 10,000 円 (79 GBP, 127 USD). I think that this is a great way to show support and help with the conference costs. These sponsors also received a special t-shirt and a conference mug.

YAPC::Asia Individual Sponsor T-shirt

The registration process was so well organised that having another category of people registering didn’t cause any problems.  Making everything look so easy has to be a combination of the experience of the organisers and also the fact that there were 43 people helping out with this conference.  I know that when I was involved in running a European conference that we maybe had 10 people volunteering during the event.  Mind you, this YAPC in Asia was a much bigger event with 798 attendees.

There was also a professional photographer at the event.  This means that there are now good quality photographs of all the speakers and of the general conference that are nice to have but can also be used in the creation of promotional material or to show future sponsors.

YAPC Day 1 - On Arrival at the Venue

It’s not the photographers fault that I was pulling silly faces early in the morning.

I do like that there are prizes for the top three talks.  I believe this year that the third prize was a set of books, the second prize was funding to attend three local Perl Monger events in Japan, and the first prize was funding to travel to either YAPC::NA or YAPC::EU.  The attendees of the conference use a web-based system to pick the best talks.

It was also the first time that I have seen a Lightning Talkathon.  My Japanese language skills are not good enough for me to have quite worked it out on my own.  I could see that a group of people were giving lightning talks but my first thought was that it was an area that allowed people to practice their talks before giving these before the entire conference.  It turned out to be a mini-conference running inside the main one where all the talks were lightning talks.  It was not as well attended as the main sessions but there were still a fair number of people involved and it is certainly an interesting concept.

Larry Wall was the opening keynote speaker, so I’ll finish with a quote from his talk:

There are many computer languages in the the world and they all they think they  are perfect.  With Perl 6 we are not trying to make it perfect, but right next to perfect, so the next generation can make it perfect. 

Larry Wall, Day 2

There once was a Braga Perl man

In Frankfurt he thought of a plan

Because he was missing

Some good air conditioning

He tried to run off with the fan!

I have just bought a ticket to YAPC::Asia which is taking place in Tokyo from the 27th to the 29th of September.  I would suggest that if you want to attend that you buy your ticket as soon as possible.  Last year, I completely forget to do this and had to write to the organisers and ask for a ticket after the conference had sold out.  And since it sells out every year, I imagine that it will sell out this year too.

YAPC::NA is quickly approaching and I am experiencing my usual mixed-up feelings of trepidation and excitement.  The thought of speaking always fills me with dread. I know I will be fine once I start but thinking about starting does something odd to my brain and I fear I won’t remember any words. I spoke on Wednesday night at the Windy City Perl Mongers and they would never believe that I could be without words.  I easily spoke for over an hour on The Perl Foundation.  I only have 20 minutes at YAPC so I will need to be less loquacious.  I really enjoyed meeting the Mongers in Chicago.  They were incredibly welcoming, appeared to be interested in what I was saying, and asked lots of questions that allowed me to babble at length.  There is no doubt that I can be passionate about the work we are doing at The Perl Foundation.

And I’m excited because JT and his team have put so much effort into YAPC::NA that it’s going to be an amazing conference.  There is so much happening that I have no idea where I’ll get the energy to fit everything in, but I’m certainly willing to give it a go. I have been in America for over a week so at least I won’t be jet lagged at this conference.

This is my 24th YAPC and over the years I have made many good friends in the Perl community. I love the hallway track and I’m looking forward to the conversations.  There are some regular attendees who can’t make it and I know I will miss Jesse Vincent and Yaakov Sloman.   But soon I will get to see Shawn, Casey, Matt, Rik, Jacinta, brian, and so many others that I’d be here for some time if I tried to list them all!

Things lately in my personal life have been overwhelming and unfortunately this has caused problems with the volunteering work that I do.  I am, however, still planning on attending YAPC::NA and I hope to catch up on my todo list in the next couple of weeks.  I will also be going to the Windy City Perl Mongers on Wednesday night to talk about The Perl Foundation.

I have finally booked flights for my summer travel.  I start travelling next week and will be away from home for 14 out of the next 21 weeks.  I have booked 20 flights and plan to be in Seoul, Pittsburgh, Rome, Chicago, Madison, Amsterdam, Belfast, Frankfurt, London, Tallinn, and Sydney.  I’m a bit apprehensive about the amount of travel I’ll be doing, but I will get to catch up with a lot of people.  As well as a number of family events I’ll be attending YAPC::NA in Madison and YAPC::EU in Frankfurt.  I’ll also be back home in time to attend YAPC::Asia in Tokyo.  As always when I travel I will try to meet up with local Perl Mongers.

Attending and speaking at the Perl conferences is important to me but I haven’t managed to come up with an interesting talk this year.  I will be speaking about The Perl Foundation at YAPC::NA and I may do this as well at YAPC::EU.  But I had really wanted to create a lightning talk based around the number 25 as YAPC::EU will be my 25th YAPC and this year marks the 25th anniversary of Perl.  I still have time to get inspired, but I have so many Perl related things that I’m working on that I don’t know if I’ll manage to make the talk a priority.

Perl Oasis takes place in Orlando this weekend.  I had hoped to attend but I decided in November that I probably wasn’t well enough to attempt the journey.  I have been once before and I really enjoyed the workshop.  Actually, I’ve enjoyed all of the Perl workshops that I have attended.  They tend to be smaller than the YAPC conferences and while I am happy that more people are attending YAPCs I’m not fond of crowds.

At the minute it looks like the first conference I’ll attend this year with be YAPC::NA in Madison.  Looking at my travel schedule I should have been able to make the German Perl Workshop in March but I only noticed the dates of that workshop yesterday.  It’s too late for me to change my plans but it’s a bit annoying that I will arrive in Europe on the day the workshop ends.  I am flying to Ireland but I could easily have stopped over in Germany.

I read so many things about Perl every week but I haven’t found a good way to know when Perl events are taking place.  The other summer conference I’m hoping to attend is  YAPC::EU but there are no dates for this conference yet.  I hope they are available soon as my other commitments are beginning to need attention and may eat up my summer.

I have been asked a few times in the past couple of months about money and my role in The Perl Foundation (TPF).  I’m not fond of discussing money so I’ll make this brief.  I am not an employee of  TPF, I am a volunteer.  I don’t receive any money for my work with TPF nor does TPF pay my expenses for travelling or attending conferences.  This is true for all TPF volunteers.  The only people who do receive money are grant recipients and those who are paid for professional services like accountants and lawyers.

I am very fortunate that I am able to volunteer and get to work with a great community filled with volunteers.