use Perl

Wow.

Really, wow. Richard Dice and the whole Toronto.pm crew did the most awesome job of putting YAPC::NA 2005 together. I've never been to such an informative and entertaining conference in my life. And even if the rest of things had gone poorly, just being able to make the CGI::Application BOF session made the trip worthwhile. But everything, everything (I thought anyhow!) was awesome, and it make it that much better.

YAPC was full of many memories for me, and here's but a few of the more memorable ones:

• I was standing next to the engine in the paddle boat looking down at it with Trushar when Larry Wall walks up to us, looks down at the engine, looks at us and says, "This thing could use a refactoring." When prompted as to why, Larry admitted, "because it reminds me too much of Perl 4."
• Hearing about Andy ripping the head off of That Guy. You all know the one.
• Speaking of Andy, seeing a guy kiss him for some free swag.
• Perl Ninjas. Need I say more?
• Yes, I should say more. 70 cent beer!
• And finally, juggling with Mark Stosberg on the back of the ship. Mark developed quite the audience around him, and it was kind of him to invite me to participate as well.

Some of the people I was fortunate to have met:

• Jason Purdy
• Mark Stosberg
• Michael Graham
• Diona Kidd
• Shawn Sorichetti
• Allison Randall
• chromatic
• Dave Rolsky
• cog (Jose Castro)
• Cees Hek
• Larry Wall
• Steve Comrie
• Richard Dice
• Perrin Harkins
• Trushar Zaveri
• William McKee
• Michael Peters
• ...and many more!

I want to give a special thanks to all the members of the CGI::Application mailing list, who really made the conference extra special for me. You guys rock.