use Perl

I forgot to mention that I went to the Perl 6 Workshop, that was part of the UKUUG Conference, the other week. It was held at The Paragon Hotel in Birmingham, and although I've driven past it many times, I've never before been in. The building is a bit odd amongst all the industrial warehouses, machinists and engineering works. Its a listed building so it stands out. There were a few conferences going on that day, and I was quite impressed with the size of the rooms. Not sure whether it would be appropriate for a YAPC, but its certainly a back up choice.

Allison Randal took centre stage and for a morning told us all about Perl6, PUGS, Parrot, PONIE and things. I haven't really looked in depth at Perl 6 since Damian's talk in Munich in 2002. There have been some changes, but most is pretty much the same. If nothing else I still feel the sky isn't falling.

Admittedly there is going to be a learning curve, but then those of us that switch from C to Perl had that, and we didn't seem to suffer because of it. To most I suspect it'll be just another language. It was useful to have the talk at this point, as Allison was able to demostrate PUGS, which has pretty much only come into being within the last few weeks. Okay the test script wasn't earth shattering, and didn't include all the latest features of Perl6, but it was enough to feel the project is moving forward and that it won't be too long before we actually can start doing real work with it.

As the workshop was only in the morning, I planned to stick around and do some chatting to other attendees. I hooked up with a few people I know including Jono Bacon and Andrew Ford. A few spotted MessageLabs on my badge and wanted to say nice things to me. I also got singled out because I had Barbie on my badge, which was nice too. One of the organisers of UKUUG actually knew Birmingham.pm were planning to organise a YAPC, and offered help and funds should we want it, which was expectionally nice. I was quite please with this, as we have plans to do something a bit special regarding Open Source, so their involvement would be a great asset.

Chatting to Jono Bacon, I got asked to do some presenting at a seminar. OpenAdvantage are looking to start some Perl courses and thought someone like me would be ideal to give an introduction to businesses as to why they might want to think about Perl. No dates or anything have been discussed, but it sounds interesting. He also wants to interview me for LUGRadio and possibly one of the magazines he writes for. Those terrify me, but I'm certainly up for giving them a go.

Jono also mentioned that the LUGRadio Live event has finally been organised. Unfortunately I am likely to be out of the country at YAPC::NA. Three of the organisers have already been asking me if I could come and give a talk or two on Perl, so I'm hoping some of the other Birmingham.pm'ers will up for the task. It'll be interesting to see how it goes, as it might be worth joining forces for next years event (if we get YAPC), and have one after the other. We'll see.