use Perl

Who out there has some free time and is interested in helping out beginners?

My little project for Perl beginners, Perl101.org, has been largely ignored lately. My idea was to have a cookbooky style set of pages that beginners could read for things like the right way to get a count of elements in an array, or how to extract links from a web page without using a regular expression.

It started out pretty nicely, but has lain fallow for months now. I'd like it if someone could take it over. I'll hand over the domain name and the Google Code project for the site, and you'll keep this going and make it something more useful. If you want to overhaul how it works, or keep the same system going, it doesn't matter to me. All I require is that you'll do something useful for the beginners.

Any interest?

petdance writes "Linux Journal didn't learn from their offensive server ad of this past summer. Yesterday, Linux Journal news editor Justin Ryan ran an article about the release of Perl 5.10 under the headline "Perl puts out for the first time in five years."

We deserve better than cheap sexist jokes. Details, screenshots at http://perlbuzz.com/2007/12/linux-journal-is-offensive-perl-deserves-better.html

"

The Perl Foundation is pleased to announce the election of Alberto Simões to the position of Grants Committee Chair. Alberto was elected by the Grants Committee members from a pool of four strong candidates.

Alberto is president of the Portuguese Association for Perl Programmers, the leader of Braga.pm and the co-chair of YAPC::EU 2005 in Braga, Portugal. Alberto is a Ph.D. student in Machine Translation (Natural Language Processing) at the University of Minho, in Braga.

Curtis "Ovid" Poe has held the position of Grants Committee Chair since autumn of 2005. The Perl Foundation would like to give Curtis our deepest thanks for an excellent tenure as Chair of the Grants Committee and for all his help in preparing the search and election of his successor. Curtis has also pledged his support to help Alberto get up to speed as the new Grants Committee Chair over the next few weeks.
http://news.perlfoundation.org/2007/10/grant_committee_elects_a_new_c.html

After a running the Perl Foundation Grant Committee for almost two years, Ovid has decided he needs to step down. Naturally, this means we need someone to step into this role and we're hoping to get new people into the Perl Foundation.

Running the Grant Committee is a very important volunteer position with specific responsibilities. These include:

• Every three months, putting out a call for grant proposals and organizing votes on them.
• Finding and retaining grant managers to oversee grants which are awarded.
• Keep abreast of important trends in the Perl community.
• Work the Grant and Steering committee to help shape Perl Foundation policy.
• Keep the news.perlfoundation.org blog updated with regular events happening with the grant committee.

This role requires:

• A good understanding of the needs of the Perl community.
• Thick skin ("why did you morons approve X?", "You aren't funding enough grants!", "You are funding too many grants", etc.)
• Patience. Sometimes the wheels turn slowly.
• Discretion (never publicly discuss rejected grants. Respect privacy)
• Tact (you have to let rejected grantees down gently while telling them why their grant was rejected)

Aside from the above, we like to see initiative on the part Grant Committee Secretary. New ideas, grant-related or not, that help the Perl Foundation better serve the Perl community are always welcome. To help the transition, Ovid has volunteered to help the new Grant Secretary get to his or her feet and answer any questions which might arise.

If you're looking for a way to make an impact in the Perl community, and help the Perl Foundation drive Perl development, the Grant Committee chair position may be for you. If you're interested, email Richard Dice at rdice at perlfoundation.org. We hope to hear from you soon.

For a year or two now, I've hosted the Perl 6 and Parrot wikis on my home server, on a not-too-fast DSL line, at rakudo.org. They've now been moved to the wiki infrastructure at perlfoundation.org, on a dedicated box. This means much better performance, so if you've tried the wikis before and found them slow, check them out now.

The moved wiki workspaces are:

• http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6/ — Perl 6
• http://www.perlfoundation.org/parrot/ — Parrot
• http://www.perlfoundation.org/hackathon-chicago/ — The 2006 hackathon in Chicago
• http://www.perlfoundation.org/hackathon-toronto/ — The 2007 hackathon in Toronto

Thanks to Socialtext for the hosting.