Recap: May 9th Meeting

by admin on May 10th, 2007

First of all, a big thanks to everyone who came out to the first meeting of the new Vancouver.pm. There were just under 20 people present, including visitors from out of town. After eating some pizza (thanks, ActiveState!) and washing it down with some beverages (thanks, Sophos!), we got started.

Luke Closs began with an excerpt of his upcoming YAPC::NA talk, Hacktastic Wiki Tricks. Luke gave an overview of several of the tools that he’s written for accessing the Socialtext wiki software, all of which are made possible by using an innovative REST API. Be sure to check out Luke’s pages on Hacktastic Wiki Tricks, as well as his wikrad screencast.

Kirsten Jones was up next, briefly showing off how The Perl Foundation’s website will soon be powered by a wiki while maintaining its current styling. After this, she talked about OpenID, with examples of usage and a short discussion on how to implement OpenID in Perl.

Next was an impromptu (but much appreciated) talk by Ingy döt Net, discussing his well-used module YAML, his work on YAML2, and a discussion of various community efforts related to YAML, such as libyaml, YAML::Syck, and JSON::Syck.

After a brief intermission (with much socializing and pizza), we sat back down to listen to the final speaker, Bill Odom, president of The Perl Foundation (TPF). Bill started off with a bit of an overview of TPF, discussing its mission, grant system, and other interesting tidbits. Bill then opened up the floor to questions, and gave in-depth answers to queries about everything from TPF financials to Perl 6.

Thanks again to all of our presenters and attendees. I haven’t decided if meetings will be monthly or bi-monthly over the summer, but either way you can either check out this website or the mailing list for details.