Update -- Now participating also: New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, Sydney Australia, Turkey, and other parts of the the EU

You could call it the DFW.pm's "Winter of Code". You could call it a contest. You could call it fun. You could call it Perl...

...And you'd be right. DFW.pm (so far joined by NY.pm -- all groups invited) is holding in a competition that runs from now until January 8th when the code of each competitor will be pitted against the others in a live Google hangout world-wide Perl Mongers meeting.

The aim of the competition is to "deduplicate" 100 gigabytes of random file data, using Perl, as fast as possible. If your code can do it the fastest, without killing the contest server, you win. The winner gets to choose the topic of the next hackathon competition (and/or host it), and gets the recognition of having won a world-wide competition in Perl.

The competition is open to all, provided a few criteria are met which establish legitimacy of participation. YOU'RE INVITED!

Full details can be read on the dfw.pm.org website.

The contest is discussed on The DFW.pm mailing list

The hackathon was organized by Tommy Butler and John Fields of Dallas, TX, and is being hosted by the Dallas Makerspace.

Our resources are finite, so we may have to stop accepting entries if server load gets too high. Get your notice of intention to participate to the mailing list asap.