PPM - Portland Perl Monks

I was over at lemming's house a couple of days ago and we started discussing the lack of Perl activity in Portland, Oregon. The Damian Conway talk drew a fair number of Perl programmers and I am sure that there are many more who never knew about it. Currently, Portland does not offer much 'community' activity surrounding Perl and this makes dissemination of Portland-specific information more difficult.

Since Portland Perl Mongers does not have meetings, lemming and I have discussed organizing a monthly PPM (Portland Perl Monks) meeting. This meeting could be a social meeting (i.e., beer and friends), technical (discuss DBI optimizations), networking (a bunch of out-of-work programmers discovering that networking with unemployed people is not always the best strategy :), etc. If you live in or near the Portland, Oregon area and would be interested in participating, organizing, kibitzing, or whatever, please /msg lemming or myself or reply to this meditation.

My only concern with this stems from the merging of Perl Mongers and Perl Monks and YAS. Would this merging make PPM meetings inappropriate? I don't think so since there does not appear to be any other significant activity in this area regarding Perl, but I'd appreciate the opinion of others.

Cheers,
Ovid

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Comment on PPM - Portland Perl Monks

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Re: PPM - Portland Perl Monks by spudzeppelin (Pilgrim) on Aug 07, 2001 at 01:05 UTC
I don't know that holding meetings ("meets"? Perl Monks is, after all, an online community) would be inappropriate, but from what I saw on their website, it looks like the only reason Portland.pm isn't meeting is a lack of facilities. Perhaps a better strategy would be to get in touch with the powers-that-be at Portland.pm and try to take a more active role in facilitating their meetings? I think it's tragic that Portland.pm doesn't meet, especially with a favorite of .pm groups everywhere living right in your own backyard. Perhaps, just start with a social meeting or two -- how many good users' groups get going -- at a designated local tavern or pizza place; at that level, it doesn't have to be particularly formal: you aren't expecting a huge crowd or needing a conference room. Then, once you see what kind of turnout you can expect, you can start hunting around for a facility for technical meetings. Often, someone will offer up the use of an office conference room, or maybe you'll have the good fortune to have in your group someone with a classroom available. Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com	[reply]
Re: PPM - Portland Perl Monks by lemming (Priest) on Aug 06, 2001 at 23:28 UTC
I went to one Perl Mongers meeting soon after joining Perlmonks and then didn't hear anything. I think doing anything might at least get more stuff going again. My house would be available for social activities, since we have a decent amount of room and a pool table. Plus several systems so code could be demonstrated if needed. And it will give me a good excuse to clean-up a bit...	[reply]
Re: PPM - Portland Perl Monks by HollyKing (Pilgrim) on Aug 07, 2001 at 03:00 UTC
Well, I'm new to Perl but I would love to meet other folks in town. Please add me to your list. HollyKing Owl looked at him, and wondered whether to push him off the tree; but, feeling that he could always do it afterwards, he tried once more to find out what they were talking about.	[reply]