I read some of the archives of London.pm and it is interesting. Perhaps part of the thing is that PM answers newbie questions, and there are a lot of CGI people there. Also a lot of the people here use CGI.. but not obsessed. Part may also be that it isn't so easy to see all the recent threads in PM as it is easy to see in the London.pm archives or maybe in a thread-following email app.

Personally I have a problem with PM, and Slashdot, and some other sites in that it seems that a discussion can only last a certain number of hours before it is slated to die a terrible death.. sliding off the bottom of the top page or worse yet, nobody comes back to see later responses because it is difficult to see where last they left off reading. So, it is hard to maintain an ongoing discussion about a single subject, instead it is like having the same subject show up as dupes and rehashed questions over and over again. Would like to work on tools for this.

I'd like to add to the list of topics I'd like to hear about:

Bioperl - This is a very cool Perl story!
Haskell - which we could really use! I'm going to try to learn more about it anyone here use it?
CPAN selections - groups of modules that work well together for you, and glue code you have that is not returned to CPAN. Maybe we need an anti-CPAN for that stuff that makes it work? Thinking of CGI::Application auth schemes but nope, no CGI on the brain here..
AI and integration with anything that makes you and your Perl smarter.
Observations on perl-based community software design
Successful GUI experiments with Perl, or with something else that contacts a Perl server program
Perl-based high performance/reliability servers
More blue-skying and anecdotes about useful Perl implementations and other ways Perl can magnify your brain. Look at theDamian's project page.. could we try to build one of those for our community brain? I'm not asking anyone to become an artist (unless you use the Artistic liscense, right?) but just thinking some persistent discussion and work together could create some very useful tools and neat perl things.

I tried to cover a little about the GSL the other day Rolling a Biased Die but I think the comment came in too late and it was called "overkill" (no names) despite this being a C implementation of the best algorithm for a common job. Maybe (probably) overkill for the person who asked the question, but I think answers to questions should also try to be relevant to any monks trying to solve these problems..