I agree with Ovid, your outline is too ambitious for a 60 minute session. Skip the "cutesy" stuff- the whimsey / perlisms. In my view, obfuscation / perl golf / poetry are not part of "professional programming".

What is the aim of the session? To raise general awareness of perl? As a lead to getting increased use of perl in your shop? First, get your aims clear in your head of what the purpose is. I spent some time being trained "the Army way" of teaching courses. They all started with "In this lesson you will be taught . . ." and "At the end of this lesson you will be able to . . .". Useful for people that need to be shown which end of a rifle you point at the bad guys, but even though I never say that at the start of my training sessions - I work it out before hand. That stops it degenerating into a meaningless ramble and chewing the fat session.

As far as examples, what is a hot button in your area at the moment? Are you working on dynamic web pages? Set up a simple exercise using CGI.pm, maybe throw in some DBI stuff. You will have to set up some stuff beforehand, but that is pretty nifty to show. Hey, anyone can know up a useful web application in an hour!

As far as the reference material goes - both on line and dead tree formats - have that as part of your handout (you are going to leave them with something to take away, aren't you?). Just mention that there are a range of good reference and tutorial books, plus a vast array of tools on the web (CPAN, PM, yada, yada).

Finally, if part of the aim is a little subtle evangalism, a few introductory remarks on the current demand for good perl programmers. Throw in some $ amounts. This can be a great lead in - "Why are perl programmers in such demand, and why are they paid so much more than VB hackers?" Appeal to our baser instincts - since gratutious sex is probably out, money is a close second :).

Maclir

Just Another Perl Slacker