these people program in C/C++, Fortran, C-Shell on a regular basis, and allegedly sed and awk.

As a group, or individually? i.e., did they all have a common background?

If they didn't, it can be very difficult to teach. I remember taking a 'C as a second language' class during my undergrad. It was still a rather intensive course (I think it was 1, maybe 2 credits, but still had as much in-class time as any non-lab course), but they skipped the obvious stuff like the concepts of constants and variables. But they couldn't expect much more than that from anyone.

The problem was, we didn't all have common experiences -- there were people who had Basic, Pascal, Ada, Fortran, etc, and no one language in common -- so the teacher couldn't speak in idioms that would be universal to all people.

I'd suggest that you specifically try to do a overview of Perl for C programmers, and then one of Perl for Fortran programmers, etc. Trying to mix the group too much is going to get the one Cobol programmer tossing questions at you that you're not prepared for, which then bores the rest of the people, and then people stop paying attention, and it turns intoa big waste of time for most people.

So my suggestion -- start small. Specifically compare Perl to a language that the audience already knows. Build on things incrementally, and don't expect sudden converts from a quick tutorial. Instead, leave some nagging thoughts in their mind about where Perl excels, and try to get them to come and ask you more about Perl when they come across those sorts of situations.

If you have to, you can do the late night TV pitch:

1. Describe exagerated problem
2. Provide solution
3. Ask how much they'd expect to pay
4. Give them a low cost
5. Hook them with the 'wait, there's more' free thing.

Okay ... maybe not ask them how much they'd pay ... maybe ask them how many lines of code they think it'd take.