http://szabgab.com Gabor Szabo about programming in Perl, automated testing, dynamic languages and everyting else en-us Copyright 2002-2012, Gabor Szabo szabgab@gmail.com 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 1 hourly http://szabgab.com/the-power-of-referrals.html In the <a href="http://perlweekly.com/archive/22.html">latest issue</a> of the <a href="http://perlweekly.com/">Perl Weekly</a> I mentioned I'll need to find new ways to promote the Perl Weekly. I am not sure if because of that but <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/zzzcpan">Alexandr Gomoliako</a> has <a href="http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/moscow-pm/2011-December/011498.html">sent</a> two one-liners to the <a href="http://moscow.pm/">Moscow Perl Mongers</a> and <a href="http://kiev.pm.org/">Kiev Perl Mongers</a> resulting in about <b>50 new subscribers</b>. <p>For the full article visit <a href="http://szabgab.com/the-power-of-referrals.html">The Power of referrals</a></p> Gabor Szabo 2011-12-29T11:13:57+00:00 Perl, marketing, Perl Weekly http://szabgab.com/creating-a-successful-open-source-project.html <p> People write and contribute to open source for various reasons. My main reason to start writing an <a href="http://padre.perlide.org/">IDE for Perl</a> was to help people: Both beginners and people who don't know much Perl or who need to maintain large or just old projects. I'll use it as an example to go over the various aspects of making a project successful. </p> <p> For me it is important that the product will be used by many people and that it will make them happier. For me, in the context of Padre, that's success. </p> <p> That means it is not enough to just write the code. It is also important to make sure people who could benefit from it can find it and use it. So I need to look at it in a way somewhat similar to how a company looks at a product. I pulled out my marketing book from my university studies. Surprisingly it looked unfamiliar. Then I remembered I got 60 on my marketing exam. The lowest mark that still let me earn my degree. </p> <p> I recall something called the <b>the 4 P-s</b>. (<b>Product, Price, Place, Promotion</b>). I looked it up and it can be found on Wikipedia under the title <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix">Marketing mix</a>. I'll go over the items as they are related to the <a href="http://padre.perlide.org/">Padre</a> project. </p> <p> <h2>Product</h2> </p> <p> AFAIK most of the open source projects focus on this part only. </p> <p> We have built the product. It is quite good already. Sure there are areas of improvement and there are even important areas that need a lot of work. In general the product is quite good. Thanks to the 50+ people who were involved in the project. </p> <p> We will certainly need to make further adjustments and we will need to invest a lot more energy in the development but the most important of the Marketing mix we have done. We have a good product. </p> <p> Of course I know it does not fit everyone. I know for example that people using vi or emacs will have a hard time to adjust to the more Windows-like editor. I also know there are many people for whom Padre would be of great help. </p> <p> <b>Installation</b> </p> <p> For <b>Windows</b> it is solved now in a reasonably good way as we have a Windows installer. </p> <p> For <b>Linux</b> it is partially solved as the major distributions carry a version of Padre. Unfortunately in some cases their package is broken and naturally it always lags behind the source-code releases of Padre. People can install the most recent version of Padre relatively easily but it still requires spending some time. </p> <p> On <b>Mac</b> the situation is quite bad as Padre can only be installed manually. </p> <p> While the mostly potential users are on Windows, these issued need to be addressed on Linux and Mac as many of the vocal people are using those platforms. </p> <p> <b>Tutorials and documentation</b> </p> <p> A couple of months ago we started to collect a list of all the <a href="http://padre.perlide.org/trac/wiki/Features">features of Padre</a> and started to describe them on our wiki. This work needs to be continued and presented in a better way. </p> <p> I have made a few screencasts showing features of Padre. I should make a few more describing all the features. That will also help me find out if I missed some of them :) </p> <p> <h2>Price</h2> </p> <p> Price is a funny thing. We don't charge anything for Padre. It is free. Both as in <b>free beer</b> and as in <b>free speech</b>. I am just not sure if it is always a good thing? I know many people, especially in the corporate environment, who would value it more if it cost them money. Anyway. We have a price and it is 0 USD. </p> <p> There is however another <b>cost factor</b> besides the actual purchase price. </p> <p> It is the time the customer needs to spend with installation, learning to use the product and on maintenance. In many open source projects this is higher than in their shrink-wrapped proprietary counterpart. For Padre this boils down to ease of installation, tutorials and good documentation. </p> <p> <h2>Place</h2> </p> <p> Traditionally this referred to the location of the store to make it convenient for the customers to visit and buy the product. In a supermarket setting this referred to the location of the product on the shelves. Who can put its sweets next to the counter where people are waiting with small kids? </p> <p> On the Internet the physical location is not relevant but it is very important to make sure it is easy for the customer to find the product and it is convenient to purchase / download and install it. (In our case purchase is irrelevant.) Download and install was already mentioned under product. </p> <p> So what remains is to make it easy for the potential users to find Padre. That brings us to the last of the 4 P-s: </p> <p> <h2>Promotion</h2> </p> <p> We would like to make sure people who are learning Perl will see Padre very early. </p> <p> That means we have to make sure Padre is <b>featured on <a href="http://learn.perl.org/">learn.perl.org</a></b> and maybe also on <a href="http://www.perl.org/">www.perl.org</a>. For that we need to make sure it's worth the attention of the maintainers of those sites. </p> <p> People who learn Perl will look for a tutorial. So we should build a <b>free tutorial for learning modern Perl</b>. I already started it using both screencasts and blog posts. (see <a href="http://szabgab.com/modern-perl-5-tutorial-part-01.html">Install Perl, print Hello World, Safety net (use strict, use warnings)</a>) This needs to be expanded and made it good enough to be features on the main page of learn.perl.org. </p> <p> In addition we will need to find other channels where people - not yet familiar with the Perl community - are looking for information about Perl. That's a much longer job and it will include using various social networks. </p> <p> Lastly, many people get recommendations from friends who are already experts in Perl. Previous <a href="http://perlide.org/poll200910/">polls</a> and surveys showed that a large part of the Perl community is using vi or emacs. I know they won't switch to use Padre but at least some of those understand that for many people vim and emacs are not the best choices. Especially when they are learning. (You don't want people to be distracted by the editor while they are learning Perl, do you?) Some of the hard core vim users told me: </p> <p> <b>Probably I won't use Padre but I see its value and I'll recommend it to others.</b> </p> <p> That's the message I would like to see echoed in the Perl community. </p> <p> <h2>Conclusion</h2> </p> <p> So there are a number of things to do. They are quite interconnected. Luckily while I enjoy coding Padre I also enjoy the promotional activities such as creating screencasts. </p> Gabor Szabo 2011-07-06T22:17:42+00:00 Perl, Padre, open source, project, promotion, marketing http://szabgab.com/update-on-some-open-issues.html <p> <h2>Perl Jobs</h2> </p> <p> The poll <a href="http://perlide.org/polls/the-most-important-features-of-an-employer-or-job-opportunity/">What are the most important features of an employer or a job opportunity for you?</a> has ended. Results and raw data are available. </p> <p> <h2>LinkedIn</h2> </p> <p> An update to the "<a href="http://szabgab.com/business-awareness-of-perl-developers.html">Business awareness of Perl developers</a>" blog: </p> <p> I checked the size of the various groups again after 2 weeks: </p> <pre class="sh_perl"> .NET 37,586 =&gt; 38,560 (growth: 974 2.5%) Java 33,080 =&gt; 33,984 (growth: 904 2.7%) PHP 16,609 =&gt; 16,890 (growth: 281 1.7%) Python 9,538 =&gt; 9,690 (growth: 152 1.5%) Javascript 8,506 =&gt; 8,664 (growth: 158 1.8%) Ruby 8,412 =&gt; 8,602 (growth: 190 2.2%) Perl 3,891 =&gt; 4,050 (growth: 159 4.0%) </pre> <p> I can imagine a title: <b>The growth rate of Perl Mongers is double that of PHP, Python and Ruby combined!</b> (4.0% compared to 1.8%) after all that's all just statistics.... but some people would think this is important. </p> <p> Well, it is, so this is the link to sign up to the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=40830">Perl Mongers</a> group on LinkedIn. </p> <p> <h2>Visitor count</h2> </p> <p> In "<a href="http://szabgab.com/falling-number-of-visitors.html">Falling number of visitors?</a>" I quoted a few numbers about visitors count. Since then I have been blogging every day and got an average of 300 visitors every day. Now I only need to increase the interest level of my blogs. </p> <p> Really I should ask you! What would you like to read about? </p> Gabor Szabo 2010-05-16T06:41:15+00:00 Perl, LinkedIn, business, marketing, promotion, social network, jobs http://szabgab.com/apache-software-foundation.html <p> While the <a href="http://www.apache.org/">Apache</a> project is a diverse and exciting project the <a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/">Apache Software Foundation</a> does not seems to be very exciting. It has a healthy budget and a number of contributors. It is just working. </p> <p> <h2>Membership</h2> </p> <p> The <a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/members.html">members</a> of the foundation are people who are involved in one the <a href="http://projects.apache.org/">projects</a> of the Apache Foundation. They are nominated and then accepted (or not) by the existing members. Currently there are about 260 members. </p> <p> <h2>Management</h2> </p> <p> The <a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/board/">Board of Directors</a> consists of 9 people. They are elected by the members annually. There are also a <a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/">lot of officers</a>. Each Apache based project has a VP and there are more VPs for various general subjects. </p> <p> <h2>Finances and Funding</h2> </p> <p> The <a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html">sponsorship</a> page tells us that the levels of sponsorship range from 5K USD (Bronze) to 100K USD (Platinum). On the <a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html">thank you</a> page where the sponsors are listed we find 3 Platinum sponsors (100K), 2 Gold sponsors (40K), 2 Silver sponsor (20K), and 6 Bronze sponsors (5K). </p> <p> That adds up to 470K for a year as revenue from the sponsors. </p> <p> In 2009 the Apache Foundation reported 317K USD revenue. </p> <p> I am not sure what is the source of the difference between these two numbers but that might be due to some of the sponsors on that page joining only in the middle of 2009 or in 2010. </p> <p> They also reported 236K USD expenses and were left with 343K USD assets at the end of the year. The expenses were divided more or less equally between Infrastructure services (hosting, version control, bug tracking, etc) on one hand and Marketing and PR on the other. </p> <p> <h2>Reporting</h2> </p> <p> The financial reports are a bit out of date on the <a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/">public records</a> page and I have not seen a budget or some details on how the money was spent. </p> <p> There is also the <a href="http://blogs.apache.org/foundation/">ASF blog</a> with a post every week or two. </p> <p> <h2>More info</h2> </p> <p> <a href="http://people.apache.org/~curcuru/">Shane Curcuru</a> sent me a number of additional links that are worth looking at: </p> <p> <ul> <li><a href="http://people.apache.org/~curcuru/timeline/members.html">Membership/committer/projects growth</a></li> <li><a href="http://wiki.apache.org/general/FoundationGovernance">Apache Foundation Governance</a></li> <li><a href="http://apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html">How it works</a></li> <li><a href="http://apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2010/board_minutes_2010_04_21.txt">The current formal annual budget (2010 April 21)</a></li> <li><a href="http://planet.apache.org/committers/">Planet Apache, which is where any individual committer can have their blog aggregated (not official from the ASF, but a key place to learn about who's who at the ASF)</a></li> </ul> </p> Gabor Szabo 2010-05-16T06:12:57+00:00 Apache, non-profit, business, open source, marketing, foundation http://szabgab.com/python-software-foundation.html <p> The <a href="http://www.python.org/psf/">Python Software Foundation</a> just recently elected a new Board of Directors and Allison Randal was also elected. She also chairs the <a href="http://www.parrot.org/foundation">Parrot Foundation</a> and is still on the board of <a href="http://www.perlfoundation.org/">The Perl Foundation</a> after being the president for several years. </p> <p> <h2>Membership</h2> </p> <p> There are 3 membership types: </p> <p> <ol> <li>Nominated members are nominated and elected by existing members from the Python community. This is free of charge. There are currently about 150 nominated members. </li> <li>Sponsor members need to be approved by the board and they also have to pay an annual fee ranging from 2-20,000 USD/year. There are currently 28 sponsor members. </li> <li>Emeritus members are former nominated members who are no longer active. They have no voting rights. </li> </ol> </p> <p> Both Nominated and Sponsor members have a single vote for electing the board. </p> <p> <h2>Control</h2> </p> <p> The nominated and sponsor members elect the Board of Directors (13 ppl) who in return elect the Officers (6 ppl). The Directors and Officers hold monthly virtual meetings on IRC with one face-to-face meeting a year and even there not all directors participate. </p> <p> <h2>Management</h2> </p> <p> Directors are unpaid volunteers. Some Officers (Treasurer and Secretary) receive a nominal salary though it is unclear to me how much is that and how much work is expected in return. Apparently most of the job is done (or not done) by volunteers. </p> <p> <h2>Reporting</h2> </p> <p> There are some <a href="http://www.python.org/psf/records/">public records</a> that include the IRS tax returns (990) up till 2006. It is unclear to me why there are no more publicly available tax reports and I have not found an easily readable budget on financial reports. </p> <p> The most recent entry in <a href="http://www.python.org/psf/press-release/">press releases</a> section is from 2005. </p> <p> There is a blog called the <a href="http://pyfound.blogspot.com/">Python Software Foundation News</a> that has frequent entries, including the announcement on the new board and a report about 2009 that does NOT provide all the details. For example January and December are not even mentioned in the report nor is there information about the revenues and the total expenses of the foundation. </p> <p> <h2>Funding</h2> </p> <p> The funding comes from both the annual fees of the <b>sponsor members</b> and from random people who give sponsorship. The memberships fees are due at the beginning of the fiscal year, all at the same time. There are 1147 donors listed on the <a href="http://www.python.org/psf/donations/">donors page</a>. </p> <p> I have not found any up-to-date financial reports to see how much money the foundation has and how do they spend it. Actually there are some details in the blog entry called <a href="http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2010/04/chairmans-report-for-year-2009_07.html">Chairman's Report for the Year 2009</a> that lists several grants the PSF provided during 2009. That amounted to about 38.000 USD. </p> <p> Based on the out of date <a href="http://www.python.org/psf/summary/">Executive summary</a> in 2006 the PSF had 168,000 USD revenue and it spent 158,000 USD, 67% of which was spent on PyCon 2006. Its assets were standing at 310,000 USD. Back then, the revenue came from PyCon registration and PyCon sponsor fees (51%). The PSF sponsor fees were (17%) and individual donors gave (13%). Google Summer of Code program gave (14%). </p> <p> <h2>Actions</h2> </p> <p> The PSF provides funding (sponsorship) to various Python events and to a few other events where Python has interest. </p> <p> It is also providing funding to several Python projects. </p> <p> <h2>Related entries</h2> </p> <p> <a href="http://szabgab.com/the-freebsd-foundation.html">The FreeBSD Foundation</a> </p> <p> <a href="http://szabgab.com/about-the-gnome-foundation.html">About the GNOME Foundation</a> </p> <p> <a href="http://szabgab.com/comparing-the-eclipse-foundation-with-the-perl-foundation-and-epo.html">Comparing the Eclipse Foundation with The Perl Foundation and EPO</a> </p> Gabor Szabo 2010-05-14T20:47:06+00:00 Python, non-profit, business, open source, marketing, foundation, Perl http://szabgab.com/the-freebsd-foundation.html <p> Last week I was writing "<a href="http://szabgab.com/about-the-gnome-foundation.html">About the GNOME Foundation</a>". This time I visited the <a href="http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/">FreeBSD Foundation</a> trying to understand how that organization is structured, how do they finance themselves and what do they do? </p> <p> <h2>Membership</h2> </p> <p> This Foundation does not have members. </p> <p> <h2>Management</h2> </p> <p> Based on the Profit and Loss report it seems there is one person who gets salary or several people who get partial salary but I could not find out the details. (In 2009 they had 55,000 USD payroll expenses. For 2010 they budgeted 62,000 USD) </p> <p> <b>Update</b>: After I sent a message to the board I got a reply from Deb Goodkin the Secretary and Treasurer of the FreeBSD Foundation telling me that she is the one who receives a salary. </p> <p> <h2>Control</h2> </p> <p> The board is self electing. Each board member is elected for a period of a year. They normally don't get a salary but they can receive one if the board decides so. They can get compensation for their expenses. </p> <p> <h2>Reporting</h2> </p> <p> There are quarterly, publicly available <a href="http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/#financials">financial reports</a> and quarterly reports about <a href="http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/activities.shtml">the activities</a> of the foundation. There is also a <a href="http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/">FreeBSD Foundation blog</a> for better communication. </p> <p> <h2>Funding</h2> </p> <p> They are funded by donations of almost 1,000 different donors. In 2009 the total donations were 270.000 USD and they spent 162,000 USD. In 2010 they budgeted for 347,000 USD expenses while their goal is to raise 350,000 USD. There is a nice image on the front page of the <a href="http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/">FreeBSD Foundation</a> showing the current status of the fund-raising. </p> <p> <h2>Actions</h2> </p> <p> In the quarterly <a href="http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/activities.shtml">description of activities</a> one can see the types of activities the Foundation does: </p> <p> <ul> <li>Financing various FreeBSD conferences.</li> <li>Travel cost of some of the FreeBSD developers.</li> <li>They are running the fund-raising itself.</li> <li>Evaluate and support various development projects.</li> </ul> </p> Gabor Szabo 2010-05-10T18:48:27+00:00 FreeBSD, non-profit, business, open source, marketing, foundation http://szabgab.com/about-the-gnome-foundation.html <p> Recently I have been doing some research into how various technology related non-profits are working. I was trying to figure out the answer to a couple of questions to try to understand the various aspects of each organization: </p> <p> Membership: (Who and how can become member? How many members does it have? Does it cost money?) </p> <p> Management: (Is there a paid director? Are there other paid employees? Is everyone a volunteer?) </p> <p> Control: (Is there a board? Who is in the board? How is it elected?) </p> <p> Reporting: (How do the officers report to the board and the members? How often are there reports?) </p> <p> Funding: (Where does it get its financing from? Membership fees?, Sponsors?) </p> <p> Actions: (What does the organization do?) </p> <p> Here is what I've learned about the <a href="http://foundation.gnome.org/">GNOME Foundation</a>: </p> <p> <h2>Membership</h2> </p> <p> There is a fuzzy definition on who can become a <a href="http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/">member</a> in the GNOME Foundation but it is basically open for people with non-trivial contribution to the GNOME project. In order to become a member one needs to apply via an online form and the Membership Committee needs to accept the application. Membership is free of charge but it needs to be renewed every year. As of Q1 2010 there are 370 members. </p> <p> It's renewed every two years. You also need two people to sponsor you or vouch for you. </p> <p> <h2>Management</h2> </p> <p> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/stormy">Stormy Peters</a> is the executive director of the GNOME Foundation since July 2008. As I can see she is the only paid employee. Her job is to build contact with the industry and to reach out to various developer communities, institutions and governments to consider using GNOME. She reports to the Board of Directors. </p> <p> There is also a paid part-time administrative assistant. </p> <p> <h2>Control - Board of Directors</h2> </p> <p> The Foundations members elect the 7 members of Board of Directors on the annual regular elections. The board members have meeting by phone or by IRC on every second week. The <a href="http://live.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPublic/Minutes">minutes of the conversation</a> is posted on their wiki. </p> <p> <h2>Reporting</h2> </p> <p> Stormy Peters has a <a href="http://blogs.gnome.org/foundation/">weekly report</a> on her activities in the official GNOME blog which provides an excellent way for the community to follow what she is doing and what happens in the GNOME foundation. </p> <p> There are also <a href="http://foundation.gnome.org/reports/">quarterly and annual reports</a> that include description of the activities and the financial status of the Foundations. This is great as it helps people see what happens and where is money spent. It is especially important as it lets people in the GNOME community feel more comfortable with an organization that has some commercial faces. </p> <p> <h2>Funding</h2> </p> <p> Most of the funding of the GNOME Foundation comes from companies that are interested in the advancement of GNOME. These companies pay 10,000 USD annual fee and sometimes more in form of sponsorship and are sitting on <b>Advisory board</b> of the Foundation. The budget of the GNOME Foundation was 240,000 USD for 2009. </p> <p> For 2010 they have raised the fees to $20,000 USD annually. </p> <p> <h2>Advisory board</h2> </p> <p> The Advisory board is made up of organizations and companies that support GNOME. It has no decision-making authority but provides communication between the Board of Directors and the member companies. </p> <p> <h2>Actions</h2> </p> <p> The GNOME Foundation is involved in the development of GNOME, maintaining the infrastructure required for the project. It is involved in the organization and the financing of Hackfests and conference. It helps the presence of GNOME on various technical conferences both by having talks and by setting up a booth. </p> Gabor Szabo 2010-05-04T22:23:41+00:00 GNOME, non-profit, business, open source, marketing, foundation http://szabgab.com/business-awareness-of-perl-developers.html <p> Once I wrote a post about the <a href="http://use.perl.org/~gabor/journal/21896">business readiness of various programming languages</a> by comparing the number of people in <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn</a> mentioning the name of the language. This cannot be done any more but now I found another interesting way to measure. </p> <p> I checked the LinkedIn groups dedicated to specific languages and there I can see the number of members. It is far from being scientific but it is interesting. </p> <p> <h2>Executive summary</h2> </p> <pre class="sh_perl"> .NET 37,586 Java 33,080 PHP 16,609 Python 9,538 Javascript 8,506 Ruby 8,412 Perl 3,891 </pre> <p> <h2>Perl</h2> </p> <p> The biggest group is the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=40830">Perl Mongers</a> group with 3,891 members that was setup by José Castro when he was doing the communication of The Perl Foundation. </p> <p> There are also other groups I have not seen earlier such as the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=106254">Perl</a> group with 2,808 members and the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1332857">Perl Jobs</a> group with 760 members both owned by Dariusz Jackowski. There is also a group dedicated to <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=39178">The Perl Foundation</a> with 102 members which is owned by Marco Lima. </p> <p> There are many other, smaller groups mostly related to specific Perl Monger groups. </p> <p> There are some other Perl related groups as well. </p> <p> For example There are 3 <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=971957">Webgui</a> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=47444">related</a> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2051852">groups</a> with 129, 53 and 11 members respectively. </p> <p> The <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=74787">Bricolage group</a> has 20 members. The <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1734207">Catalyst group</a> has 70 members. The <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2460957">Padre group</a> has 30 members. </p> <p> <h2>Python</h2> </p> <p> The <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=25827">Python Community</a> has 9,538 members and the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=50788">Django group</a> has 3,492 members. </p> <p> <h2>Ruby</h2> </p> <p> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=22413">Ruby on Rails</a> has a group with 8,412 members. the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=120725">Rubyists group</a> has 2,744 members There is another <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=109785">RoR (Ruby on Rails) group</a> with 1,643 members. What is very interesting to me is that there is also a group called <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=27822">Business on Rails</a> with 1,460 members. </p> <p> There are several more Ruby related groups. </p> <p> <h2>PHP</h2> </p> <p> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=40870">LinkedPHPers</a> with 16,609 members. There is a smaller group called <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=42140">Php developers</a> with 7,324 members. </p> <p> There are several groups for Drupal. The biggest is just called <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=35920">Drupal</a> and it has 6,875 members. </p> <p> <h2>Java</h2> </p> <p> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=70526">Java Developers</a> is the biggest Java related group with 33,080 members. </p> <p> <h2>.NET</a> </p> <p> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=40717">.NET People</a> has 37,586 members. </p> <p> <h2>Javascript</h2> </p> <p> The group called <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=121615">Javascipt</a> has only 1,988 members but the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=100943">JQuery</a> group has 5,196 members and there is a group called <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=121615">Rich Internet Applications (RIA)</a> uniting the various Javascript based frameworks with 8,506 members. </p> <p> <h2>Conclusion</h2> </p> <p> I am sure you can all draw your own conclusion. </p> <p> Mine is that the Perl community is the least business aware among the languages I checked and maybe it is time to send out another call to all the Perl users to join the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=40830">Perl Mongers</a> group on LinkedIn. </p> <p> I'll check these numbers a week from now again to see if there is any significant change. </p> Gabor Szabo 2010-05-02T09:30:37+00:00 Perl, business, LinkedIn, marketing, promotion, social network http://szabgab.com/would-you-like-to-talk-to-perl-programmers-or-about-perl.html <p> There were about 30 Perl events last year. On some Perl Workshops there are 30-50 people on the German Perl Workshop there are 130. On YAPC::EU there are about 300 visitors. </p> <p> On <a href="http://www.fosdem.org/">FOSDEM</a> in Brussels, Belgium there were about 5,000 people and my guess is that about <b>300-400</b> visited the Perl booth. Many of them were writing Perl and almost none of them have ever been to a Perl Workshop or YAPC. </p> <p> On <a href="http://www.cebit.de/">CeBIT</a> in Hannover, Germany there were about <b>1,000</b> visitors at the Perl booth. While the experience level seemed a lot more varied here still many knew and used Perl but again almost none of them have ever been to a Perl Workshop or YAPC and almost none of them are members of any Perl Monger mailing lists. </p> <p> On <a href="http://www.linuxtag.org/">LinuxTag</a> in Berlin, Germany there are going to be about 10,000 visitors. I expect to have <b>600-800</b> visitors at the Perl booth. </p> <p> On the other hand many of the visitors only heard about Perl but never used it or never even seen it really. Many of those had negative views. Before they came to our booth. </p> <p> So while I think the Perl workshops and YAPCs are great you can see from these numbers why going to non-Perl events has a lot of potential in <b>finding Perl developers</b> (if you are an employer) or telling Perl developers about various <b>new development in perl and on CPAN</b>. (Moose anyone?) Finally it is a great opportunity to show Perl to people who have never used it and seen it and make them curious about it. </p> <p> As I mentioned in my blog post <a href="http://szabgab.com/perl-booth-at-linuxtag-berlin-between-9-12-june-2010.html">Perl booth at LinuxTag Berlin between 9-12 June, 2010</a> we are looking for people to help at the booth in Berlin. Of course if you are not around that area there are lots of other events where you can attend, give a talk about some Perl based thing and even setup a booth to attract many more people. The <a href="http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?events">events group</a> already has a long list of events and I created a Google calendar of the <a href="http://szabgab.com/events.html">events where we could talk about Perl</a>. </p> Gabor Szabo 2010-04-23T07:38:12+00:00 Perl, conferences, FOSDEM, CeBIT, LinuxTag, promotion, marketing http://szabgab.com/perl-booth-at-linuxtag-berlin-between-9-12-june-2010.html <p> A few days ago my request for a Perl booth at <a href="http://www.linuxtag.org/">LinuxTag Berlin</a> (June 9-12) was accepted. I am really happy as this was quite a last minute decision. The contact with the organizers was made by <a href="http://reneeb-perlblog.blogspot.com/">Renee Backer</a> when we were at CeBIT. The event is expecting to have about 10,000 visitors which means we will have a lot of opportunities talking to people. </p> <p> <h2>Perl::Staff</h2> </p> <p> On the previous events we had several people at the booth we called the <a href="http://metacpan.org/release/Perl-Staff">Perl::Staff</a>. This will be the same this time. So we need people who can be at the booth some of the days part of the day. If you are interested, please add yourself to the <a href="http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?events_2010_linuxtag_berlin">coordiantion wiki page</a> on the <a href="http://www.perlfoundation.org/">Perl Foundation wiki</a>. </p> <p> If you don't know what is expected from you at the booth, please talk to us either on the events mailing list or on the events IRC channel. See details on the <a href="http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?events">events coordiantion page</a>. </p> <p> <h2>Talks</h2> </p> <p> According to <a href="http://vcc.linuxtag.org/schedule.pl">the schedule</a> there are going to be many talks but as far as I know there will be only one Perl related talk this time, given by myself: <a href="http://vcc.linuxtag.org/details.pl?id=266">Automatic testing in the Open Source world and what businesses can learn from them</a> If there are other talks, it would be nice to list them all on our coordination page and to promote them at our booth. </p> <p> <h2>Projects</h2> </p> <p> We would like to show both Perl as a language but also specific projects that are more user facing. It would be awesome to show at least one Content Management System, a Wiki, an Issue Tracking System and a <a href="http://padre.perlide.org/">Perl IDE</a>. You can guess we already have at least one person from the IDE project who will participate and will spread the word. We also have Viacheslav Tykhanovskyi from <a href="http://mojolicious.org/">Mojolicious</a>. </p> <p> We would like to show more projects! Your help is needed there too. </p> <p> <h2>Job offers</h2> </p> <p> While the team at the booth is showing Perl and Perl based projects we can also give out a brochure with job offers. So if your company is looking for Perl developers, especially in or around Germany this would be a great opportunity for them to promote their job offers. My estimate is that there will be between 400-1,000 visitors at the Perl booth during the 4 days of the conference, many of them with several years of Perl background. Please tell your boss to <a href="http://szabgab.com/contact.html">contact me</a>. </p> <p> <h2>Promoting Perl consultants, contractors and trainers</h2> </p> <p> As with the job offers the LinuxTag would be a good opportunity for people providing consultation, contract work or training in Perl to promote their services. If you can come and help at the booth that will give you the direct opportunity to also promote yourself. </p> <p> Even if you cannot participate we can distribute your promotional material or business card. So <a href="http://szabgab.com/contact.html">let me know</a> if you are interested. </p> Gabor Szabo 2010-04-21T05:59:40+00:00 Perl, Linux, Berlin, Germany, conference, promotion, marketing, LinuxTag