The (free) Israeli Perl Workshop on 28th February 2012

It starts less than a week from now with a Pre-Workshop Social meeting 27th February at HaMinzar in Tel Aviv.

Then, on 28th February, a full day of Perl talks in two tracks.

We conclude the event with a dinner after the workshop.

There are two guests from Germany: Stefan Hornburg (racke) who will give two talks and Florian Ragwitz (rafl) who will taste the beer and hack the code.

There are also going to be a few people from the biggest Perl employer in Amsterdam and lots of locals. As of now, there are 90 people registered to the workshop.

From the schedule you can see there are going to be both very technical talks and several fun-talks.

I am really excited and quite nervous that after 5 years of break we are going to have a Perl conference in Israel again.

I really hope that many people in the industry will know about it and recognize the value, both in the talks, and in mingling with other Perl users.

I think there are two main question people ask me.

Is this good for me?

and

Will my boss let me go?

I think there is an overlap in the answers.

Check the schedule and go over the talk descriptions. I am sure you will find a few that will interest you and that you will be able to think about some immediate application of that knowledge.

Then there are other talks, that are unclear if they would help you and some, that sound outrageous. Some really are. We have a strong feeling that part of the learning experience is having fun. If you are bored, you will fall asleep and we don't want that, do we? So at least some of the talks need to be fun.

Then the other thing.

I fully believe that the personal contacts you build during such event can lead to both improved technical knowledge and better chances later in your career.

I mean, don't expect that just by turning up at 9:00 am and leaving at 18:00 will do that. First, because we start at 8:30 and second, because after the talks end we have a social meeting.

I don't say it's easy. You know only a few people there and all the rest are strange geeks. I know, but this is an opportunity to talk to a few new people. Maybe you can grab one of the speakers and invite him for a drink? Or maybe you can grab Rafl, who won't give a talk but who is one of the most prolific CPAN authors and have a chat with him? Maybe ask him about The Perl Foundation and the Google Summer of Code or the Google Code-In.

I all else fails, come and talk to me.

What are you selling?

People - at least in Israel - are used to all these technical conferences where companies are paying for the opportunity to market their stuff in the disguise of a technical talk.

I think those who visited the earlier Perl Workshops in Israel can tell you this does not happen here. I don't think that any of the speakers is sent by their company. There are 1-2 self-employed like myself who do have something to sell but we too usually prefer the technical aspect to the marketing aspect.

So what we are selling is the Perl community. It is the idea that we can cooperate and create really nice things together.

I hope you join us.