TODO for March 2012

In January I started to write annual reports and TODOs. In February I added my first monthly report and TODO list. Let's now see what happened in February and what am I planning for March.

February report

1. The bad thing: I have done nearly no Perl Maven videos. I made a few, but then something broke in my desktop and all my recordings got somehow crippled. I did not have the patience to fix it yet.
2. On 6th February I announced the first release of DWIM Perl for Windows. That was still using perl 5.12 but a few days later I built and announced the release of DWIM Perl 5.14 for Windows. These are Perl distributions that allow you to solve lots of problems without the need of any additional package from CPAN.
3. I announced and started to sell the first Beginner Perl Maven eBook. It was not a smashing success but slowly people buy it. Soon I'll send out the second edition.
4. I wrote 8 technical articles on szabgab.com but none on other sites. These were the post of the last month:
   • Perl on the command line
   • Debugging Perl scripts
   • Automatic string to number conversion or casting in Perl
   • $_ the default variable of Perl
   • Matching numbers using Perl regex
   • Name "main::x" used only once: possible typo at ...
   • Subroutines and functions in Perl
   • join
5. I also wrote an entry to encourage people to visit the Israeli Perl Workshop, and one trying to figure out what is a Perl Monger group for? I hope these will be useful for other workshop and monger group organizers too. We even made two last-minute video promo for the workshop.
6. The Israeli Perl Workshop took place on 28th February 2012. About 75 people arrived and, I think, after having almost five years break this is a nice number. We also got some very enthusiastic feedback. We had two guests from Germany and three from The Netherlands. I still do some follow-up work but already have several new people sign up to the regular discussion list of the Israeli Perl Mongers.

Perl Weekly

Jeff Bisbee sent out an invitation to the members of the Perl Mongers group on LinkedIN to register to the Perl Weekly. This alone brought about 150 new subscribers. I should find a way to repeat this and I should approach other LinkedIN group leaders to send out similar invitations. If you know any other group leaders, please introduce each other!

As of today there are 2831 people registered to the Perl Weekly newsletter and 432 read it via RSS.

The Perl Weekly also got some more followers on Twitter: @perlweekly has 219 followers (up from 173 a month ago).

On Google+ 281 people put Perl Weekly in their circles. (up from 173 a month ago)

On Facebook 91 people liked the Perl Weekly (up from 78). This seems to be the weakest channel for the Perl Weekly.

Plans for March 2012

I have 7 Perl training days already confirmed but there are also two new companies interested in classes. The Perl training business started started quite well this year.

1. I have to fix the video recordings and go on with the Perl Maven video courses.
2. Publish a new edition of the Beginner Perl Maven book and publish the first edition of the Advanced Perl Maven book
3. Follow-up on the contacts from the Israeli Perl Workshop and direct people to get closer to the Perl community. Also talk them about the Perl Maven books and courses.
4. Post 10-12 technical articles on szabgab.com and 1-2 articles guest-posting elsewhere.
5. Make at least one new video recording and publish it on my YouTube channel.
6. Finally launch the new Perl Maven and start moving the Perl Maven tutorials to that site. I also have some ideas that I cannot do on szabgab.com which is my personal site, but I'll be able to do on Perl Maven.

That's enough of planning for now.