Who needs more marketing in the Perl world?

Many in the Perl community don't agree with me that we need professional marketing. Some hope to solve the branding issue by getting more designers enthusiastic about Perl. I think such grass-root efforts are really good and it will hopefully lead to Perl gain more new users from the enthusiastic crowd.

Let's see if there is another world where a Marketing Director of Technology evangelist can be better than grass-root efforts? What about convincing CTOs and other IT managers that Perl or some of the technology built on Perl is the right choice for them?

The grass-root efforts and the more commercial efforts don't rule out each other. They can even strengthen each other.

In order that you won't feel I have a secret selfish agenda, let me first write down what I'd like to have.

Promoting my Perl classes

I am offering training in Perl in general but I have a specific course called Test Automation using Perl that I'd like to promote more. I have a test automation newsletter and I blog about it but I am sure I could have more clients if there was someone promoting the testing tools of Perl directly to Test and QA managers. It would especially help if that person was also mentioning my classes but even without that, if the market grows, hopefully my part grows as well.

I can't afford such a person at a full-time job but I could participate in paying part of the wage of such a person.

Promoting Bricolage, Krang, WebGUI

There are companies behind these open source Perl Content Management Systems. I guess some of the companies are large enough to have their own marketing directors but others do not. I am sure they would all have more clients if there was a person promoting their their technology. They might even be ready to pay part of the salary of such person.

Promoting Catalyst, Titatium, Mojolicious

There are several companies behind these projects too. Companies that make money by implementing web applications. They could too have more clients if there was someone promoting their technology. I guess they all have some form of marketing already too but maybe they would also be ready to pay part of the salary of a marketing person.

Privately or as part of TPF/EPO ?

I'd like to organize the people behind these companies and setup budget for someone who will help promote our respective technologies.

We can do it either privately within a company which would be a plain business deal for co-marketing or we can do it under the umbrella of either TPF or EPO. I'd prefer to do it in the open. The main reason for that is that I hope that once our efforts start to pay off we will be able to reach more organizations that would like to participate in the promotion of this technology. Meaning companies that are interested in promoting Perl based solutions (such as Bugzilla, Webmin, etc.) and companies that want to recruit Perl programmers. Is it really hard to find good Perl programmers?)

I'd be glad to discuss this with any of the interested parties via IRC or if you are coming to Lisbon, then there too.