HI Lyle,
This is a great opportunity. But I would suggest asking them to
run an open seminar for staff and students - not just sysadmins. I'd
suggest a fairly general talk that has the aim of exciting people
about Perl.
For the closet-mongers in the audience they can sagely nod but for
the uninitiated it could be an opportunity to look again and even for
the regular Perl users it could reinvigorate their interest.
"If you used Perl you would be home now" could be an underlying theme.
One way of approaching the presentation would be to provide a
historical overview of Perl - where it comes from, how it has
developed and where it is going. Along the way we could have some
speaker(s) share their excitement about Perl - how/why/when/where they
use it - in shorter lightning talk length case studies.
The historical outline could cover things like: Larry,
linguistics, TMTOWTDI, CPAN, Perl Foundation, Artistic Licence, Perl
Best Practices, TAP, YAPC, Perl Mongers, Web frameworks, Moose, Perl6
etc.
At the end the audience should:
* appreciate that Perl is a thriving technology with an active
community that "runs deep"
* be excited by the prospect of "getting home early"
* see opportunities to use Perl in their work
* feel stronger about defending Perl in light of other technologies
The message for the different types of audience could be:
* closet-Mongers - get out of the closet - join the BP&PM - be proud
to use Perl in the organisation
* new users - Perl is a tool that can make your life easier - it has a
long but low learning curve - here are some starting points
* Java/Ruby/Python fanboys etc - Perl is another tool you should add
to your toolbox
* managers - save money - use CPAN - Buy Perl Best Practices for your team
I'm happy to volunteer to do the historical outline and introduce
lightning talk case studies along the way. Maybe we should discuss
this at the first pub meeting? I'm sure Bath University would also be
interested in putting on a similar seminar for staff and students.
Just some ideas ...
Nige
On 12/05/2008, Lyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi All,
> Seems like we are in a UWE :-)
>
> I just got this email from Richard Manley:-
>
> Hi Lyle,
> Julia Dawson has suggested that you would be interested in talking to
> some of the IT administrators at UWE regarding perl. I manage the team
> that provides IT support to the maths, computer science, and engineering
> disciplines, and I think four or five of the team (out of a total of
> 12-ish) would be interested in learning more. Does that make it worth a
> trip for you? Academic staff may also be interested, but Julia suggested
> that you were primarily interested in talking to sys-admins. If you'd
> like to come, let me know what kind of times/dates would work and we'll
> fix something up. Thanks, Richard.
> -- Richard Manley Technical Manager Computing and Electronics Bristol
> Institute of Technology
>
>
>
> I replied saying that we also use Perl a lot for CGI and Web Apps and
> would be interested in talking to anyone there who is interested in Perl
> or could benefit from using Perl.
>
>
> So now we need to figure out what we are going to offer them
> presentation wise.
> Also my questions to the group:-
>
> A) Has anyone here pitched to a Uni before?
> B) Who has public speaking experience? Nige, I understand you have, are
> there others?
> C) What do you think we should put in our presentation to the sysadmins?
> D) Who's interested in coming?
> E) Do you think it'd be worth giving Barbie a call from Birmingham.pm?
>
>
> Lyle
>
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>
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