Last nights' meeting was a success. Successful in the sense that over half the active mailing list was in attendance, interesting discussions were had, and future commitments were made by many. If this is any indicator, the future of KC.PM activity looks good.
Please help me and help us to continue to make it so. Invite new people, volunteer to do a book review, puzzle, lightning talk, or presentation. Or volunteer to take notes at the meeting and do this write-up. KC.PM will remain active only so long as there are people willing to take an active role in it. I understand that time can be a very limiting factor. But I also know that we collectively and individually get back a lot more than we put in. -Both in self-knowledge and the sharing of it.
The format for the meeting was as follows:
o Introductions
o Administrata
- format
- location
- schedule
o Lightning Talk: TT
o Book Review: Object Oriented Perl
o Brain Teaser: Hoops 'Round Loops
o Feature: Object Oriented Perl 101
[Introductions]
The meeting was held at Planet Sub on 50th and Main in the Elvis room. In attendance were: Stephen Clouse, David Dumler, Garrett Goebel, Lezlie Martin, Andrew Moore, Dan Ostrowski, Jason Park, Doug Sparling, and Shawn Walker. With Daniel Ostrowski coming in all the way from Topeka.
New and old faces were seen round the table. Doug Sparling shared a little of the history of KC.PM. -David Nicol, if you're reading this please help fill in the blanks. Apparently KC.PM was started by David Nicol several years ago, and Doug was one of the 3 original members. Doug by the way follows close to some 30 Perl Users group mailing lists. Originally the group consisted of the mailing list. But eventual meetings were started at David's apartment, moving on to a place around the Flea Market, and eventual to our current home at Planet Sub.
[Administrata]
No one had any problem with the format or venue, though there may be a scheduling issue. Jason Park mentioned that KCLUG (Kansas City Linux Users Group) was meeting the same night. Previously on the mailing list Shannon Merritt had noted that KCLUG met one Wednesday a month. There was agreement from several in attendence that Wednesday was indeed the regular night, but there was some familiarity with notion of an occassional Tuesday meeting as well.
Jason Park volunteered to look into the specifics KCLUG's meeting schedule. The end result being that we will either move our meeting to a different Tuesday... or convince KCLUG to use a different alternate night when their Wednesdays won't work. Until further notice, assume that the next meeting will take place at 7PM on Tuesday November 19th at Planet Sub on 50th and Main.
Also discussed was the topic of eventually moving the KC.PM website and mailing list to the facilities provided by the greater Perl Mongers organization (www.pm.org). KCPM's services are currently well and graciously provided for by David Nicol and www.tipjar.com. However an eventual move is seen as a good thing in that it will relieve the burden of responsibility from any one KC.PM member and allow KC.PM to take advantage of and integrate more closely into the services offered the Perl Mongers organization. Andrew Moore volunteered to assist with this transition.
There was discussion of topics of interest for future presentations. The work one does in preparation for a presentation is a great way to become even more intimate and knowledgible about a given topic. Please look through the following list and consider working up a lightning talk or detailed presentation. I've listed names in parentheses for people how have already volunteered for a given topic:
AxKit
DBI
GUIs
Gtk::Radiant (Shawn Walker)
Gtk
Tk
Win32::GUI
wxWindows
Hash internals
HTML::Mason
Inline
mod_perl
POE (Dan Ostrowski)
Regular Expressions
SOAP
Template::ToolKit
XS
[Lightning Talk]
Doug Sparling gave an introduction to the Template::Toolkit CPAN module. TT is a fast, powerful and extensible template processing system. TT allows one to separate data from the presentation. Thus allowing a separation of concerns between coders and designers conserned with layout. Doug, Stephen, and Shawn were familiar with TT in the context of the presentation of static and dynamic web content. Whereas Jason has found it useful for processing configuration files as well. There was obviously a good deal of TT expertise and interest around the table. I hope Doug, Jason, Shawn, and/or Stephen will consider a more detailed presentation some time in the near future.
[Book Review]
I have received a couple book review requests so far, but would like to take the time once again to encourage everyone to take advantage of the gracious offers of O'Reilly and Manning to review their books. If there are any other publishers' books you would like to review, please let me know and I will attempt to establish communications with them.
Garrett Goebel gave a well received review of "Object Oriented Perl" by Damian Conway and Randal L. Schwartz. The text of which will be posted to the mailing list shortly. There was a good deal of consensus that this book has been a great contribution to the Perl community, and is indeed the definitive work on object oriented programming in Perl.
[Brain Teaser]
Garrett Goebel handed out a puzzle entitled "Hoops 'Round Loops". The puzzle consisted of a "poorly written" perl script which filters, orders, and reformats a series of comma delimited lines of text storing among other things KC.PM meeting dates. The goal is to improve upon the example script while removing the use of loop controls and excessive regex matching. Prizes will be awarded at the next meeting for the shortest and fastest scripts. The full text of the puzzle will be posted to the mailing list shortly.
[Feature Presentation]
Garrett Goebel gave a talk called Object Oriented Perl 101. It covered core and basic concepts of OO programming. And while lacking a bit in preparation, managed to come off well. As promised during the meeting, a list of resources for those who would wish to further investigate OO Perl follows:
Perl man pages:
perlboot: Beginner's Object-Oriented Tutorial
perltoot: Tom's object-oriented tutorial for Perl
perltootc: Tom's OO Tutorial for class data in Perl
perlobj: Perl objects
perlbot: Bag'o Object Tricks
perltie: how to hide an object class in a simple variable
Note: Perl man pages should be easily accessible from any computer with a proper perl distribution installed. Simply go to a command shell and type:
>$ perldoc perlboot | more
This meeting summary has been brought to you by Garrett Goebel and the Kirkland Starbucks blend coffee. May someone else please volunteer for this job ;) And perhaps that someone might even be you?
--
Garrett Goebel
IS Development Specialist
ScriptPro Direct: 913.403.5261
5828 Reeds Road Main: 913.384.1008
Mission, KS 66202 Fax: 913.384.2180
www.scriptpro.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
