The 2013 White Camels


We used to give the White Camel Awards out at conferences because we knew the recipients would be in the audience. As we've become more inclusive with the rest of the globe, that didn't make sense. This year, we've waited until Perl's birthday to announce the awards.

The White Camel Awards recognize outstanding, non-technical achievement in Perl. Started in 1999 by Perl mongers and later merged with The Perl Foundation, the awards committee selects three names from a long list of worthy Perl volunteers to recognize hard work in Perl Community, Perl Conferences, and Perl User Groups.

This year we took nominations through Mob Rater. We developed a long list of worthy recipients.This year, the White Camels recognize the efforts of these people whose hard work has made Perl and the Perl community a better place:


Perl Community: Thiago Rondon

If you're doing Perl in Brasil, you probably know "maluco". Not only does he run multiple business with heavy doses of Perl, but he was the leader of the São Paulo Perl mongers and the organizer of the Brasilian versions of the Perl Advent calendars, called Equinócio, which the local community runs twice a year. He's also the creator of OpenData-BR, which uses Perl to illuminate government spending data.


Perl Conferences: Wendy and Liz

If you go to enough Perl conferences, especially in Europe, you will eventually cross paths with this pair of Dutch women. You may have seen their collection of hundreds of Perl books, heard the outrageous sums of money they offer at conference auctions, or been the recipient of their quiet (and not so quiet) kindness and attention at workshops, hackathons, YAPCs, FOSDEM, and many other events. Perl is a glue language, and Wendy and Liz are glue for the Perl community. Curiously, many people immediately thought of Wendy and Liz as worthy recipients and we were surprised at the number of "no" votes in Mob Rater. It turns out Wendy was stuffing the ballot box to not get the award. That's too bad; no good deed goes unpunished.

Perl User Groups: Fred Moyer

Fred Moyer has been a fixture in the San Francisco and Bay area Perl community for years, and is the current leader of the San Francisco Perl mongers. He's always experimenting with new ways to get people involved with the local community, even if that means inviting people over to his house, manning a booth at a conference, or setting up other events. The community wouldn't be where it is today without the hard work of local organizers.

11 Comments

Muhaha Wendy and Liz won!

Yay. Congrats to all, richly deserved.

Well done and kudos to the deserving winners! :D

Fred, congratulations on taking the SFPUG to the next level.

Liz and Wendy are honoured but still think they did not do enough Perl to deserve this award. But thank you very much. And Wendy says sorry for all the cheating.

At first, I didn't like the use of Mob Rater because I thought it would turn it into a popularity contest. At least I was right in thinking there would be some ballot stuffing... I didn't expect anyone would actually cheat to lose. :-)

I turns out I completely misunderstood how it was used... It was for nominations only, so the score mattered much less than simply being on the list, as I expect the committee has been looking in some detail at who the people on the list were and what they did for the community.

Congratulations to all the recipients, this is very well deserved.

But Wendy, these awards are nothing to do with the amount of Perl you do. They are about the amount of good you do in the Perl community. And I can't think of more deserving winners than you and Liz.

As someone new to going to YAPC's, I want to also say a big congrats to Wendy, Liz, and the Brasilian Perl community. You deserve the recognition, and I hope you see you this summer!

I completely missed the call for nominations via MobRater, but the award winners are certainly well-qualified. Welcome to the club, Thiago, Wendy, Liz and Fred!

Jim Keenan

Congratulations to the winners. I'm sure they are well-deserved awards.

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About brian d foy

user-pic I'm the author of Mastering Perl, and the co-author of Learning Perl (6th Edition), Intermediate Perl, Programming Perl (4th Edition) and Effective Perl Programming (2nd Edition).