/dev/null or somewhere equally as stupid, and despite my own inabilities to do them all, the least I can do is something which is greater than being a clown on the internet.
The things I bitched about boil down to a few key bits:
Don't start me here
I'm hopeless with video recording equipment, but I would like to think that there could be some way, somehow of at least getting people or parties interested in the department of creating good footage and learning materials. I personally don't know where to start on this topic, and if someone could give me an idea on how one might go about doing such a thing, it would be appreciated - quite possible by more than myself.
Capability and communication
I'd like to start somewhere if I'm useless with a camera. Where? Well, work on the usability, presentation, look & feel of a few key Perl websites that do see significant traffic and desperately need work on their look and usability - jobs.perl.org, www.cpan.org, perlfoundation.org, and I would like to talk to whomever maintains these websites and ask if they are interested. If the owners of use.perl.org or perlmonks.org are also interested, I would like to hear from them. I'd also like to get in touch with whomever maintains all the sites recently updated by the designers at Foxtons - perl.org, learn.perl.org, etc and see if they are willing to at least look at myself working at analyzing the metrics already gathered and improving these websites to attract more users, but more importantly, work on the goal of having a much greater user experience. Some of that really does depend on the content - that might take camera and some good footage but let's not go there yet.
Outgoings
I've sent emails to the fine people at the Perl NOC, and to a few others asking if they would be interested, but the chances are of my emails ever getting there may, or may not be slim. If you're one of the above or know them - please point them this way. Am I the only one here interested in making these topics real?
So far, the only people with vocal voices in the "Marketing" of Perl are people with financial interests in the language - consultants, trainers and the likes. Let's not mention names. I've got nothing against these people putting bread on the table, hell, the language which I write and use most days does it for me. But I have full time employment, so my financial circumstances change little if the language died tomorrow - like all problems within my work, problems are worked around, solutions are found. I don't want the Perl community to end up where a handful of consultants and trainers are trying to get those of us with less financial ties to the language to essentially promote their business by proxy through the promotion of the language. Would I like to see more popularity with Perl and the horrible practices of the past dispelled and unused by naysayers? Absolutely. But I also think that technology is also victim to natural selection　- the language and how it functions needs to keep up with the times and adapt in order to survive. This can not be done by businessmen and marketing alone. To those of you who keep the language adapting and bring in great ideas - new or stolen from smarter minds, I raise my glass to you.
The popularity of Perl will not move forward by fliers, banners and signs in other people's conventions, nor excessive preaching to the converted.
The popularity of Perl will not move forward by marketing campaigns with large budgets with a lack of concluding definition.
The popularity of any programming language is dictated by it's relevancy to the immediate problem faced by users that it helps solve, and it's relevancy to the present.
There are several areas that I feel that could use more of our attention, that would benefit the businessmen, and benefit programmers, either present day Perl hackers, or tomorrow's hackers.
The many faces of Perl
Still a few websites that remain under the control of the Perl NOC, and other more popular Perl websites that could use a new coat of paint - a redesign. A look to suit, beyond just bare functionality. Like it or not, people are attracted to good looking things, even if you may not care. The work done on perl.org was very well done, and personally I think that the same level of attention to design should be applied across many other "faces of Perl". Which sites am I referring to? jobs.perl.org, use.perl.org, perlmonks.org, cpan.org, just to name a few. The owners of these sites may hold their own opinions, and may find it difficult having to agree with designers decisions, but I still maintain this should be a significant priority to something that appears to only be half way finished. Could there be a pursuit to have a donation of designer time from companies with a interest in the language, like those already who've supplied designer time? I think it would be more appealing to ask for things and people time, not money from companies with a vested interest in Perl. If money is more accessible however, could the option of finding a design firm or freelance to work gratis, or at a discounted rate be an option? I have previously suggested open source projects away from "throwing money at it", so consider this an absolute last resort. Making communication between yourselves, the developers and web admins and the designers as easy and comfortable as possible is key.
Measuring the impact of our face
perl.org is collecting analytics. So are many other Perl websites. Are there people setting targets or goals for these websites in terms of traffic reach? Is there any efforts at present to look at adjusting these websites to reflect the visitors and provide a better experience, using A/B testing, passive surveys (ie no popup boxes) etc? If there is not, this is another area that our marketeurs could find some use. Just as traffic, SEO, usability are important to any online business, if the goal is to find more people using the website and making it as easy as possible to use, this is also something that requires attention and brings benefits. Like my objection to banners and advertising in the real world, I also stand that online advertising is a bad choice and should never be pursued. In addition to this, I'm certain that concrete deliverables could be made for these tasks and the TPF along with the community would be less hesitant in approving funding for a person or group to dedicate time to identifying usability issues and achieving traffic goals in websites where there would be significant benefit in attracting new users, and improving the service for existing users.
Capturing better footage
Out of all the video recordings of conferences and screen-casts on the language, most are of a very low quality. In comparison to the output by other events and language-specific conferences handle video, this is an area in my opinion requiring huge improvement. There is clearly demand for screen-casts and people wishing to watch talks from conferences. I think to improve this, serious effort needs to be put, more so on YAPC events towards high quality video with clear audio (lapel mics on speakers, please!) and solid editing. It's by no means mandatory to get a professional company to do this, if the community already possesses the means to do it at a quality level matching what others already are.
Compiling the footage
The second biggest problem with all of the available footage and screen-casts is that they are all over the place, and the problem is getting worse. Youtube, Google Video, blip.tv, Presenting Perl, yapc.tv and many others have a scattering of low quality footage. A centralised location that could compile video from a variety of sources, including its own would be a huge benefit, especially for those starting in the language. The efforts of yapc.tv and yapc.fm have tried to work on this, but maintainence and constant iteration is necessary. On a side note, recently Google had uploaded quite a comprehensive amount of footage on introducing Python, and whilst the sheer duration of it may not be appealing, achieving this for Perl would be significant. At present there are many videos out there (particularly on Youtube) that introduce Perl for beginners, but also introduce habits we may consider by today's standards as poor form.
More of today's Perl
To my knowledge, at present, there is no "The Idiot's Guide to Moose", "DBIx::Class in 21 days", "Catalyst for Dummies" and the likes. Whilst this might sound like a daft idea to you, I think it would be a brilliant idea to expand further the tutorials and guides on such tools, even if they aren't in print. The documentation, screen-casts, books and other material on modern day tools and practices is not the first thing people manage to find. I commend the Perl 5 Documentation Team and hope that they set a good standard of documentation. I know most of you guys are too busy hacking and making the code rock - but if you make the entry level to learn and understand the awesome things you make easy, the work of hacking on it and improving will be cut out, as more dedicated people will find it and improve it, fix your bugs and do the things you can't get around to doing for whatever reason. Great documentation is always in any project's favour.
Compare and contrast
Other languages have various learning material that compares and contrasts themselves from other similar languages, like Perl. Learning material, in my opinion could be more appealing by at least providing material that shows "You are familiar with doing 'x' in your programming language 'y', here is how we do that in Perl". Too much material teaches from the beginning to program, in my opinion, and not others who are looking to cross from other languages. This will also help to detract many myths that non-Perl programmers have on the language. mst had said that he would prefer to be criticized on what we do today, not what we were doing in the past - of the few things I agree that comes out of mst's mouth, this is it.
Evaluation from day one
Other languages also have gone to the efforts to put in-line evaluators in-browser, along with tutorials. This appears to be quite successful for introducing new people into the language. Yes, I know this is hard to do in a secure fashion with Perl, but I'm certain it would be no more difficult than those faced by others. Does this exist already? If so, where is it, because it needs greater accessibility. If it does not, who would host this or build it? I don't know. But if it's working for other scripted languages in assisting the introduction of syntax and structure to students, then it could benefit Perl.
As a programming language, the best "marketing" we can bring is to make the language more approachable, more appealing, more available and more accepted and used by people. The apparent problem just can't have money and pretty banners thrown at it because this is a language, a culture and community, a tool, almost a religion and not a product - at least in my mind.
These are just my ideas, and my thoughts. What are yours?
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