NeilB

Celebrate the inauguration of CPAN on the 16th August by doing something related to CPAN: release something, blog about your favourite module, or email its author thanking her or him.

On the 16th August 1995, Andreas König uploaded Symdump 1.20 to CPAN. There were other things already on CPAN, but this was the first true upload, to be followed by more than 6,500 people who have released over 35,000 distributions in 230k releases.

So it seems appropriate that 16th August be designated CPAN Day, to celebrate CPAN, and all the authors who've made it what it is.

On Saturday 16th August this year, why not make your own small contribution to CPAN and its community?

Here are some suggestions:

• Release something to CPAN! Maybe even your first upload ever -- this would be an auspicious day to choose for that. If you're not sure how to go about that, start off by looking at the CPAN FAQ. If you want more help, just ask!
• Release a bugfix for one of your existing distributions, or a new feature.
• Release documentation improvements for one or more of your modules. Send doc improvements for to someone else, for one of their modules.
• Send a pull request to someone else for their CPAN distribution. It doesn't have to be anything big, it could just be to fix a typo, or add an entry to their SEE ALSO section.
• Donate some money to the Perl Foundation.
• Think of your favourite CPAN module and email the author or current maintainer and thank them for their work on the module, and why specifically you like this module.
• Blog about CPAN: modules you admire, improvements you'd like to see, ideas for new modules.

Other suggestions?

CPAN and PAUSE record their timestamps in UTC — please remember this if you plan to do a release on CPAN day!

CPAN Day was the brainchild of Philippe Bruhat (BOOK), who came up with the idea on 4th June 2014.