You Can Help MetaCPAN by Helping the QA Hackathon
As I was spending some time updating the list of MetaCPAN sponsors, it occurred to me that we had not listed the QA Hackathon as one of our sponsors. I came to realize that this was a fairly significant omission since, if you run the numbers, the QA Hackathon is one of our biggest sponsors. The hackathon has sponsored a MetaCPAN hacker for 3 years now. 2011 (Amsterdam), 2012 (Paris) and 2014 (Lyon). The 2012 and 2014 sponsorships involve me flying across the Atlantic and all 3 years involved hotels, meals, etc. If you take all that together, it really adds up.
Being involved for me this year is huge, mainly for the reason that I rarely get more than a couple of hours in a row to work on MetaCPAN. That is to say, pretty much every day offers some MetaCPAN issues that needs to be dealt with, but I don't get a lot of free time to sit down and write some code or just chip away at with the bigger issues. Now I've got 4 days in a row (plus some of my travel time) to sit down and deal with the backlog and even maybe start on some new dev work. It will give me a chance to clear out some bugs, get things to be a little better organized and use my powers of persuasion on my roommate to start pushing more code towards MetaCPAN. There is also the obvious advantage of being in a room full of people whom I can tap on the shoulder for help, advice, rants etc. I'll also be available to them to explain how parts of MetaCPAN work, address pain points for them etc. Some things can be solved better and/or faster in person than they can on IRC.
Now, MetaCPAN doesn't generally accept cash donations, but we do occasionally have someone ask if they can send us a few dollars. If you've ever thought you might want to donate something to MetaCPAN, I'd encourage you to consider a donation to the QA Hackathon. The hackathon accepts corporate sponsorships but also donations of any size from individuals. If you want to send a few dollars to help support this great event, it's very much appreciated. As an individual you can help us by helping the QA Hackathon.
I hack on MetaCPAN, CPAN modules and other fun stuff.
And don't worry about giving too much... as is the tradition since the Amsterdam edition in 2011, any surplus on the QA Hackathon 2014 budget will be donated to the organisers of the next edition.
Metacpan is big enough now that there's a good case for a metacpan-specific minihackathon. Is there a location that is close to many of the core authors/contributors? I'd gladly champion for a TPF grant for such a thing.
Thanks @Ether. We might be skewed slightly towards North America, but it's close. Europe might actually more accurately be the middle point.