Ideas for perl.org.in | an Indian connecting platform
Friends,
I have found certain outward challenges in perl and have always found someways to overcome them. Some of the common challenges i found specific in India are:
India being such a large country have a number of software development centers across it like: Noida, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune etc. Though there are excellent developers in perl but they are less in number and find them sparsely located across these development centers , ie. few in each centers which makes connecting with each others rather difficult. Though there are some perl monger and other groups here but still as the developers are geographically sparsed in India, they dont connect well, eg. a developer in Delhi will not want to subscribe to Bangalore group because he may not find any merit at it. Same is with the recruiters .
My idea is to create a all india perl group, and also list profiles of most of the people here. There will be a weekly or monthly mailer from the group with a list of opportunities , I am willing to use the domain perl.org.in for this and use catalyst for the same.
Also we will plan remote sessions / google hangouts.
Any person here want to comment on this, and / or will want to contribute towards the design / anything just comment here or at https://twitter.com/perl_org_in ?
I blog about Perl.
I think using the internet to connect people spread over a huge land mass is a great idea.
And, have you considered using a Google Group for this?
People using Marpa::R2 have one called marpa-parser, and it works marvellously.
I think such a group could have a geographic basis (or should that be geographic-busting basis :-) just like it can have any other basis.
There is also the Perl Mongers in India LinkedIN group you could use. It has more than 500 members.
There have been attempts to get indians to start using the core IRC community platform, IRC, in the channel #bangalore.pm but for some reason none of them ever stick around. The only remotely persistent indian presences within Perl i am aware of are the US-based guys who do cool stuff, and the people who drop in #win32, try to ask questions in broken english and disappear without waiting for answers.
I can't offer you much help in what to do specifically to set up a successful indian community, but would strongly recommend talking to people and figuring out why they just never stick around.
I think any sort of community building is a wonderful effort, to be commended. Solving a low-density issue is a hard problem, and the internet-based solutions you suggest sound like good ones. I can think of two basic issues you will need to solve.
First, you must develop a critical mass. This will be difficult if you don't offer much of an incentive to join the group. The three incentives I can think of are (1) mutual support and help, (2) social connection, and (3) free advertising for freelancers. You might be able to think of others. How would your system incentivize folks to join?
The best idea I can think of is a email list. If you provide a mail list or discussion forum, you will have to fend off free-riders. These are folks who join the group simply to ask the community members to solve their problem for them. This happens (or used to happen) with inordinate regularity on the LinkedIn Perl group. I strongly recommend that you establish strict community standards about what is acceptable, and what will happen if you don't follow them.
FWIW, I like the idea of using an email list for this purpose. On IRC, if you stop participating, you stop hearing from the group. With email, messages keep coming unless you explicitly opt-out. This should help retain good folks even when they step away for a little bit.
I like the idea of a mailing list, may be coupled with a wiki of profile of users.
If so which wiki software should i use if not create one?
I will be back with the mailing email but what wiki should i use.
thanks