Introduction to Perl at BarCamp Kerala 8, India
The following is a brief summary of my Perl introduction/promotion talk at BarCamp Kerala 8, held in March 28th, 2010 at Tiruvalla, Kerala, India.
It was my first BarCamp, and the first other conference/camp that I ever attended apart from last year's YAPC::EU::2009 (which was a great experience, by the way!). I was very interested in having Perl promoted among a community that uses/promotes other programming languages. So, I thought of giving a talk and selected the title 'Y Perl?'. The talk concentrated on why Perl should be considered when there are myriad programming languages. Highlights were on the latest buzzwords in Perl, namely Catalyst, Moose and Padre, the community efforts such as Send-a-Newbie, Perl Monks and Perl Mongers.
Blog posts, pictures and tweets have been made on the session. You can find some at: http://bit.ly/brt0KV.
And, most of all, some people met me, expressing their interest in learning the Perl language. I am glad that I was able to encourage them to start taking up Perl. :-)
I am also intending to attend other camps/conferences (near and far), with the same motto of introducing/promoting Perl.
The difference makes the difference.
What other Perly events are in India? Honestly, aside from a few Perl Mongers groups with which I've never interacted, I don't know anything about Perl in India. That's odd since we almost speak the same language.
Is there any chance of a YAPC::India?
There are no Perl events in India as far as I know. There are some Perl Mongers here (http://www.pm.org/groups/asia.html), however they are either inactive, or their websites are not updated.
However, there are active user groups for Linux, Microsoft, Google Technology, Adobe, PHP, Python, et cetera in India. PHP and Python user groups have organised conferences as well. Most people have not heard of Perl, or have left Perl behind due to the popular myths and are not aware of the recent happenings in Perl. Perl needs promotion.
I have requested a Perl Mongers group (India.pm) which will act as a hub for all efforts in introducing/promoting Perl among non-Perl users, organising/starting up Perl Mongers groups, discussing Perl, and for other Perl activity in India. Then, my next aim is to activate dormant Perl Mongers. If everything goes well, YAPC::India::2011 will be a possibility, with the support of the international Perl community. With well known speakers like you participating, YAPC::India will be a great boost to Perl in India. :-)
There were some folks interested in organizing a perl conference in the Bangalore.pm Thread .
As far as I know there are a lot of Perl programmers in India but most of them use perl to get their jobs done and Don't talk much about it or not aware of the larger perl community . So yes it will be helpful to get them in one place
I have been noticing lots of Indians (assuming from their names) posting to the Perl beginners' mailing list. However, as you have written, they do not socialise over Perl. There is a need to introduce such an interest.
I want to read in the data (which is in a file)...and store to manipulate it (sort based on the number). As in C++, I would read in each person into a node format.
Zetaclear
I am Delhi based. We have monger group Delhi.pm mailing list but very few mails. I am also interested in some sort of Perl events. I think we have now many people working in Perl here in India but all scattered. I think we should seriously think about bringing all of us together with a country level monger meeting/event and then ask the International Perl community for something like YAPC. Also we should try to attract some sponsor.