Better late than never - Perl School is awesome!
Three Saturdays ago I attended the fourth Perl School, which was about DBIx::Class.
Top line summary: it was brilliant!
This was the second course I've attended from Dave Cross, and the first one under the Perl School banner. Dave has been using Perl heavily for around two decades up to and including this year, which gives him a very deep knowledge that is also firmly up-to-date. He is also an excellent presenter and trainer, so all that knowledge I just mentioned comes pouring out freely in a way that is easy to understand.
I would say that Perl School is aimed at people more towards the "beginner" end of the spectrum, but the courses are focussed enough that as a Perl expert but a DBIC beginner I found it informative and interesting. I suspect that others would find the same holds for the "Object Oriented Programming with Perl and Moose" course that is also available. This is not a bad thing - I took this opportunity to bring along one of the less senior members of my team at Lokku, and I recommend others do the same. It also means that, unlike YAPC or LPW, the room was full of faces I didn't recognise. If those people can be converted into YAPC attendees then our community is going to grow and thrive.
I also know that Dave is looking to add more courses and to constantly improve Perl School, as is evident from the post-course survey and the conversations during the day itself. If you have any requests, comments, or ideas for courses please do contact him over on the Feedback form on the site.
If you're thinking to yourself that a course on Moose or DBIx::Class sounds great then you're in luck - Perl Schools 5 and 6 will be repeat performances of the Moose and DBIC courses, on April 6th and June 8th. At only £30 they are a bargain, there's really no excuse for not going!
I for one am really looking forward to seeing what happens with Perl School over the next year or so. I'm expecting great things :-)
CTO at Lokku Ltd.
Thanks for the reminder; I had even forgotten that Perl Schools existed. :-S
Sounds amazing stuff. Are these recorded and distributed ?
No problem, glad to remind you :-)
They are not recorded, but if you attend one then you get a password which gives you access to the slides. And I'll let you in on a little secret - that same password gives you access to the slides of the other courses as well ;-)
If you're outside of London and are not inclined to journey into our fair city, then it's also worth noting that Dave Cross runs Magnum Solutions (http://mag-sol.com/) which is available for all kinds of consultancy and training, and I believe he's willing to go to your work wherever it is and train your developers for you if your company is willing to pay his not unreasonable prices :-)
@Alex: Thanks for the blog post. Glad that you enjoyed it so much.
@Erik: Perl School is really cheap, so I don't have the money to do clever stuff like recording them. It's possible that something like that might happen in the future though.
I found the class really excellent and would recommend it to anybody wanting to start using DBIx::Class, or to improve their use of it.
If you manipulate databases or plan to, and don't know what DBIx::Class is, then you should definitely go.
Thank you Dave