Makoto Nozaki

Read volume 1 here.

In my last post, I talked about some of the big things TPF (The Perl Foundation) does. This time, I'll discuss some of the smaller stuff I've handled at TPF, often with help from others, and my misses along the way. My opinions are my own.

White Camel Awards

The White Camel Awards, started by brian d foy in 1999, were created to honor Perl community contributors, who, like ninjas, do all the hard work but never seem to get noticed. brian personally picked the winners each year until he stepped down in 2018. While many people contribute to the Perl community, their efforts often fly under the radar. I mean, organize a Perl event every year and your name still wouldn't make it outside the venue. Tough, right?

In 2022, I took over the award with TPF, with brian's blessing, to keep this tradition alive.

Quite honestly, running this award is not as easy as it sounds. The Perl community is vast and diverse, and it's way too easy to get caught up in what's happened recently. But this award is all about recognizing those quiet contributors who've been helping out for years, sometimes even decades.

Right now, I am working on selecting the third winner of my tenure. While I've gotten better at deciding who deserves it, I know one thing: you can't please everyone―no matter who we choose, somebody will grumble. But that's a part of life. Agree to disagree. Celebrate the winner, and crown someone else next year.

My miss is that I didn't know the best way to find the right people. Public nominations often spotlight popular figures rather than hidden gems. If we rely on public votes, it'll turn into a popularity contest.

We will announce the 2024 winner in December, and they will be celebrated at our conference in 2025.

Transparency

Like I said in the previous post, I value transparency, especially when it comes to nonprofits. For instance, when people donate money, they should know where it's going.

Back in 2013, during my first year as the Grants Committee Secretary, I started publishing financial reports (this for example). I kept it up until passing the role to the next generation.

Transparency within the Perl community is just as important. While TPF's presence was well known in North America, it was often invisible to communities outside of the continent. So, when I joined the board, I started hitting up Perl events worldwide to spread the word about what TPF does and why we exist. I visited Perl events in Spain, Germany, the UK, Latvia, Belgium, and Japan. Besides promoting TPF, these trips helped me build relationships with future donors and volunteers and I deeply appreciate the local groups who hosted me.

However, here's the miss: I haven't kept up those relationships as well as I should have. My last Perl trip to Europe was in 2020. Then COVID hit. COVID was hard.

Diversity and Outreachy internship

If transparency is my priority number one, diversity comes in a close second. During my time on the Grants Committee, we had members from all over the world―USA, UK, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and India. And while the gender ratio wasn't perfect, we did have some diversity there, too.

In 2020, I pushed for TPF to rejoin the Outreachy internship program, which connects open-source projects with people from underrepresented groups in tech. Our participation has continued every year until now. I needed a mentor who can help interns to develop Perl applications, and with the mentorship help from Open Food Facts, we have had some really great results.

This year, we had more than 70 people show up in the selection process, and we selected one intern. It's a win-win: TPF demonstrates our commitment to diversity, the mentor organization gets a project done, and the intern gains valuable experience and gets paid.

If you are curious to learn more, my fellow board member Bruce gave a talk at this year's conference in Las Vegas.

Google Season of Docs and Google Summer of Code

In 2021, we also participated in Google Season of Docs, where we worked on auditing Perl documentation. Jason McIntosh selected a technical writer, and together, they completed the project. I mainly handled the logistics so I can't take too much credit. The nice part about Google's program is that they cover all the costs including the writer's pay, travel stipend, and even a donation to TPF.

Now for the miss. I couldn't turn it into an annual thing. Finding mentors who are willing to guide newcomers to our languages is hard―whether it's for Google's program or Outreachy. We also applied for Google Summer of Code across multiple years, and we are still waiting for that acceptance letter.

Hiring the next generation of Board members

As I mentioned in the previous article, TPF didn't onboard any new board members between 2010 and when I joined in 2016. While stability is great, fresh faces and new ideas are also essential for long-term success.

In 2018, I posted a public nomination process (because, you know, transparency) and seven new people joined after me. I also had difficult conversations with long-time members who got other commitments. While unpleasant, these conversations led to voluntary resignations, which made room for new blood.

But again, I missed the mark on making this a regular thing. Board members tend to stay indefinitely without re-elections, and I didn't push for change, especially when we were dealing with other organizational challenges around 2021.

Relying on the same people forever isn't healthy. Knowledge doesn't get passed on, and if someone steps away, things can fall apart ("bus factor"). I've been Secretary for eight years now, and honestly, I'm pretty sure no one else knows exactly what I do.

What's next? At the very least, I should implement re-elections every two years for board members with officer titles. Regular members should also confirm their willingness to serve another term.

Supporting community events

One more thing I started focusing on is supporting community events. Beyond our annual conference, there are a lot of community events, like workshops or hackathons. COVID hit our communities hard, but with events bouncing back, I'm exploring how TPF can help. This year, I worked with event organizers to sponsor Perl Toolchain Summit and London Perl & Raku Workshop.

I've also thought about supporting local meetups. It will be a bit odd for TPF to start buying beers, but paying for the platform (Meetup.com or physical space) won't be a bad idea.

Other good stuff TPF does

I'm not heavily involved but TPF manages trademarks, domain names, such as cpan.org, though we don't run services on them, and marketing. So if you see Perl or Raku being used in cool ways, there are always volunteering and collaboration opportunities.

If you found this post useful or just interesting, feel free to reach out via X, email, any other social network I'm in, or just drop a comment below. Stay tuned for the next round, where I will write about TPF financials and our misses.

P.S.
TPF (aka TPRF) supports Perl and Raku languages, but I used the term TPF as most of what I've mentioned here relates to the Perl side except for the board members bit.