On low attendance in TelAviv.pm meetings
Shlomi Fish published a post in Israel.pm that I think is worth reading by anyone from Israel (or Israhell), especially if you're from the Tel Aviv region.
In a year that dealt mostly with marketing, there seemed to be a decline in people showing up to meetings. Even though Tel Aviv University provided us with a room (and now a better room), with a projector, boards, air conditioner and a lot of space, few people show up.
Whatever the reason is, if these trends continue, the meetings will cease. If you care about Perl, if you like to learn, if you like to teach and if you want to spread it, these meetings are for you (or for you to drag someone else to :).
I find it hard to believe there are no Perl programmers in Tel Aviv (I personally know a few), and that they all know everything already.
Seriously, wake up and give a shout out to Shlomi (or even me) about why you aren't showing up. Whatever reason it is, there's bound to be some solution to it.
P.S.:
No, I didn't really understand what you wanted, Shlomi. :) My answer was "whatever parser you want to write, it has two steps. Step one is Parse::RecDescent." I thought it was funny.
Gots to do the bloggingz
I don't suppose you have any details on the sample Moose use-cases the audience proposed do you?
Someone said he's writing an NS Lookup client, so we took that as example. Created a Dig client with proper attributes, subtypes and the such. There was another example I currently don't recall.
It was difficult because I had to squeeze the audience for examples. There was one person who "works with objects" that hasn't said more than 2-3 words, another one which doesn't even program, and a few more who were late and didn't say anything at all.
Because what Shlomi is organising is an "Open Source club", not Perl Mongers, definitely not Israel.pm. The nature of the .pm meetings is for Perl people to meet, socialise and talk Perl, and while there might be elements in the "TelOSC" that might appeal to Perl people, Israel.pm it ain't.
Also, with local groups like Jerusalem.pm and Rehovot.pm, I think it's time to cease calling the TA gathering "Israel.pm" and start thinking about starting a true-to-form TA.pm.
Ostensibly it is an Open Source Club, but practically all the recent meetings revolved around Perl. Also, they were advertised as such (as least the advertising I've seen).
I'll not to be presumptuous, but from your words I understand that you won't attend an event that deals exclusively with Perl if the umbrella says "Open Source Club"? Am I getting this straight? If so, don't you think that's a bit off?
Regarding local groups, it's important to note that the local groups don't just uphold the local people. Usually they factor in people from the area. I, for example, don't live in Tel Aviv anymore but I attend both TelAviv.pm and Rehovot.pm, because they're reasonably close by. A good example of this solidarity and family-like behavior is London.pm and MiltonKeyes.pm, which host people not just from London or from Milton Keyes.
I come from Tel Aviv (where I work) to Rehovot to attend Perl-related meetings. It makes sense for people living _in_ Tel Aviv, _around_ Tel Aviv or even in a reasonable distance to attend Perl-related meetings in Tel Aviv. Wouldn't you agree?
"I understand that you won't attend an event that deals exclusively with Perl if the umbrella says "Open Source Club"?"
Hardly, I'd attend a good Perl presentation even if it's given during a "Java for Evil" event. But that's not the issue here; you are saying, "why is TA.pm dwindling?". My argument here is "the Open Source Club" isn't TA.pm, the way I see TA.pm. It might be semantics, as no one has the "rights" for the name, and I can do a 3 perl guys meeting in the local pub and call it Perl Mongers, however, you, and Shlomi are asking why perl people don't come to TA.pm meetings, and my simple answer is, because it's not TA.pm. You may as well be asking why don't Perl people attend a Ruby-on-Rails meeting.
So, according to that logic, I could do one of either:
- Change my question to "why aren't people coming to the Perl lectures of the Open Source Club?"
- Change the banner to "TA.pm meetings!" in the advertising.
I think it's purely semantic, but I'm willing to publish the next event as TA.pm. Will that make you come out and show up?