August 2012 News

It was announced on the Perl Foundation homepage today that three new members were added to the marketing committee to help further promote Perl and the community to a wider audience.

It is our pleasure at Castle Shadowcat that two of the members added are Shadowcat related and come in the guise of Ian Norton and Jess Robinson, both recent additions to our illustrious ranks.*

We wish them both well in their new roles and hope that they further the excellent cause that this committee was created to tackle. No doubt we will have more to report in the coming months.

* They may be recent additions to Shadowcat but both Ian and Jess have been prmoinent and active members of the Perl community for many years and are well known in many channels and on lists as idn and castaway.

Mark Keating, Managing Director and de facto monarch at Castle Shadowcat, recently presented at YAPC Europe in Frankfurt on the need to support CPAN Testers.

With the work done by Shadowcat Staff for the community, in particular our sponsorship, support, programming time, promotion and dedication to the Enlightened Perl Organisation who organise the financial side of CPAN Testers, we do already sponsor them.

Many other people give up their valuable time and effort to support this worthwhile service.

However, Mark has pointed out that if 40 companies, institutions or individuals, each dedicate just twenty pounds (£20) a month to CPAN Testers then the majority of all their bills can be met.

Therefore Shadowcat Systems will be the first organisation to step up to that plate and donate twenty pounds each month. We encourage you to do the same at the CPAN Testers Donations Page on the Enlightened Perl main donation pages.

Join us and help keep this invaluable service alive and growing.

• CPAN Testers Home
• CPAN Testers Donations Page
• Main Donation Pages
• Enlightened Perl Organisation

In October the reknown trainer, tutor and presenter Damian Conway will be giving two workshops in London and Shadowcat staff will be there.

Mark has already written about Damian a few times on his Perly blog, the most noticeable being the recent The Dao of Presenting. In which he expresses a great admiration for Damian and the workshops.

Poster made by Mark Keating to advertise Damian Conway's presentation skills course

Shadowcat Staff in the form of: Jess 'castaway' Robinson, Mark 'mdk' Keating and Ian 'idn' Norton will be attending either the Regular Expressions or the Presentation Skills days.

Shadowcat Systems highly endorses Damian Conway as a presenter and trainer and we recommend the Presentation Skills Workshop to anyone who has to speak to an audience or in public, even at meetings to colleagues.

The Shadowcat Staff look forward to seeing you there.

• Perly Blog
• The Dao of Presenting
• Regular Expressions Workshop
• Presentation Skills Workshop

Next week sees the hosting of YAPC Europe 2012 in Frankfurt by the good chaps of the Frankfurt/German Perl Mongers.

This year Shadowcat will be ably represented by Jess Robinson, Mark Keating and Matt S. Trout. As always Mark and Matt will both be presenting talks and holding Lightning Talks.

I am sure that all the staff will have a good time and they look forward to meeting old and new friends while they are there as well as participating in the many conference events, discussions and talks.

Mark will also be in charge of organising the three Newbies from the send-a-newbie initiative organised by the Enlightened Perl Organisation.

The Shadowcat Staff hope to see you there.

• YAPC EU Homepage
• Mark's User Information
• Adventures in Marketing: Part Two‎ (20 minutes)
• Perl & CPAN‎ (Lightning talk)
• ‎A bag of Announcements‎ (Lightning talk)
• Matt's User Information
• State of the Velociraptor‎ (40 minutes)
• Distributed Daemon Discovery‎ (40 minutes)
• Moo - almost, but not quite, two thirds of Moose‎ (40 minutes)
• Jess' User Information

Shadowcat Systems has launched its new look website for 2012. The site has had its previous design for a few years and we felt that although it was an iconic look for the company it seemed used and dated.

Therefore Matt and Mark decided that 2012 was the time for a re-think and a re-fresh.

This is only the first stage of the new design and it complements a refactor of the code that drives the site. There will be further work being done throughout the remiander of 2012 and into 2013.

We hope that you like the new look and feel to the site, we will be keeping you up to date of the changes as we implement them.

As part of the ongoing need to have a closer link between the organisational elements of the Perl world and the broader community, coupled with its continuing support of the local community, the Perl Foundation has formed a Community Advocacy Committee (http://www.perlfoundation.org/ community_advocacy_committee).

Mark Keating has been asked by the Chair of the Committee, Yaakov Sloman, to sit as a member due to his links to the Perl Community and his strong support of the wider Perl world.

"It is yet again a great honour," said Mark blushing profusely, "to be asked to join by long-standing community members, and as a person they wanted on board was a privilege, I hope to similarly volunteer/recruit people to the marketing committee, starting with Yaakov as he has a lot of experience in the field and is a great communicator and advocate of the community."

It is a further display of the commitment that Shadowcat Systems has to the community and the recognition of such by our peers, and we at Shadowcat are enormously proud, yet appropriately humbled, by the honour bestowed on a staff member.

Ian Norton, co-Leader of the North West England Perl Mongers group, UKUUG Board member, Perl Speaker, event speaker, community advocate, Ironman Team Lead, project participant and event organiser, will officially join the Lancaster Shadowcat team on 6th August 2012.

Ian has been an outside developer, and part-time contract worker, at Shadowcat for a number of years, helping us out on projects that suited his specific talents. Finally we at Shadowcat were able to persuade Ian to come and join us full time and to work from the Shadowcat Offices in Lancaster.

Ian is an experienced developer with a wealth of experience under his belt in network and database management. He will be bringing a number of skills to the Shadowcat team including an affinity for RT, experience in training, presentation and the obvious computer literacy skills in Perl and Unix environments.

We are hoping that Ian's contribution to the Shadowcat team will be matched with further involvement in the communtiy of which he is a rising star and committed participant. We are also hoping that for Ian it is a journey of wonder and personal achievement (along with a joyous jog on the Shadowcat treadmill).