July 2012 News

As mentioned in a previous news itemn Mark Keating will be presenting talks as the guest speaker at the second Cluj.pm meeting, Adventures::In::Perl::Land, in Cluj on 9th August 2012.

After negotiation with the organisers Mark will be presenting two brand new talks that will be written especially for this meeting and will form a part of longer pieces which Mark wishes to build on in the coming year.

The two talks are: Three Big Ideas that Could be Done in Perl - in which Mark will discuss 3 things that he believes that we (the community) could build to help with the further marketing and evolution of our community and language; The Social Structure of a Community with the Family Perl, in which Mark will discuss the makeup of the community, how it reacts and how we need to guide and nurture it. Mark will also discuss his feelings about how the community interacts like a family and the various models for thinking about it.

As well as these two new talks Mark will be presenting a Lightning Talk, he will be doing the Perl and CPAN poem which is scheduled for most of the events he is attending this year.

The call for papers is still open, and the organisers are encouraging you to submit 15 minute talks or 5 minute lightning talks. The event is sponsored by the nice chaps at Evozon systems who are doing their utmost to build a great Perl community in Romania.

Mark hopes to see you there.

On 2nd March 2012 it was an enormous pleasure for us to send Shadowcat's own Matt S. Trout to Cluj (Romania) for the innagural meeting of Cluj.pm. It is now our great pleasure to announce that Shadowcat's Mark Keating has been invited to talk at the second meeting of the group on 9th August 2012.

This will be the summer meeting for Cluj.pm and is titled: Adventures::In::Perl::Land. The call for papers is still open until the 25th July and will be either 15 minute or 5 minute (Lightning Talk) slots.

"It is a great feeling to be invited to speak at the second meeting after Matt was a guest speaker for the first event," said Mark, "I am always humbled when people say they want to hear me speak, I am honoured that Evozon will be providing sponsorship to enable me to attend. A guest speakership is an enormous compliment especially when I attend so many great talks from other people in the community."

At this point Mark is still in discussion with the event organisers as to which talk(s) he will present on the night, but it will as usual be related to the Perl and to people and events in the community.

Mark will be taking his camera with him so hopefully there will be a chance to take a number of photographs of the event. Further details will be reported here and no doubt there will be at least one post on Mark's Shadowcat blog.

Last night, Wednesday 4th July, Matt S. Trout slipped and broke his hip on the towpath near to the Shadowcat offices.

Initial diagnosis is that the break is quite severe, but after an operation and a good period of rest Matt is expected to make a full recovery. More details of this will be made available and no doubt will be a feature of his blog in the coming weeks and months. This was a rare occurance in one so young and is likely to be one of those one-in-a-million events where a small fall combines with the odd landing.

When we spoke to Matt his first responses were at his dismay that something should happen in this fashion to someone so active (he walks almost everywhere) and sober (not always, just at this time).

Mark Keating has promised to write a short post to update people on his condition and to record some of the comments and speculatiions of friends and colleagues. We will keep the world updated on this site as more information is available.

In true hard-core coder style, Matt wasn't phased, as he put it "brain and hands still work fine, so no real affect to future plans for development and evolution of the environment."

If you wish to pass on any comments or regards please don't hesitate to contact Shadowcat or Mark Keating.

* This is one of the worlds worst puns, I apologise.

Jess 'Castaway' Robinson in the Shadowcat Offices

For the second time this week we are glad to host a Catalyst author at the Shadowcat Systems offices (Castle Shadowcat) in Lancaster. Jess Robinson, better known as castaway, a contractor for Shadowcat who normally works remotely is taking the option of visiting the offices as part of a work project.

Jess is famous for maintaining the DBIx::Class documents, helping with maintaining other document projects, writing the anticipated DBIx::Class book and has recently started work on a Grant from the Perl Foundation to improve Cross-Compiling Perl code on other devices starting with Android.

It's always a pleasure to host Perl folks at the offices and to eat and drink in the evenings with them. It is more of a pleasure when they are also your remote work colleagues.

If you are in the Lancaster area and want to hot desk and spend an evening with the Shadowcat folks then just contact us.

Kieren in the Shadowcat Offices

Once again we are glad to host Kieren Diment in the Shadowcat offices. Kieren last visited us four years ago when he was previously in the UK so when he returned this year he took the chance to visit once again.

Kieren hails from the sunny shores of Australia where he currently lives. He is the author, with Matt S. Trout - Jess Robinson - Eden Cardim (all of Shadowcat fame), of the Definitive Guide to Catalyst and the current Catalyst docs maintainer.

It's always a pleasure to host Perl folks at the offices and to eat and drink in the evenings with them.

If you are in the Lancaster area and want to hot desk and spend an evening with the Shadowcat folks then just contact us.