August 2017 News

The Lightning Talks on Day Two of the Perl Conference in Amsterdam during the week of 7th-11th August had a distinctly Shadowcat feel about them.

To begin with Mark Keating, who has foolishly declared that he will run the 2018 YAPC[1], gave a talk about the 2018 event and its host city. Mark also took the opportunity to give a gift to the current YAPC team.

Then Errietta Kostala, a former Shadowcat Apprentice and currently a member of FairFX’s team, gave her first ever talk at a Perl conference with a comparison between Catalyst and Mojolicious.

Next up Paul Evans, who is an occasional sub-contractor for SC on our projects and a member of our alumni, gave a great talk on the full stack developer which was really well received.

Then came the current Shadowcat Team:

Tom gave a great Role-Play based talk about some of the perils of production as an encounter with hit points for good and bad behaviour.

Our new apprentice, Finn, gave us a short talk about how to break your Perl in a single line.

While Matt did his usual high-order levels of insanity with a fast-paced talk called AA (short for AAAARRRGGGHH - amongst other things).

It was great to be so well represented at the event and well done to all our staff, past and present, for giving a great show and account of themselves.

Notes

[1] The Perl Conference is also known, especially in the Perl Community, as the Yet Another Perl Conference. Because we are inclusive to new audiences as well as our community we will use both The Perl Conference in Glasgow and Yet Another Perl Conference Europe 2018 interchangeable (#TPCiG #yapceu2018).

As part of our commitment to the community we allow Shadowcat staff to work on community projects during work hours, it is another way we like to give back.

Recently Mark has been spending some time working on the Perl 6 Booklet (Introducing Perl 6) for distribution in both community and outside at other events.

This has taken some time to compile and revise and much of the work to produce it has been done on Shadowcat time. The costs of printing will be carried by the Enlightened Perl Organisation.

The new EPO booklet

The booklet is also available as a PDF on The Dog Ate My Bookshop website and you can freely download it from there. It is also available on Github if you would like to pull a version and print and distribute it locally. You can also request to join as an editor/contributor.

Notes

[1] There are not always notes, but since I wrote this it seems that might be wrong!

A short while ago we said that three of the happy meat-forms of Castle Shadowcat would be trekking across the channel for the European Perl Conference. Since those times a small change has occurred. Shadowcat has a new apprentice magi in the form of young Finn (as reported in the news article from just a day hence) and being the kindly souls we are we felt it fun to drag him along with us.

So if you are at the European Perl Conference next week take a weary eye and give it a fresh polish in anticipation of a small crop of ‘catters who will be gracing the halls and stages of Perl land.

In other, and much shorter, words: we hope to see you in Amsterdam.

Notes

[1] The Yet Another Perl Conference Europe (YAPC::EU) has been re-branded, or rather old-branded, to be The Perl Conference. This is officially The Perl Conference:Amsterdam.