[epo-core] What are we going to -do- with this non-profit we have, anyway?

[Matt S Trout]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 06:01:10PM +0100, Mike Whitaker wrote:
> J Shirley wrote:
> >Probably the least favored response: marketing
> >
> >I'm viewing that aspect more as an investment.  If we market, and get
> >people interested in what we're doing (which means we have to do a
> >good job) then it stands to reason that we'll get more people and thus
> >more money.
> >
> >The downside is this could very well be subject to trends, which
> >allows the coffers to overflow one season and the next bubble we'll be
> >right back where we're at.
> 
> I'm in agreement on marketing.
> 
> >>I'm wondering if enperl shouldn't focus its money on getting stuff  
> >>visible
> >>rather than advancing the project's codebase
> >
> >Right, marketing :)
> 
> That'd be marketing, then.
> 
> I've said a number of times that IMO Perl's problem is perception,  
> pure and simple, and I've had any number of folks echo that.

Ok, good to see there's general agreement on that.

Marketing seems to be a dirty word in the perl community. Fuck 'em, if
they just want to hack fine, and we can spend actual money on the rest.
 
> >>So for example there was some talk about getting a new design for  
> >>some of
> >>the perl.org sites - maybe we could Just Pay A Damn Designer for  
> >>that.
> >>
> >
> >Please.  I think it's imperative to understand that in order for us to
> >appear as good as "those guys" it is imperative for us to look as good
> >as those guys (I'm not speaking of any "those guys" in specific,
> >really, so please don't take that as a rails reference).  Talking to a
> >usability person would also make sense.  How do we make the site
> >accessible for the various demographics we've discussed before (Green
> >coders, converts, business folks, system admins, etc)
> 
> See above re perception. We need shiny modern looking Web2.0y sites  
> (yes, I know Web2.0 is a pretty nebulous term, but there's a modern  
> style that looks slick to most folks, and gives the impression that  
> we actually have folks with a grasp of marketing/graphic design in  
> the organization, rather than just being a bunch of techies with an  
> axe to grind.

I'm not sure if jay thought we meant the Catalyst site, which is going
to be a community effort - I was talking about perl.org itself, which is
awful, and maybe later seeing if we can hold a contest to do a use.perl.org
redesign (this will mean me finding somebody who can talk to pudge and
see if he'd be willing, but I don't see why not).

> >>I think also maybe a -small- stipend, UKP50 or so, for useful  
> >>articles
> >>that contribute to the cause might be good. My experience is that  
> >>people
> >>don't tend to write these for the money anyway (I know several  
> >>perl.com
> >>article authors who never actually chased them up to get paid) but  
> >>I suspect
> >>it might be worthwile having a small cash chunk anyway.
> >
> >Imagine people in other countries, though.  If they could write an
> >article a week, that would nearly cover living expenses.  That's good
> >incentive.  I agree this is a good point, but we should have
> >publishing guidelines (as well as licenses).  Something along the
> >lines of we get unlimited edit and publication rights, and maintain a
> >joint copyright.  That will allow us a lot of flexibility to retool
> >the articles and evolve them.  One thing that truly pisses me off
> >about the perl.com articles is that they have horribly outdated
> >articles (like Catalyst) and no indication that shits done changed.
> 
> And we need a review panel so that we don't publish things in good  
> faith that are WRONG, or incomprehensible.

Somebody else should lead that, but I'll serve on it as a technical
adviser.

> >"Enlightened Perl presents the Perl Luminaries Awards, brought to you
> >by (Six Apart|Yahoo!|Shadowcat)" has a nice ring to it. I think that
> >to get corporate sponsors we'd have to have specific return points
> >-and- a dedication to it.
> 
> I like that. Might be worth asking Y! if they'd be willing :)  
> (Although we are phasing out Perl for new developments... but that's  
> apparently because we can't hire enough Perl devs, which comes back  
> to the perception issue.)
> 
> >The major thing that people want is a copy'n'paste solution.  If we
> >control the medium for this, we can control the perspective of copy
> >and paste.  People use phpBB3 and the plugin system there is shit, but
> >they use it because the expectations are already set and they believe
> >it is simple.
> 
> People use J2SE - Java plus its core modules - and J2EE - Java plus  
> even more modules - at least in part because there is a big thick  
> standard which says 'this is how you do X in Java'.
> 
> Perl has TMTOWTDI. Which is all very shiny, but makes big businesses  
> go weeble, because they don't want more than one way, they want a  
> nice big standard that allows them to say 'hire me N developers with  
> the following skillset' and know what they get as a result.
> 
> We need, IMO, to be the ones who write that big standard, and the  
> hell with TMTOWTDI.

Right. The key enperl project that's code related is $extended_core_name
- perigrin is kindly starting to prototype this in the form of Task::Kensho
so please do send suggestion to him about areas where there's too many
ways to do it and an opinionated suggestion should be there.

Somebody (I'll try to have a play with this, but anybody else interested
should too) should start learning Perl::Critic policy writing as well. I
want an enperl coding standard that can be shared across the community;
the closest we currently have now is DBP and I Am Not Happy With That.

-- 
      Matt S Trout       Need help with your Catalyst or DBIx::Class project?
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