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

[J. Shirley]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 2:11 AM, Matt S Trout <mst at shadowcat.co.uk> wrote:
> 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.
>

\o/

>> >>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).
>

No.  I think qr/.*perl.*/  tends to look terrible.  The perl sites are
somewhat disjointed, they have wildly different looks and nearly all
of them are terrible.

I think the Catalyst site in its current form is nicer than most, once
we get the docpages and the wiki over to a unified layout it's just
that much better, but for now it's fine.

I also don't think Catalyst should have any additional preferential
treatment purely because of its connection.

>> >>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.
>

Maybe Schwern, Stevan and a few others would help not only in quality,
but in getting the reputation points out there.


>> >"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.)
>>

[replying out of order, because this is the only bit from Mike's post
I wanted to address]

I think that Y! would be a stretch, but if we provide significant
value add to their offerings it is entirely possible.  I don't know
what the significant value add would be, and I don't think that we can
really endorse YUI over jQuery or Dojo.

There are plenty of other perl-based companies.  If we could partner
up with jobs.perl.org, perhaps give automatic sponsorship for job
postings for enperl sponsors?  Just need to get the proper reciprocal
deals going, and I think a lot of companies would want to be
involved... Since it is a non-profit, I believe that means all
sponsorships would be tax deductible, right?  That would complicate
the partnership with jobs.perl.org I would think, but I'm not a
lawyer, accountant or anything of legal importance.

>> >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.
>

<crickets>