[epo-core] new aims/membershgip section for site, proposed

[Mark Keating]

Mike Whitaker wrote:
>>>> - Eliciting the creation and/or improvement of tutorials,
>>>> screencasts, and other accessible documentation to make it easier
>>>> for new users to get started with modern perl
>>>
>>> Is it worth specifying reference documentation, books and training
>>> courses in that list?
>>
>> Maybe. Thoughts, everybody?
>
> The problem with books is there aren't many. Partly because of the 
> lead time on books (compared to the speed the likes of Moose is 
> evolving), partly because the major book publishers seem to be easing 
> off on Perl, and partly because, I guess, the 'notable' Perl authors 
> (as seen by the masses) aren't part of EP.
>
> By way of example, and obviously picking the big one:
>
> http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106/toc.html (5th Ed Learning 
> Perl ToC) does not mention the word 'object'. The last NEW O'Reilly 
> (rather than new editions of old standards) was Mastering Perl, and 
> that was over a year ago - before that there was Perl Hacks (2006) and 
> Intermediate Perl (which is a rename of the objects and references 
> book), and then PBP and the Testing notebook (2005). There are NO 
> upcoming Perl books on their site, and, IMO, like it or loathe it, 
> that's where a book needs to be if possible.
>
> As I think I've said before, this is an issue, because IMO a massive 
> percentage of the folks we want to reach still learn from the Camel 
> and Llama, think PBP is scary, wouldn't know how to write a unit test 
> in Perl and are still blessing hashes by hand, or at best with 
> several-year-old helper classes. Either that or they aren't using Perl 
> any more because they think that's what Perl IS.
>
> We need Enlightened Perl books, one way or another.
++Full agreement.

It might be worth noting that when I spoke to Josette (O'Reilly sales) 
in Copenhagen she indicated that O'Reilly were seeing a downturn in all 
their booksales and were focussing the business onto 
conferences/training/online more than anything else. This has two 
ramifications:

1. They are less likely to pick up books to print due to high costs and 
low sales.
2. They are more likely to pick up books that are presented as 
almost-complete package (written and edited and needing only final 
editing), especially if a proven market can be found - communtiy sites 
and reference material already in place and being used on other sites 
shows interest and a market.

So, to my mind, the more written material we have, in the form of 
articles, discussions, code docs the better. Especially if we have 
branding/association to EP.
> -- 
> Mike Whitaker    | Perl developer, writer, guitarist, photographer
> mike at altrion.org | Board member, http://www.enlightenedperl.org/
> Y!: tuxservers   | Blog: http://perlent.blogspot.com/
> IRC: Penfold     | Yahoo! UK Ltd - internal CMS team
>
>
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-- 
Mark Keating BA (Hons)              |  Writer, Photographer, Cat-Herder
Managing Director                   |  Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director/Secretary                  |  Enlightened Perl Organisation
http://www.shadowcat.co.uk          |  http://www.enlightenedperl.org
http://linkedin.com/in/markkeating  | 'Sufficiently Advanced Technology'