Memoirs of a Roadie

Are We the Waiting

Posted on 27th August 2011

With over a week gone since the end of YAPC::Europe 2011, I'm please to see we already have 102 Conference Survey responses and 541 Talk and Course Evaluations submitted. This is once again a fantastic start to the responses and very much appreciated. However, there are still a further 165 who can still submit their Conference Surveys, and everyone still has time to submit feedback to the speakers of the talks and courses they attended.

If you haven't received your keycode email, please contact me and I will resend it. You still have 3 weeks until the close of the surveys, so please try and take some time to complete them. It really does help to improve the conferences for everyone.

For those interested in the results of the YAPC::NA 2011 surveys, although the speaker feedback has been sent out, I had to postpone my work on the Conference Survey due to some CPAN Testers issues and my attendance at YAPC::Europe 2011. As such, I am now preparing these results for the YAPC Conference Surveys website and hope to have an announcement within the next few days.

Rearviewmirror

Posted on 19th August 2011

Earlier this week I attended YAPC::Europe 2011. Many thanks to Andrew, Alex and all the others involved with bringing the conference to life, it was well worth all the effort.

During the conference I gave two talks. The first was my main talk, Smoking The Onion - Tales of CPAN Testers, which looked at how authors can use the CPAN Testers websites to improve their distributions, as well some further hints and tips for common mistakes spotted by testers over the years. It also looked at how some of the sites can be used by users to see whether a particular distribution might be suitable for their purposes or not. The talk seemed to go down well, and it seems a few were disappointed to have missed it, after discovering it wasn't my usual update of what has been happening with CPAN Testers. Thankfully, I did video the talk, and I think the organisers also have a copy, so expect to see it on YAPC TV and Presenting Perl at some point in the future.

Photo by Jon Allen

My second talk, Perl Jam - How To Organise A Conference (and live to tell the tale), was a lightning talk to help promote my book and the YAPC Conference Surveys. The book is currently a work in progress, and I'd like to get more feedback from anyone who has been an organiser of a YAPC, Workshop or Hackathon, as well as any photos that would help to highlight particular sections of the book. If you think you could help, please take a look at the GitHub repository and send a pull request with any updates you think appropriate.

Congratulations to Frankfurt.pm for winning the chance to host YAPC::Europe 2012. See you next year.