After several months of planning, the 2009 QA Hackathon finally happened with 24 attendees working on a variety of QA activities over the 3 days from 28th March to 30th March. All the attendees seemed to have a great time, and got a lot of work done, not least of which was the release of Nested TAP and the further design and work on Metabase for use within the CPAN Testers infrastructure.

Some reviews of the weekend have already started to surface, and you can read them by clicking the links below:

• Initial Summary by Adam Kennedy
• Test::Builder2 write-up by Colin Newell
• What happens at a Hackathon? by Piers Cawley

Many thanks to all the attendees who came along and got involved, and a big big thank you to all the sponsors, without who we wouldn't have been able to host the event.

For the March Technical Meeting, Birmingham Perl Mongers are delighted to have our friend from LUG Radio fame, Stuart Langridge. Stuart will be taking us on a tour of the new features available in the Javascript language, that you perhaps never knew about. As per usual we'll be at The Victoria on John Bright Street (5 mins from New Street/Moor Street stations). All are welcome, and it's free entry (you'll need to pay for your own beer though ;)).

Once again the time has come around for the Google Summer of Code 2009. This year The Perl Foundation, co-ordinated by Jonathan Leto, are again applying to be a mentor organisation. However, it cannot be a mentor organisation without projects, students and mentors.

If you are an eligble student, and would like to participate in the Google Summer of Code 2009, then read Jonathon Leto's blog post Applying to Google Summer Of Code 2009 with The Perl Foundation. Projects can be anything relating to Perl, whether that's wanting to work on Rakudo or Parrot projects, a CPAN module, your favorite Perl application, or even hacking on the Perl 5 internals. Everything will be considered. If you need some ideas, have a look at the previous suggestions for 2008.

It's also worth noting that the Google Summer of Code is not just for students, as The Perl Foundation are also looking for anyone willing to act as a mentor. As students can submit ideas for all sorts of projects, The Perl Foundation are looking for a wide variety of knowledge bases in mentors. You don't need to be a Rakudo, Parrot or Perl 5 internals hacker if the project is for a CPAN module or a Perl application you happen to use. So if you think you can offer some experience and guidance to a student for the Google Summer of Code, please consider completing the Mentor sign-up form (see also Jonathon's Mentor blog post).

You'll need to sign-up soon, as the deadlines are fast approaching.

Since YAPC::Europe in 2006, when Birmingham hosted the annual european Perl conference, YAPC::Europe has run a survey among the attendees. The data and feedback have been very useful for organisers to see where their audience's interested are, and where they perhaps should be. The results of the 2006 and 2007 surveys have been previously published, but there was no single central source to record all that information.

As such, the website YAPC Conference Surveys was launched this week, to act as a focal point for the past and future surveys. For 2009, alongside YAPC::Europe, the YAPC::NA will also be running a survey after the event. In addition both conferences will be featuring the ability to feedback on talks, tutorials and master classes, so that speakers can get a better understanding of how their presentations went.

See the YAPC Conference Surveys website for more details.

The presentations given by Brian and Barbie at February's Technical Meeting are now online. See the Talks pages for the appropriate links.

We've been a bit lax in uploading talks for a while, so expect a few new entries over the next few weeks as we update the backlog :)

As some may be aware Birmingham Perl Mongers are organising the 2009 QA Hackathon. The event will be held in Birmingham, and is a 3-day event, taking place from Saturday March 28th to Monday March 30th 2009.

The event will be a coding workshop for people involved in Quality Assurance, testing, packaging, CPAN, and other related projects. Though not necessarily exclusive to Perl projects, many of the attendees will be planning to work on projects with a direct benefit to the Perl language. Already suggested are plans to work on TAP, CPAN Testing, CP5.6ANamong others. The event in 2008 proved very productive and we hope that the 2009 event will be equally as beneficial to everyone.

Foillowing up on the last news item, I should also mention that we also have a Facebook group. Feel  free to join and catch up with any special events we announce. Our current special event is the Christmas Social, so please add yourself if you didn't get an invite and plan to come along.

For those familiar with the professional networking site, LinkedIn, you may be interested to learn that Birmingham Perl Mongers now has it's very own group. Feel free to join the group and tell others about us. There are several Perl related groups already on LinkedIn, as well as several Perl Monger user groups that have added themselves. The networking side does work, and it can be a more professional way to associate yourselves with coworkers (past and present).

As we may be venturing to The New Inn in Harborne for our Christmas Social, Steve suggested we at least try it out to make sure everyone was happy with the choice of venue. As such we'll once again be heading out of town (slightly) for this month's social. If you're not sure where the pub is, please check our social meetings page for directions and details.

Following an motion passed at the AGM in January, as of October 2008 our membership fees have changed. For those wishing to join Birmingham Perl Mongers as full paid up member, the fees are now £25 for waged and £10 for unwaged. The membership fees help to run the company behind Birmingham Perl Mongers, for such items as administration fees to register with Companies House and also to help costs of hosting the website and related projects. To become a member please see out Terms & Conditions of Membership.