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.

Unfortunately it seems all our regular haunts for technical meetings have all been booked up, as well as a few others that have since come to light. It seems our bookings for The Victoria have been erased since the new managementhave taken over, so I'll have to rebook those for future months.

So, for this month (that's Wednesday 24th September ... tomorrow if you're reading this today!) we are relocating to The Old Joint Stock. I have booked the Club Room, which is on the ground floor to the rear of the building, if you haven't been before. If you arrive early, say you're with Barbie from Birmingham Perl Mongers and are there for the meeting, and you should be fine. The pub serves food, so order when you get there, and we'll plan to start the presentation from about 8pm.

Mike Kemp will be presenting his new security tool, Nanshe, so please come along and take a look. He's also looking for anyone who might like to get involved in the project, so he'll be delighted if anyone would be willing to help him out.

Normal service should resume next month.

In response to our frequent visits to MiltonKeynes.pm this year, the guys have very kindly offered to come and visit us. However, not only have the agreed to visit, some have even agreed to give talks for our October Technical Meeting on Wednesday October 22nd.Details are still being organised, but expect a good selection of talks.

September's meeting is to feature another security talk by Mike Kemp, with more on his current projects, which looks likely to generate even more healthy discussions. If anyone wants to be added to the list for September or November, please let me know. 

Unfortunately our technical meeting is again suffering this week, as we still don't have a venue. I'm hoping that The Victoria has a new landlord/landlady next month, so will try and find out whether we can use the upstairs meeting room from September. Due to holidays and YAPC::Europe, I also haven't been prompting anyone to do a talk this month either, so we have nothing prepared. As such the August meeting is being cancelled. Apologies for the late notice.

However, I do have some plans to invite some guest over the coming months, but I'm also keen to get anyone wanting to promote their current project or  willing to show us something cool and unusual with Perl. I'm also looking for anyone willing to have a go at some beginner level talks, in all aspects of Perl, as we do have a few newish recruits these days, and it all helps to encourage those who are only just learning Perl to come along and get something out of night. If you have a talk idea, please get in touch, and we'l see what we can do about getting you on the bill :)

As Jörg Plate is in town this week, we have invited him to a special emergency social on Wednesday. Feel free to come along too and join us. For further details see the Next Meeting with more details of where and when, but we plan to be in The Wellington from about 7pm onwards.

After a successful QA Hackathon in Oslo earlier this year, Birmingham.pm are delighted to be able to announce that a second QA Hackathon will take place in Birmingham, UK. Dates have yet to be confirmed, but we expect the event to take place in March/April 2009. More details will forthcoming soon, so please check the new website - qa-hackathon.org - and the usual news outlets, and we will make further announcements in due course.

We are happy to talk to anyone wishing to sponsor the event, and if you or your company would like to contact the organisers, please do so at organisers@qa-hackathon.org.

Okay, they weren't exactly found, and they're not astrological planets either, but they're still new(ish).

First off, Planet Perl, which has actually been around for quite some time. A collection of Perl related blogs, including a few from use.perl, which you can read via the web page, or from an RSS feed. If you have a Perl blog, feel free to email Robert and Ask to be added to Planet Perl.

Following on from Planet Perl, Hex has created an alternative site that aims to be a companion site called Perlsphere. Likewise you can read the blogs via the web page, or through the RSS feed. Hex is also keen to get more people adding their Perl blogs to the feed, so feel free to email him to added to Perlsphere.

Thirdly, we now have a Planet feed specifically for our YAPC conferences from around the world, at Planet YAPC. Run by The Perl Foundation , the planet uses Plagger to search for blog entries from the likes of bloglines, technorati, etc, looking for any mention of the word YAPC. As such if you're planning to attend a YAPC somewhere in the world, get your blog listed on a blog rating site, and you'll find your post hopefully appearing. Once again you can read the web page, or plug the RSS feed into your favourite aggregator.

So if you've been think how you can add to your thirst for Perl knowledge, now you have 3 new sites to read. Enjoy.