Technical Meetings

The technical meetings are a monthly event, that aims to provide the Birmingham Perl community with an educational night of talks. If you wish to attend, please feel free to come along and listen in.

Talks Wanted: If you would like to do a talk, whether a 5 minute lightning talk, a 15 minutes talk or longer, please let us know and we'll add you to the schedule. If we are unable to add you to the schedule for the next meeting, we will give you priority at a future meeting.

Guest Speakers: Are you visiting Birmingham at some point in the future, and would be willing to give a talk? Or are you based outside of the West Midlands, but would be willing to make a trek over to see us and present a talk? If so, then I'd love to hear from you. Drop me an email with details of when you are in Birmingham and the talk you would like to present. I'll then arrange a schedule and confirm.

See also:

Previous Technical Meetings

Previous technical meetings details are online, with links to slides where available.

3 December 2014
  • Your idea is dangerous and must be crushed [Steve Pitchford]
  • Regular expressions you need to stop writing [James Green] *
  • Developing with Catalyst as securely as possible [Colin Newell]
29 October 2014
  • What it means to be Agile [Melinda Marsh]
  • The Statistics of CPAN [Barbie]
  • CPAN Testers - How YOU Can Help [Barbie]
23 July 2014
  • Brown & White Papers [Alan Stanger]
28 May 2014
  • Web scale full stack software engineering - a rant through dev-space and time [Steve Pitchford]
26 March 2014
  • Creating a basic CPAN mirror/inject server using the Salt stack [Colin Newell]
  • Testing Traps and Effects [Barbie]
22 January 2014
  • failures [Colin Newell]
  • Creating Excel Spreadsheets with Template Toolkit [Barbie]
  • Introducing the UK Co-Ordinators [Barbie]
  • RemoteLib [Tony Edwardson] *
23 October 2013
  • Managing Multiple Git Repositories [Jon Allen]
  • The Future of CPAN Testers [Barbie]
25 September 2013
  • Perl Golf [Brian McCauley]
  • A Beginner's Guide To PSGI [Barbie]
22 May 2013
  • Rabbit MQ [Gavin Hillbrook] *
  • Jenkins .. an update [Colin Newell]
  • Managing Source Code Repositories with MR [Colin Newell]
15 August 2012
  • RabbitMQ in Perl [Gavin Hillbrook] *
  • OpenERP and Perl [Jon Allen]
  • The eco-system of CPAN Testers [Barbie]
23 May 2012
  • App::Cmd - A command-line app for building command-line apps [Jon Allen]
  • Jenkins and Jenkins::API [Colin Newell]
21 March 2012
  • App::Cmd - A command-line app for building command-line apps [Jon Allen]
25 January 2012
  • Labyrinth is/isn't a Framework [Barbie]
23 November 2011
  • MooseX::NotRequired [Colin Newell]
  • CPAN Dependency Heaven [Jon Allen]
23 February 2011
  • Fun with Fons [Mike Kemp]
  • Validating XHTML web pages [Barbie]
27 October 2010
  • Adding Plugins and User-Contributed Content with Inline:: and friends [Richard Wallman] *
  • Special Preview [Jon Allen]
22 September 2010
  • Migrating a PHP website to Perl/Catalyst [Steve Pitchford]
  • Moose - quick, easy and efficient OO in Perl5 [Richard Wallman]
28 July 2010
  • Into the Black: Exploring North Korea (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb) [Mike Kemp] *
26 May 2010
  • CPAN Testers 2.0 - "I love it when a plan comes together" [Barbie]
  • Accelerated web development with Catalyst [Richard Wallman] *
24 March 2010
  • How I avoided buying an iPhone [Jon Allen]
  • use Freecycle qw/reduce reuse recycle/; [Richard Wallman] *
21 October 2009
  • The Camel And The Snake [Jon Allen]
  • CPAN Testers Statistics ... Reloaded [Barbie]
23 September 2009
  • Web development trends in Python [Stuart Langridge - 'Aq'] *
  • Building a web mashup with Perl and Catalyst [Jon Allen]
  • Using Silverlight and Expression Blend / Sketchflow [Nick Harewood] *
22 July 2009
  • The Never Ending Jigsaw [Barbie]
  • The (Abridged) Statistics of CPAN [Barbie]
  • Introduction to regular expressions [Brian McCauley]
  • Data::Iterator::Hierarchical [Brian McCauley]
17 June 2009
  • The Statistics of CPAN [Barbie]
  • Surveying a YAPC [Barbie]
27 May 2009
  • PDF Manipulation with Perl (An Alternative View) [Andrew Ford]
22 April 2009
  • Deploying .NET applications [Colin Newell]
25 March 2009
  • Whizzy new JavaScript stuff [Stuart Langridge - 'Aq'] *
  • PDF Manipulation with Perl [Jon Allen]
25 February 2009
  • Data::Iterator::Hierarchical [Brian McCauley]
  • An Introduction To Maisha [Barbie]
22 October, 2008
  • Logging With Perl [Tom Hukins] *
  • Perl Source Filters [Tony Edwardson] *
  • Role Base Access Controls [Peter Edwards] *
24 September, 2008
  • An Introduction to Nanshe [Mike Kemp]
25 June, 2008
  • No Comply: or why the Paranoid Android Approach to Security is a Bad Idea [Mike Kemp] *
  • Photo Tools (Perl scripts for digital photography) [Jon Allen]
28 May, 2008
  • Understanding Malware [Barbie]
30 April, 2008
  • Why my iPhone sucks! [Simon Lewis]
  • Perl at The MS Scripting Games [Jon Allen]
26 March, 2008
  • Community Meets Cartography [Andy Robinson] *
27 February, 2008
  • Monotone: Distributed Peer-To-Peer revision control system. A natural successor to CVS [Tony Cooper] *
  • Developing Perl GUIs Using Glade and Gtk2 [Tony Cooper] *
28 November, 2007
  • WARP [Martin Wright] *
  • Option and configuration processing made easy [Jon Allen]
24 October, 2007
  • Talk about POE (title to be confirmed) [Chris Williams] *
  • And The Camel Shall Lie With The Lion [Andrew Ford]
26 September, 2007
  • A quick introduction to regular expressions [Brian McCauley]
  • The Perl m// s/// and qr// operators - an unconventional viewpoint [Brian McCauley]
  • The Perl pattern match variables [Brian McCauley]
  • Perl 5.10 Advanced Regular Expressions [Brian McCauley]
  • WTF are Perl6 grammars? (lightning talk) [Brian McCauley]
22 August, 2007
  • Cleaning up with Ajax [Mike Kemp] *
  • UseNet Gems [Brian McCauley]
25 July, 2007
  • An Introduction To Template Toolkit [Barbie]
20 June, 2007
  • Extended File Attributes [Richard Dawe]
  • Preparing For CPAN [Barbie]
  • Lightweight Ajax with OpenThought [Jon Allen]
23 May, 2007
  • Ban The Bog Troll (Lightning Talk) [Steve Pitchford]
25 April, 2007
  • Testing with Perl [Barbie]
  • Yahoo UI Demo [Colin Newell]
28 March, 2007
  • DOM Scripting, JavaScript, and Ajax [Stuart Langridge - 'Aq'] *
  • Selenium - An Introduction to Web testing [Barbie]
  • FOSDEM - A Lightning Talk [Richard Dawe]
  • Testing When You Don't Have Time [Tom Hukins] *
  • Making better use of vmstat (LT) [David Morris] *
28 February, 2007
  • Functional Programming - An Introduction [Jon Allen]
  • Using Phrasebooks - A Design Pattern [Barbie]
  • Recursive Iterator - A Brainstorm [Brian McCauley]
  • Cross-platform GUIs with Perl [Jon Allen]
22 November, 2006
  • GPS and Geospatial Information Systems with Linux [Alex Willmer] *
  • What I learned at YAPC Europe [Tom Hukins] *
  • Formal Theory, Informally [Jonathan Worthington] *
18 October, 2006
  • How I Learnt Perl (LT) [Colin Newell]
  • Lexing without parsing (HOP::Lexer) [Curtis Poe] *
27 September, 2006
  • Perl interface to a TAP Pager (LT) [David Morris] *
  • Graphing with Perl [Barbie]
  • What The People Say [Barbie]
26 July, 2006
  • World Tour - July Update [Barbie]
  • Security For Real People [Shane Coughlan] *
  • AJAX and OpenThought [John Jewitt] *
21 June, 2006
  • World Tour - May/June Update [Barbie]
  • Assuring Quality [Barbie]
  • Excel on the Command Line [Jon Allen]
26 April, 2006
  • 2006 World Tour - April Update [Barbie]
  • Project Splinescan [Andrew Lewis] *
29 March, 2006
  • On the Front Line: Convincing People the Inconvincible [Jono Bacon] *
  • An Introduction to the FSFE [Shane Coughlan] *
  • 2006 World Tour - March Update [Barbie]
22 February, 2006
  • BBC World Service Content Management System [Sherwin D'Souza] *
  • Algorithms: Think Parallel When You Sort [Alex Chudnovsky]
  • 2006 World Tour - February Update [Barbie]
30 November, 2005
  • substr() as subroutine argument [Brian McCauley]
  • History of a FAQ [Brian McCauley]
  • When does (pre|post)increment happen? [Brian McCauley]
  • Photo Tools [Jon Allen]
  • Extended attributes on files [Richard Dawe]
  • Web 2.0 at LPWs [Richard Dawe]
  • Smoking The Stats [Barbie]
  • So Damn Kludgy [Barbie]
26 October, 2005
  • Development Coverage [Barbie]
  • CGI::FormManager [Andrew Ford]
28 September, 2005
  • Perlish Pattern Matching (Part 2) [Jon Brookes]
  • High-Availability & DBI + MySQL [Steve Purkis] *
27 July, 2005
  • An Introduction to CGI::IRC [David Leadbeater]
  • Project: yacsmoke [Barbie]
  • Building A Scalable Search Engine [Alex Chudnovsky]
  • The Great White North [Barbie]
22 June, 2005
  • So I Was Trying To Be Lazy (Aggregation Hacks) [Richard Clamp] *
  • strace & ltrace [Richard Dawe]
  • Preparing For CPAN [Barbie]
25 May, 2005
  • GNU Guerilla [Marty Pauley] *
  • Perl IO Layers [Brian McCauley]
  • A Kick In The Monad [Marty Pauley] *
  • "Wyt ti'n medru siarad Saesneg?" And Why You Need A Phrasebook [Barbie]
27 April, 2005
  • XS Baggage: All at C with Perl [Andrew Ford]
24 November, 2004
  • Writing Filesystems in Perl [Richard Dawe]
  • The Perl Spectrum Emulator [Jon Mitchell]
  • From Module To Distribution [Barbie]
  • Perlish Pattern Matching [Jon Brookes]
27 October, 2004
  • A Free Software Payroll: Sense or Suicide? [John Pinner] *
  • A Computational Introduction To Security Systems [Shevek] *
  • Games::Fluxx - a work in progress [Brian McCauley]
29 September, 2004
  • Boys & The Black Stuff Mediterranean Meanderings [Barbie]
  • A quick rant I knocked up on the train about email Newsletters [Steve Pitchford]
  • Even More Usenet Gems [Brian McCauley]
18 August, 2004
  • Usenet Gems (YAPC remix) [Brian McCauley]
  • The Perl Auctioneer [Barbie]
28 July, 2004
  • An Introduction to Open Source [Tim Williams] *
  • Overview of the SimAgent toolkit [Aaron Sloman] *
  • Another Brick in the SmoothWall [Jon Brookes]
30 June, 2004
  • Qpsmtpd - The Perl SMTP Server [Matt Sergeant] *
19 May, 2004
  • Book Searching with Perl [Barbie]
  • Some Security Models [Shevek] *
28 April, 2004
  • More Usenet Gems [Brian McCauley]
24 March, 2004
  • Graphing Data with GD::Graph [Jon Brookes]
  • Overview of Digital Image Processing [Paul Whitehead] *
25 February, 2004
  • Some Perl Special Variables [Barbie]
  • Extended Testing [Barbie]
  • Introduction to Gtk Perl & Perl Qt [David Irvine]
  • subscriptio - Management of Subscriptions to Mailing Lists [Richard Dawe]
  • The Perl Auctioneer (Revisited) [Barbie]
07 January, 2004
  • Striving For Perfection [Barbie]
  • C++ Containers for Perl Programmers [Richard Dawe]
  • Building Mobile-enabled Web Applications [Jon Allen]
  • Usenet Gems [Brian McCauley]
29 October, 2003
  • Choosing A Templating System For Your Web Project [Tom Hukins] *
  • Cool File & Directory Modules [Barbie]
  • More Fun With Bluetooth [Jon Allen]
  • The Birmingham Job - The Story So Far [Steve Pitchford]
03 September, 2003
  • Abusing the internet, sending spam and how to block it [Martin Lee] *
  • A Continental Perl Adventure [Barbie]
  • A quick talk I knocked up on the train about that tie stuff [Steve Pitchford]
18 June, 2003
  • Device::Ericsson::AccessoryMenu [Richard Clamp] *
  • Calendar::List [Barbie]
  • The 'R' in Perl [Jon Allen]
  • Validating Parameters [Barbie]
  • Siesta [Richard Clamp] *
30 April, 2003
  • Class::Phrasebook [Barbie]
  • Perl For Distributed Processing [Jon Allen]
  • A Quick Guide To XSL-FO [Steve Pitchford]
  • An Introduction To Regular Expressions [Barbie]
26 February, 2003
  • The Perl Auctioneer [Barbie]
  • Overloading in Perl [Dave Cross] *
  • Building Tests with Test::Builder [Mark Fowler] *
  • Perl For The People [Dave Cross] *
  • The Complete 2002 Perl Advent Calendar (abridged) [Mark Fowler] *
23 October, 2002
  • Life, The Universe and Perl [Steve Pitchford]
  • An Introduction to NMS [Barbie]
  • My Adventures with Flash [Steve Pitchford]
  • YAPC::Europe::Munich::2002 [Barbie]
27 March, 2002
  • AxKit [Matt Sergeant] *
  • Sub::Parameters [Richard Clamp] *
  • Pod::Coverage [Richard Clamp] *
  • Devel::Debug - An Exercise in Getting It Right [Barbie]
  • Acme::Your [Richard Clamp] *
  • Target::Assess [Robin Szemeti] *

* = Guest Speaker