Perl and web history BOF
Date and time? Postponed to Tuesday evening at 5:30pm, after the lightning talks
Location? Idaho Room
Hello Perl friends! For this BOF I'd like to update whoever is interested about some Perl-related history work I’m doing, and start a conversation about what the community might get out of such historical work.
In particular I want to show clips from a short documentary I’m working on about the Everything Engine, an open source web framework (before the term 'web framework' was used) built in Perl in 1998-1999. The doc touches on the histories of Slashdot, Everything2.com and Perlmonks.com, and includes interviews with Nate Oostendorp, Rob Malda, Tim Vroom, chromatic and (soon) several other notable members of the Perl and open source communities.
I am very much an amateur filmmaker -- I briefly considered calling this BOF ‘Worse Movie Night’ -- but I hope you’ll join and offer your views on what such a documentary should or could be.
Also, I would like to hear what you get out of historical work like this. Is it simply nostalgia, or can this kind of thing offer inspiration? Relief that technology has advanced so much, or maybe a reminder that some things never change? Most importantly, how can history be a part of growing Perl and open source software today?
Although I will prepare the clips and a few slides, I hope others will bring topics to discuss, old yarns, etc.
Attending:
[dha]
Joelle Maslak (JMASLAK)