Last year, I stumbled across http://presentingperl.org and discovered Yet Another Perl Conference, and the other hackathons, meetups, and workshops that the Perl community organizes all over the world. I immediately wanted to attend, but I wasn’t able to arrange to go. This year, I’m lucky to be working at DRDC for the summer, and they’ve given me time off to attend YAPC::NA 2011 in Asheville, NC.
I’ll be in Asheville Sunday afternoon, so if you have any ideas for amusement, food, or a pre-conference meetup, I’d be happy to hear it. The conference runs Monday to Wednesday, and on Thursday, I’m heading to the Moose class Dave Rolsky is putting on. I’ve taken a look at the Moose documentation several times, but I’ve never really had cause to use it in any of my own projects. I can cargo cult with the best of them, but as more of the projects I use or contribute to use Moose, I find myself falling behind. I’m sure Dave can enlighten me.
I’m really excited to go to my first conference ever! I’ll hopefully meet some of the people I’ve been working with, get a healthy dose of Perl Kool-Aid, and share my point of view of Perl as a language and a community as a motivated beginner. You might even see me giving a lightning talk… who knows!