In the year 2000, the world was a different place. Y2K was still fresh in our memories, many of us had just partied like it was 1999 and Mark Fowler had given up eating chocolate.
Even though there would be no chocolate in the near term, Mark still wanted to enjoy opening 24 to 25 new doors in December. And so the The Perl Advent Calendar was born. You may be surprised to know that the first post, from Dec 1, 2000, wasn’t a whimsical blog post about Santa, elves and reindeer, but rather just the documentation for Data::Dumper.
The calendar evolved to a higher level of sophistication over the years and eventually became what many of us have grown to enjoy as a special treat for the holidays. It was a Herculean task, shouldered to a great degree by one person. Last year, the calendar was, for the first time in over two decades, left incomplete. Earlier this summer I reached out to Mark to ask if he would like some help with the project in 2022. He asked me if I was interested in taking it over. That is how we find ourselves here.
So, I should probably make it official. The Perl Advent Calendar is back once again in 2022. It is with great pleasure that I’m announcing that the Call for Papers is now open.
Now, before you say “I find it hard to write technical posts about jolly St. Nick”, let me quote from the Call for Papers:
We do not discriminate on the basis of religion (yes, that means you can write a Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Solstice, Wintereenmas, or Agnostica article if you want.)
So, if you can’t work reindeer into your SYNOPSIS, don’t let that stop you from writing an article. If you need help with getting in a festive angle, we can help with that. If not, that’s ok too. The purpose of the calendar is the dissemination of information. The whimsy is a nice treat, but it’s not required. The good news is that if you’ve not contributed in the past, then this is your year. If you have contributed in the past, then this is also your year. As the CFP says, we seek to be inclusive.
On an organizational note, what we’re also working on this year is trying to remove any Single Point of Failure we find in the process of managing the calendar. That means:
- we’ve transferred the domain registration to The Perl Foundation (thanks, RJBS!) 🙏
- we are using GitHub issues rather than email for communication
- we will be using CI as much as possible for site building and deployment
The goal is that if I’m not around for 2023 that there is nothing to stop the calendar from bringing more Perl holiday joy to the masses. In that spirit I have recruited a number of folks to help this year, some of whom I didn’t even ask in advance (because that’s just how I roll). Special thanks to SIMBABQUE for pitching in and doing a lot of the prep work after he got his unsolicited invitation to the Perl Advent GitHub organization. 🙏
On that note, if you’re not up for writing an article, but you’re happy to edit and/or proofread, please open a GitHub issue stating your willingness and we’ll bring you on board. Here’s hoping we have another great year of articles in 2022.
The issues for creating articles, requesting article topics and other offers for help are available to you as of right now. The official Call for Papers is also online, as mentioned above. Please do share the CFP link and/or this post, so that we can cast as wide a net as possible for 2022 authors. We look forward to hearing from you and reading your contributions.