YAPC::Boston seeking volunteers

[blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

As William Ricker mentioned at Wednesday's BLU meeting, the local 
chapter of Perl Mongers (http://boston.pm.org/kwiki/) is currently 
exploring the idea of holding the next YAPC (Yet Another Perl 
Conference, http://www.yapc.org/) in Boston next summer, and we're 
looking for involvement from interested groups and individuals.

YAPC is different from most conferences in that it is designed to be an 
inexpensive (about 1/10 the cost of a typical conference), no frills 
conference, put on by volunteers, and typically hosted by a university. 
(For example, YAPCs often provide low cost dorm rooms for out-of-town 
attendees.) YAPCs typically feature many of the same big-name speakers 
found at the west-coast open source conferences.

YAPC talks may be of interest to anyone interested in open source, and 
so past YAPCs have worked with local user groups to build awareness for 
the conference. This could be an opportunity for BLU to take an active 
role and perhaps setting some of the  conference agenda, such as a Linux 
track. (Similarly the two groups could collaborate at this winter's 
LinuxWorld to promote YAPC.)

The first order of business in making YAPC::Boston a possibility is 
gathering information on potential venues. Currently we're looking at 
MIT, U-Mass, Lesley, Simmons, and several other area schools.

One of the reasons why we're reaching out to other groups is that we'd 
like to find people with ties to these organizations who might be able 
to help make things happen. The ideal situation would be a faculty or 
staff member who likes the idea of YAPC (remember IT and admin staffs 
love Perl) and can help with sponsorship, publicity, and be a liaison to 
their department and school.

You can learn more about the YAPC::Boston efforts at the wiki:
http://boston.pm.org/kwiki/index.cgi?YAPCBostonExploration

and you can join up to a discussion list at:
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm-yapc-vol

  -Tom


-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/e/fps/3452158/