in reply to How to wake up the Perl community?
I'd like to give this thread a small bump :)
After reading the whole discussion, I've noticed some well argumented comments, but the main question looks like is still far from being clearly resolved ..
I'm not going to redefine the whole topic, just want to express my main thought - I simply don't believe that Perl is appreciated as it should be. Perl is an living example of a good thing that came from an enormous amount of work and passion (and everything that comes from it) within it's community, but I'm not sure that this is visible from the rest of the "Internet world".
I'll try to back this up with my personal experience - I started using Perl a couple years ago, after I finished my college education and got hired. Until then I didn't even hear of if, not even in a few college classes that involved some programming tasks (I'm not a programmer by default, but that's not the reason why someone should say "hey, thats a usefull thing to know, look it up"). I believe that I was simply lucky (it's not just a phrase, I really think that) that my job involved working in an environment that used (and is still using, and will continue) Perl as a tool for doing a hell a lot of varius things (ranging from development, dirty hacks, sysadmin, etc.). I became aware of the community that is behind of this excellent tool and occasinally bumped my head because I didn't discover it earlier. Why? - I grew up "online", searched the Internet for good/usefull/interesting things, apps, etc., but I simply missed to see it's relevance (maybe it was just my dissability to notice great things, I'll never know :))
So, just wanted to say that maybe it's time to give this Internet marketing thing a second (or third, forth, ..) thought. The Internet is changing, online communities are developing in a varius ways (some good, some bad ;)). Perl community has several good websites/resources, but I' believe that a central (maintained) community dashboard (webpage, blog, call it whatever you like) with simple informations like up to date news, links to usefull resources, future strategies, plans, etc. would be usefull to attract new users, help the current ones to stay in touch and promote Perl as well (for example, I really like Gabor's PerlWeekly news roundup, a nice thing to get an overview of some current happenings) ..
Anyway, this is just my personal point of view, so please don't be offended by anything. To sum it up - Perl is a great tool, with a great community which should be noticed and appreciated as it deservers ..