denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
Denise ([staff profile] denise) wrote in [site community profile] dw_dev2012-04-03 01:58 am
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Conference sponsorship

I am pleased to announce that this trend of "people giving us money" seems to be continuing, which means that we want to spend more money on y'all. (LET US SPEND MONEY ON YOU. REALLY. STOP THAT IMPOSTOR SYNDROME THINKING RIGHT NOW YES YOU I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING SO JUST STOP IT I MEAN IT IF YOU ARE READING THIS I MEAN YOU. YES YOU.)

If you have submitted at least five patches to us (since the DW project began) and at least one patch in the last year, we want to register you for YAPC::NA, the Yet Another Perl Conference in Madison, Wisconsin on June 13th - 15th. (Or, if you're not in North America, we'd be happy to send you to a local Perl conference of similar cost, if you know of one.)

There's also a two-day "Zero to Perl" workshop that I will be attending, and if you're newer to working in Perl (or to programming in general!) and think that you'd get some use out of it, I'd love for you to come keep me company. We'll also pay the registration fee for that workshop.

The small print: We reserve the right to put a cap on the number of attendees we send. (We're thinking a limit of 20 people total, and 4 people for the workshop; this may be adjusted based on interest.) I'm not sure yet if we'll register you and pay the conference directly, or if we'll ask you to register and pay and reimburse you; it depends on interest level and on how easy the conference makes it to do third-party invoices. We cannot, unfortunately, pay your travel costs (hotel or airfare) -- this year, at least! who knows about the future? If you almost qualify but not quite, you can have until the end of May to get your five patches in. If travel cost is prohibitive but there's more-local conferences or training you'd like to attend, let me know and we'll see what we can do. To take advantage of this, contact me at denise at dreamwidth.org and let me know you're interested, and we'll go from there.

And, a reminder, if travel isn't possible for you for whatever reason, we still want to buy you books or other resources!

(I really, really mean it on the impostor-syndrome thing. I have heard at least three of you who would qualify under the buy-you-stuff guidelines say that you don't think you do enough for DW to 'deserve' it. TOTALLY NOT TRUE. If you're coding for DW, we want to give you the tools to do it more efficiently and with greater skill. Period, end of sentence, full stop.)


EDIT: [personal profile] pauamma has also linked me to YAPC::EU, which will be in Frankfurt, August 20-22. Mark and I will not be able to go to that one, but if you're in the EU and that would be cheaper/easier/more convenient for you to go to, we can totally talk about sending you to that one! I can't say for sure that we'd be able to -- I need to research costs a bit more, etc -- but do check it out.
pantswarrior: Spock thinks everything is "fascinating". (fascinating)

[personal profile] pantswarrior 2012-04-03 05:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmm, thanks for linking this. I'm not actually coding for DW, but I've thought several times that I wished I knew Perl so that maybe I could. (It's amazing how much PHP I've picked up from my job, but no Perl, so no usefulness to DW. :/) And Madison's not too far from me... and even though Perl isn't used in my current position, it would be a good thing to know about. So I'm incredibly tempted to head out there myself for that Zero to Perl thing on my own dime. ;)
foxfirefey: Fox stealing an egg. (mischief)

[personal profile] foxfirefey 2012-04-04 12:09 am (UTC)(link)
If you know PHP, you probably would not have a hard time starting to learn Perl. People will be more than willing to mentor you! Additionally, a lot of things have more to do with HTML/CSS/JS.
pantswarrior: Seven declares that fun may commence. (fun fun fun fun)

[personal profile] pantswarrior 2012-04-04 12:49 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, that's kind of the impression I got - the bits of DW code I've looked at this year make a whole lot more sense than the bits of DW code I looked at a year ago, before I warily told my boss sure, I was willing to try some simple PHP so he didn't have to. And indeed, HTML/CSS is what got me my current job (large portions of it learned from doing LJ support back when Customization was still a category), and more recently I've been learning JS on the job too...

So I just need to get off my butt and start learning Perl, because I tend to pick this stuff up quickly, and then maybe I'd stop thinking I'd be more of a hindrance than a help. ;)
foxfirefey: A guy looking ridiculous by doing a fashionable posing with a mouse, slinging the cord over his shoulders. (geek)

[personal profile] foxfirefey 2012-04-04 12:59 am (UTC)(link)
Don't let yourself get held back by terming it as hindrance vs help. Even if somebody knows Perl there are things to ask about or get guidance for, like how to work with the source control, or where certain things are in the codebase, or the process of submitting patches, or managing a Dreamhack. Investing in more people knowing how things work is not a hindrance!
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)

[personal profile] momijizukamori 2012-04-04 09:00 am (UTC)(link)
There is definitely a lot on the CSS side of things *g* Everything I've patched so far has been basically CSS with a small side of Photoshop and S2.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

[personal profile] kaberett 2012-06-07 09:49 am (UTC)(link)
For what it's worth (coming back to this post way after the fact), I started coding on DW about a month ago with half-remembered 10-year-old HTML/CSS and 6 weeks of Javascript (via codecademy.com); with puzzling things out, people holding my hand in IRC, etc, I've got one patch committed and another four waiting for review. :D WE WANNA HELP. JOIIIIIIIIIIN USSSSSSSSSSSSS