Meet the European Perl Ecosystem: spotlight on Munich.PM

A chat with Harald Jorg, leader of Munich.PM, a group founded in Germany. Let’s get to know him && his group a bit better.

Q1. Tell us about yourself && your background

I’m an old dog who has been working around software for more than thirty years. I came to Perl (or rather: Perl was thrown upon me) by accident: When the web was still young, a CGI script broke, and “you’re the software guy — go fix it”. I grabbed the Camel Book, and got hooked almost immediately.

Q2. When && how did you start Munich.PM? Why did you start the group?

Though I’m a member since the first day, I didn’t start it. It all started in 1999 with a mail from Steffen Beyer to Norbert Grüner, and then soon came viral with a post in some German-speaking Perl newsgroups. At that time, I was heavily using a module by Steffen, and I knew Norbert from the university but had no idea about his involvement in Perl. For me it was clear: If these two start a group, then I want to be a member.

Q3. How are you organized? What projects && activities do you have?

We are rather loosely organised. There’s a mailing list at the usual place for a PM group, and a Meetup page. We had two attempts to schedule regular meetings, but both failed. Our irregular meetings now take place every other month, whenever someone starts the initiative.

Q4. How many members are there in your group && how did you grow the local community?

Due to the loose organisation it is somewhat difficult to say. Both the mailing list and the Meetup group have about 70 members, but many of them don’t live in Munich. The biggest boosts for our group memberships were the two conferences: YAPC::Europe in 2002 and the German Perl Workshop in 2007.

Q5. Any events of Munich.PM we could && should attend?

Our meetings are informal, but almost every time I take home some inspiration, often not related to Perl. On our last meeting, I got some pointers to HTML/CSS/JavaScript presentation frameworks — and I’ve decided to use them for my talk at the German Perl Workshop in April.

Q6. What are your plans for the future?

As a group, we don’t have any concrete plans. I admit that I haven’t shown much initiative in the last years, but I guess this will improve since right now I have some time on my hands to do the stuff I like.

In 2019 our group will celebrate its 20th anniversary, but I don’t know yet how we’ll celebrate.

Q7. Any “unsung heroes” of Munich.PM you’d like to publicly acknowledge?

That would be Bernhard Schmalhofer, who kept the flame of Munich.pm burning through the years when I didn’t spend any time for the group.

Q8. Share your favorite Munich.PM story w/ the world

I guess our highlight so far was YAPC::Europe in 2002, which was the first European Perl conference where Larry Wall gave a keynote.

Q9. A piece of advice for folks that want to start a PM group

Starting a PM group is easy — keeping it alive is the difficult thing. These days, the technical topics are usually discussed on a global scale: PerlMonks, stackoverflow, github, and there’s lots of competition by social networks — so having some “local” topics can help a lot.

Q10. What are the most important elements of a cohesive && successful group?

I’ve no idea but I am open to suggestions.

Q11. What makes your group stand out?

I don’t know many other groups, so I can’t say for sure. Personally, I like it that if I open a technical topic on the mailing list, there are still interesting contributions — occasionally by people who don’t live near Munich.

Q12. Anything else you’d like to add?

I’m sure my fellow mongers will point out what I’ve forgotten — but right now, no — nothing to add.

Thanks a bunch for the interview, Harald, it’s been a real pleasure!