30/07/18 14:50 by Mark Keating (‎mdk‎)

One of the delights* of organising a conference is picking specific people to do one-off talks, these are usually your keynote or plenary sessions. It is a delight as you as an organiser can help guide what is going to happen even if you have little influence over the actual content or delivery.

For many years Larry Wall has attended events and given Keynotes, or Q&A sessions and no doubt he is surprised by new thoughts while being badgered by the age old queries. This year we will give him a break.

It is a great pleasure to announce that this year we will have a Conversation with Gloria Wall. Gloria has been a part of Perl since before it even bore the name of Perl. She has lived with three decades of not just the language creator, but its users, its community.

Gloria will be sharing some of the ups, and probably some of the downs, of living with the Perl Community for 30 years. As Gloria recently noted to me ‘the Perl community has been a community for my family too’.

This is a rare event and not to be missed, I have to admit that it is a guilty pleasure for me as well as I have always wanted to hear Gloria’s thoughts on the community, the people and the inevitable shape that has on a person and their family when they are in the centre of everyone's gaze.

The event will take place on Day Two of the main conference before the Lightning Talks.

* And there are quite a few to be fair but they are not always apparent when you are in the depths of pre-event planning