The Perl Conference

[Steven E. Brenner]

On Thu, 24 Jul 1997, Georg Fuellen wrote:
> (I've just returned from vacation... Looking at >300 emails
> in my inbox, I'm a bit grumpy, maybe ;-)
> > > 
> > >   I would be interested in ideas about what the "goal" of the talk
> > > should be.  That is, what impression do we want to make on the "Perl
> > > world"?
> 
> We should do whatever it takes to get some seed funding from the Perl
> Institute... ;-) Other than that, I see few benefits that WE may get from
> THEM, or am I wrong ?!

The problem is not funding but manpower and expertise.  (Funding would
only be an issue if we wanted to hire a programmer, which I do not think
is realistic).  Presenting this work to the Perl community has, I think,
two major benefits:

 - We may convince people that this is an "interesting" project.  In that
case, gurus will be more willing to help answer our dumb (and not-so-dumb) 
questions about design and implementation.  Further, if we need any
special alterations to Perl (including bug-fixes or special performance
improvements), we're more likely to get them if we're perceived as being a
large and significant community

 - By presenting the work in a Perl forum, we hold it up to scruitny and
hopefully succceed in demonstrating that it is worthwhile -- and hence
improve the respect for it among biologists.  This could entail more
vounteers to actively design and code the objects.


> Bioperl sometimes seems like a project that never gets done because
> it's being talked about too often

I don't think that it is the talking which is preventing it from
happening...  But I agree, the pace has been sluggish, which I suppose is
laregely my fault for not being able to coordinate things better as I
change jobs and go around the world...

Steve