If we want to attract new people to Perl conferences (and thus Perl), we must make conferences more beginner-friendly.

Update: Please check out this github repo: https://github.com/Perl-Intro-Talks/Perl-Intro-Talks

I've been thinking about this topic for quite some time yet, as proven by this quote from a post I published after the Perl Conference in Amsterdam in August 2017:

"I think we as a community should set up a standard set of slides for various topics which can then be used at the start of a conference to bring newcomers and beginners up to speed with the current Perl best practices. Given some good enough slides, I guess a lot of us could give a presentation on stuff like Moose, DBIx::Class, Plack/PSGI, how to install CPAN modules, how to set up an app / CPAN module etc. I could, and I would." - How to make Perl conferences beginner friendly

This post even unearthed an even older and more productive attempt by genehack: https://github.com/genehack/perl-beginner-talks - last commit: 17.04.2013 :-(

Some recent developments made this issues even harder: Should we have a Perl Intro Slide-deck, a Raku one, or both?

At the German Perl Workshop 2020, which is currently taking place in Erlangen, I submitted a talk / discussion where I want to (again, and very shortly) present the idea of creating a community maintained set of Intro Slides; discuss what could be the curriculum; hopefully find and motivate a few people to actually collect and/or write the needed content; and think if and how we can do an intro set at the (hopefully) upcoming Perl & Raku Conference (again) in Amsterdam in August 2020.

I will set up some collaborativ text editing thingy during the talk, so if you're interested, watch out for the URL here, on the GPW2020 Wiki and/or twitter

Update

On the train ride back home from GPW2020 I set up a github repo and a few first issues