First time ever attended Perl Workshop outside of London. The 20th German Perl Workshop was held in Gummersbach this year, 3rd-7th Apr.

Day 1 (3rd Apr 2018)

I reached Koln/Bonn airport around 6pm as expected time. I saw Roland, Andreas and one more guy (forgot his name) came to pick me up. I wasn't expecting anyone to be very honest. It was really sweet of GPW for all the help. Julian was also arriving around 6:40pm, we decided to wait for him as well. From the airport, we went to the pub where the rest of gang already enjoying each others company. For the first time, I met Jens, RENEEB, MARKOV, TIMOTIMO. The best part of the evening was listening to Liz's experience. I have seen, Liz and Wendy, for many years at LPW but never got the courage to speak to them. I met TIMOTIMO for the first time. I even had the opportunity to say "Hi" to MAKOTO. Around 11pm, Liz and Wendy kindly dropped, MARKOV, Julian and I, back to the hotel.

Day 2 (4th Apr 2018)

I met, a young German perl hacker, Florian, in the morning and had quick chat about my today's talk. After breakfast, Florian and I, went to conference venue together, as I had no clue about the direction. We reached the venue around 9am and the first talk was at 10am. The day started with the talk by Roland Schmitz "Welcome by NR.pm". Then there was brief announcement by someone from Cologne Technical University. It was in German language, so I couldn't understand a single word. After tea/coffee break, we had talk "Turning Humans into developers" by Julien. Unfortunately this talk was too in German. However the slides was in English. So no complain. We took again Tea/Coffee break. Straight after the break, we had talk "Releasing to CPAN and GitHub" by Mark. This too was in German but the slides was in English. Then we had another talk "Perl and GitLab". This was in German and slides was also in German. But I got the gist of the talk. I will probably explore myself about GitLab later. We took lunch break after the talk and went to the Canteen in the university campus. During the lunch break, I met the author of "Think Perl6", Laurent Rosenfeld. It was great talking to him. Post lunch, we had three talks one each by RENEEB, CORION and DOMM. Now it was my turn to give the talk "Journey: CPAN user to CPAN contributor". I must say the audience was very much alive. Icing on the cake was, the front row was occupied by none other than RENEEB and RURBAN. Then there was JOROL (Catmandu guy), MARKOV and SIMBABQUE that I knew by name. I got instant positive feedback by the polite audiences at the end of my talk. I remember, Herbert, asking me why I only choose distribution hosted on GitHub as he had quite a few distributions on "Bitbucket". I will probably explore later. The last but not the least talk "How to build CPAN distribution" by Johann. I liked the slides as again it was in German. Just when we were about to leave, I met Daxim from Vienna.pm. I had short but very interesting discussions with him. After the event, Julian, helped me buying gifts for my daughters. It was lovely evening walking around the town center. Julian, later dropped me back to the hotel. I dumped my bags in the room and went straight to Dinner, where rest of the hackers were already there. The day ended on a very funny note. I told the gang at the dinner table that I couldn't meet Ovis and Jonathan, without realising Jonathan was sitting in front of me with his wife. We all had a good laugh.

Day 3 (5th Apr 2018)

At the breakfast table, Liz and Wendy, invited me to join them and I happily accepted the offer. It was such a wonderfull experience talking to both. They both made me so comfortable that I even asked a personal question (stupid me). Little later, Laurent joined us as well. While we were chatting someone turned up with the book "Think Perl6" and requested Laurent to signed it. What a memorable moment. I even captured it in my camera. While we were still chatting, someone went pass us and said "Mohammad I liked your talk yesterday. It was great and I would recommend others to watch it as well". To this I replied, "Thanks for the kind words, it means a lot." Once that person went to get his breakfast, Wendy asked me do you know who was that person? I said "No". She said "He is Nicholas Clarke, ex-pumpkin. I was completely bowled over. What a great start of my last day at GPW 2018. After the breakfast, I went to the venue by myself as I knew the way now. As I was entering the venue building, I saw "Liz and Wendy" again parking their car. We went inside together. The first talk "Rescuing Legacy Code" was by Curtis. Before the talk, I introduced myself to Curtis. I couldn't belive I was meeting with him face to face. The talk by Curtis was great and so relevant. After that there was quick announcement by Makoto. He brought some chocolates from America for all of us. I took one, so thanks Makoto. After that I attended the talk by ex-pumpkin "Nicholas Clarke" on the topic "How Geizhals took out ImageMagick before ImageMagick took *us* out.". It was really nicely structured and entertaining talk. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Now came the moment of the day, talk by Jonathan. I have been waiting for this since morning. The topic was "Building and Consuming HTTP Services in Perl 6 with Cro". Although I don't know much of Perl6 but I still enjoyed it. Post lunch break, I attended talk "High Power Perl" by Laurent. It was really nice to know how to improved the performance drastically in real world use case. It was now my turn to give the talk "Introduction to Map::Tube". Would you believe who was in the room? All the top names came to attend my talk. It was such an honour. As promised at the end of the talk, I released new map Map::Tube::Madrid from the classroom. I showed the live map on metacpan.org as well. There were few nice suggestions came afterwards which I will explore later. Surprisingly, during the talk, Julian built a new map. That was lightning fast, I was impressed. He had few small issues with the map, which I have now resolved it. Finally it was time for the lightning talks. As always is the case, the lightning talks was full of fun and facts. I really liked the talk by a first timer, Florian, who I met at the breakfast on Day one. Although his talk was in German. I liked his enthusiasm. I asked him later what did he talk about. After the lightning talk, we went to nearby restaurant to celebrate the wonderfull day. At the restaurant, I had the company of TIMOTIMO, Andreas, Laurent and DOMM. I had the opportunity to have lengthy discussions with DOMM. In between I had brief chat with Nicholas. He is such a fun guy. I requested Roland to have group photo so that I can have it framed for the rest of my life. As always is the case, he quickly gathered all of us for the group photo. Thank you, Roland, for doing this. I also happen to met guy called "Lucas" at the restaurant. He came to me and said he liked my talk. It was nice to see so many people liked my talks. Liz and Wendy as always entertained us all through out the evening. They are the heart and soul of every events.

There was surprise gift of books from Orielly for all of us. Roland organised the lottery to be fair with everyone. Guess what? I got one book, although the book is in German, I will still keep it as souvenir. About 11pm, we left the restaurant. TIMOTIMO kindly dropped me back to the hotel. Next morning 7:05am was my flight back to London. Roland offered me lift to the airport in the early morning, which I couldn't refused. He is a gem of guy. I can't thank him enough.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and everyone for the kind words and encouragement, special mention to Jens, Julian and MARKOV.