We're happy to announce that the 9th annual Perl QA Hackathon (QAH) will be held in Rugby in the United Kingdom. The event will run from Thursday 21st April to Sunday 24th April.

The QAH is a face-to-face gathering of the lead developers who work on the Perl toolchain that all Perl programmers rely on and build upon. The first QAH was held in Norway, in 2008, and so far it's always been in Europe. The QAH provides dedicated time over 4 days to work on the critical systems and tools, with all the right people in the same place.

The group of attendees gradually evolves from year to year, as it's based on the people who are currently maintaining and evolving the toolchain. A lot gets done at the QAH, but the discussions also tend to generate plenty for people to work on in the following year.

Every year the attendees create a project / topic list ahead of time (eg from 2015). That's not a strict plan though, as important issues tend to bubble up once everyone's together. In 2015 people were encouraged to log things as they went along. After the event some of the attendees blog about their time at the QAH.

As we all benefit from the work done by these volunteers, we try to pay for the QAH through sponsorship and donations. If your company uses Perl, maybe you could ask them to contribute? If you're interested, we have a sponsorship prospectus, which we're happy to send you. We'll be getting in touch with many of you anyway, with cap in hand.

Donations can be made via the Enlightened Perl Organisation (EPO). If your company needs invoicing for sponsorship, or a larger donation, let us know and the EPO will bill you. An invoice can be selected from the online portal for those who use that route.

We'll be following this announcement with some blog posts on the toolchain and how the QAH works. If you've got some ideas for topics you'd like to see discussed at the QAH, you can comment here or email one of the organisers.

The organisers this year are Barbie, Jon Allen, and Neil Bowers.