In the lands where the camel roams, the white camel is a rare and revered individual. Each year, The Perl Foundation recognizes significant non-technical achievement in Perl with the White Camel Awards. This is the 15th year we've done this, and I don't think anyone will be surprised by this year's recipients. Oh, and happy birthday Perl (from Saint Petersburg and Saint Perl 6, GMT+0300)!

Perl community - Amalia Pomian

Perl user groups - VM Brasseur

Amalia Pomian takes care of everything when organizing the cluj.pm events: booking the place to hold the meetings, creating the schwag, taking care that the guest speakers have a great itinerary here, arranging the talks, promoting the events, keeping in touch with all the participants, and most other things.

VM Brasseur now runs the San Francisco Perl mongers (now on Meetup) and has been instrumental in keeping that group running smoothly and constantly growing. She also runs the Perl Companies project to mine job adverts data to identify organizations using Perl. Coincidentally, Fred Moyer, the former organizer of the same group, received a White Camel Award last year.

Perl advocacy - Neil Bowers

Neil Bowers went on a tear this year with CPAN advocacy and participation. He's highlighted areas that need attention, advocated for different and better ways to handle CPAN, and motivated the community to take up the good fight. his blog, The good, the bad, and the beautiful, is a gold mine of CPAN advice. Curiously, it's only this year attended his first Perl mongers meeting.

Neil, a bit annoyed that we apparently pass over Mark Keating each year, awarded him a Silver Camel. We'd love to give Mark his own White Camel once he moves on from his roles inside The Perl Foundation (the people who give out the award)!

