What have I been up to since 2015?
Since last I last posted something technical, I was between work opportunities and just getting involved with Dancer and the Perl community after a long time away. A lot has changed in that time, and I wanted to take a little time to share a bit about what I have been up to in that time.
Joining the Dancer Core Team
The thing that pleases me the most was having been invited to the Dancer Core Team. I have adopted the role of release manager, and for now, I spend most of my time on the project reviewing pull requests, running and writing tests, building and testing releases, and crafting release announcements. I spend time squashing bugs and dealing with GitHub issues as I am able to, and am looking forward to having some time this spring to get some wishlist items taken care of for the project. The Dancer Core Team is a talented, passionate group of developers that care deeply about the Dancer Community, and I am honored to be a part of them.
Rejoining the Perl Community
After a long time away, I have started participating in local Perl Monger groups again. I have mostly attended Chicago.pm meetups during this time, but have recently started attending MadMongers meetings as well… There is a really interesting series of sessions at MadMongers right now that center on developing a Zork-inspired single-player text adventure, which is too good for this retro-game lover to pass up.
I have also started attending some other area meetings that involve accessibility and general web development. I am trying to learn about VueJS and Angular from people with experience in it, and trying to educate people about Modern Perl and what it means to be a Perl developer in 2017.
Accessibility is a new passion of mine, and I am both trying to learn how better to make web sites more accessible while convincing my fellow developers to do the same.
Tau Station
I spent the last year or so as project manager for Tau Station, and had a great time being paid to develop a MMORPG in Perl - quite the dream come true! It’s an amazing game, and it is rapidly progressing towards its alpha launch this summer. If you are interested in sci-fi, Perl, or free-to-play games, you should really check out what’s going on there - you won’t be disappointed!
What’s next?
I am devoting some time this spring to work on a charity devoted to helping parents and families of children with autism. My own son was diagnosed with autism this past year, and it’s been a long, difficult, and educational journey for my family. We have been extremely fortunate to have access to information and resources that have made this a lot easier for us to live with, but many families do not have the tools they need to help themselves or their children. I am hoping that through our efforts and outreach that we can provide help, information, and other resources available to all families of special needs children.
Here’s to an amazing 2017. Stay tuned, much more to come!