Well here I am in Buffalo, New York on the last day of YAPC 2004, a grassroots Perl community conference. I was at the first two YAPCs and they were a hoot, at least in part because I finally got a chance to meet some of the crazy geeks that I met on IRC some time before. It turned out they were even more fun in real life and much nicer. So much nicer, in fact, that I became disgusted with most of their online personas, grew to despise them, and stopped talking to them forever.

I hope to find some middle ground at some point that doesn't involve a lot of hating, but it can be hard.

Anyway, because of the hate I skipped a few YAPCs and then this year I got a free trip out of work so I decided to give it a chance. Something, however, is terribly wrong.

Before I get going I want to make sure that I only offend the right people. So, it's critical to note that this year's YAPC is magnificently organized. Everything is going like clockwork, the facilities are great, and in general I am very happy about the infrastructure that made this YAPC happen. Kudos to the organizing folks here. The problem with this YAPC is that it is missing its leadership.

At prior YAPCs we had Larry Wall here. We had Mark Jason Dominus and Randal Schwartz doing tutorials. We had current pumpkings talking about the ongoing work and the future direction. We had Damian Conway doing the occasional comic relief but more importantly being constantly present and driving discussion that wouldn't otherwise occur. We had hard-core perl core developers talking about what's happening. We had several people from ActiveState talking about how the windows port was developing. We had Sean Burke talking about his latest Perl-related fetishes. We had Kevin Lenzo, the founder (where the hell is Kevin these days?) And we had an enormous presence from IRC to keep the social content high.

This year we have dick. Not even Dick, but rather dick.

There are the usual small talks from amateur speakers about occasionally amusing things, and those talks are crucial to a conference like this as that's what it's supposed to be about, but the lack of real firepower makes it feel a little headless around here. The tutorials that exist are weak and in some cases flat out wrong and leave me feel like I'm in a bad Perl help channel trying not to cry real tears at the stupid advice being handed out to propagate bad behaviour. And there is no really nitty gritty talk about Perl with the possible exception of Abigail's regex talks which, while both nitty and gritty, I find to be such a perverse case of the language that I don't think it's useful. Certainly no one has the authority of Larry Wall or the dynamism of Dominus. This sucks.

How come this is happening? I have theories but I am just making shit up. I don't know what it is but it smells like death around here. The user community is out in force looking for information but the leadership either no longer exists or no longer cares or is simply no longer cohesive enough to be effective. My bet is on the latter.

My fear is that the whole Perl 6 endeavour has divided the community into those who work in Perl and have a genuine need to share useful information about it (and they are mostly here) and those who really know Perl inside out and want to spend their energies on the New Shiny. Unfortunately that latter group has all the enthusiasm, energy, and knowledge that we are lacking here this year. They are busy playing with new toys and are no longer interested in the old stuff that is actually getting used and that needs their energy desperately. So I'm a little more disheartened than before I came. I had hoped that while Perl 6 was shiny and amusing it would not detract from the existing Perl community but I am certain that it has. I am not coming away from this conference with anything like the renewed enthusiasm that the first two gave me.

We need you back in the community where work is getting done, folks. Shiny is nice but the community has been decapitated by your distraction.