Perl Mongers

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Perl Mongers is part of The Perl Foundation and provides services to Perl user groups.

Perl Mongers was created in 1998 as a stand-alone organization by Brian D Foy who formed the first Perl users group, the New York Perl Mongers, or NY.pm, in 1997 at the First O'Reilly Perl Conference. The ".pm" plays off the conventional file extension for a Perl module and "Perl Mongers" is a backronym for that. Originally, Foy's idea was to name the group after the Perl regular expression /New York Perl M((o|u)ngers|aniacs)*/, but "Perl Mongers" became the popular expression of that.

Soon after NY.pm announced its formation, the second Perl Mongers group was started by Chris Nandor in Boston. Others followed, in the District of Columbia, Los Angeles, and St. Louis. By the mid-1998, groups had formed in Atlanta, Chicago, London, Minneapolis, Montreal, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle. By the end of 1998, there were also groups in Amsterdam, Blacksburg, Champaign, Dayton, Lisbon, Melbourne, Pittsburgh, Rhode Island, Stockholm, Sydney, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Vancouver.

At the Second O'Reilly Perl Conference in 1998, Foy, David H. Adler and Adam Turoff helped to create over 100 new Perl user groups by providing a means for people to connect with others in their area. Perl Mongers provided services including web hosting, mailing lists, and user group leader discussions.

The Grand Rapids Perl Mongers initially wanted to call themselves the Grand Rapid's Perl Monkees, but Foy wouldn't let them. In the early days of Perl Mongers, he was concerned with the unity of effort and tried not only to start new user groups, but get groups to participate in the Perl Mongers framework as an overriding organization.

In 2000, Perl Mongers became part of The Perl Foundation where it continues its mission to organize and serve Perl user groups.

In Dave Cross's 2005 Perl Mongers Census, he recorded 178 active Perl user groups.