25 Years of Perl

[Dave Cross]

At the LPW on Saturday I'm giving a talk entitled "25 Years of Perl".

I have the structure of the talk, and I have worked out most of the  
things that I want to cover. But I wanted to make sure that I didn't  
miss anything important.

So I thought I'd turn to the london.pm hivemind. What parts of Perl's  
history do you think are important. I'm particularly interested in two  
areas.

1/ Technical

What CPAN modules deserve to be mentioned as part of Perl's history?  
Which Perl infrastructure projects are (or were) important? Are there  
any other technical things that need to be covered?

2/ Community

What community initiatives should I cover? Can I mention TPI without  
giving some people nightmares? How much detail can I cover about Perl  
Mongers? Which conferences deserve a mention? Does anyone remember how  
and when YAS became TPF?

It's slightly unfortunate that I've only been involved with Perl for  
about 60% of its lifetime. So anything you can share from the first  
ten years or so of Perl's existence would be *really* appreciated.

Cheers,

Dave...