MONTEREY, CA--The first White Camel Awards were presented to three leading activists in the Perl community at O'Reilly's Perl Conference 3.0 in Monterey, CA on August 23. Tom Christiansen, Kevin Lenzo, and Adam Turoff were recognized for their extraordinary contributions to Perl Advocacy, the Perl Community, and Perl User Groups, respectively.
The White Camel Awards were created to honor individuals who devote remarkable creativity, energy, and time to the non-technical work that supports Perl's active and loyal user community. The awards were conceived of and administered by Perl Mongers, (http://www.pm.org), a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to establish Perl user groups. In addition to Perl Mongers, O'Reilly and sourceXchange (http://www.sourceXchange.com), sponsored the awards.
The rare white camel is the inspiration for the White Camel awards. The camel has come to symbolize Perl since it first appeared on the cover of O'Reilly & Associates' classic "Programming Perl" in 1991.
Perl Advocacy Award: Tom Christiansen
Christiansen has been a Perl evangelist and developer since the popular programming language's initial release in 1987. He is responsible for much of the documentation that is provided free-of-charge with the standard Perl distribution. According to Perl Mongers founder brian d foy, "Tom has an eagle's eye for finding who's talking about Perl and responds instantly to anyone treating Perl unfairly. He is tireless in his support and one of the reasons that Perl is as good as it is."
Perl Community Award: Kevin Lenzo
Lenzo created and sponsored the first Yet Another Perl Conference (YAPC) to provide a low-cost, grassroots conference for the Perl community. He led a small group of volunteers who organized a successful conference for 300 people. "YAPC has encouraged the Perl community to provide more events on an intimate scale and we look forward to Kevin's YAPC 2000," noted foy.
Perl User Group Award: Adam Turoff
Turoff is a charter member of the first Perl user group, NY.pm, and helped to create Perl Mongers. He went on to start another Perl user group in Philadelphia and to encourage the formation of many other user groups. He has been one of Perl Mongers' most vocal supporters and made possible its free web and mailing list services, which are provided to over 150 user groups.
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