Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 09:14:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: Sara Winge <sara@oreilly.com>
To: cool@eklektix.com
Subject: Perl Activists Win White Camel Awards

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 24, 1999
CONTACT: Sara Winge, O'Reilly & Associates, 707/829-0515x285,
sara@oreilly.com, http://www.oreilly.com


	    PERL ACTIVISTS WIN WHITE CAMEL AWARDS
 Tom Christiansen, Kevin Lenzo, and Adam Turoff Recognized for 
    Extraordinary Contributions to Perl Programming Language

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 200 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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