The Magnificent Dave Cross

A very modest[1] man in need of praise

Last week the very well-known and indominable force of nature that is Dave Cross was kind enough to mention Matt and I in a list of people in his article The Without Whoms, who had done good work in 2009 for the Perl community. Specifically he mentioned the work we did on the Ironman blogging competition. I found this strangely humbling as I have a great deal of respect for Dave Cross and so in return I will try to capture a little of the impact of this man.

Dave is the founder of the London Perl Monguers and has been a principal force in both the bringing into being of the YAPC Europe conferences and the London Perl Workshop. He has spoken as the Keynote speakers at both 2008 and 2009, he has also presented free workshops at conferences to encourage new, or greater, participation in the community.

Aside from running a vast number of projects to be found on CPAN and on his Github Page Dave maintains a number of Blogs. These are: Perl Hacks; davblog; as well as administering: Blogs at Perl.org; and tweeting happily here: Davorg on Twitter where he is possibly the greatest human being ever to hold the title Davorg; slicdes from his conference presentations are updated to Slideshare for all to view.

More information on Dave can always be found on Dave’s personal website, which is kept up-to-date (and I swear he must have a team of immigrant children working in a sweat shop somewhere to track all that he does and update all this).

Professionally Dave is well respected for his training courses that have been run at many conferences and workshops with O’Reilly, UKUUG, YAPC and others all desiring his services. His company website Magnum Solutions has a full list of details about these.

There is still more that can be said about Dave Cross. He is constantly supportative of the local community around him as is shown by the number of Planet sites he has built, or is involved with:

The Planetarium;
Planet Balham;
Balham Twits;
SW12 Org;
Planet Westminster;
The Political Web;

This list doesn’t include the fact that Dave is always on hand on varioius IRC channels, or in person at community events to give advice, offer help and support and generally be an all-round excellent
person[2].

This list is not exhaustive or complete, and any errors or omissions are mine and i would be glad to correct them. Please send me an email to add a comment to this list about Dave.

[1] Dave may or may not be modest, I only believe so from personal experience and the fact that he didn’t do anywhere near enough blowing of his own trumpet in his article.

[2] He makes all the girls and boys moist with anticipation.

-ttfn – Mark