# and believe me, Perl is still alive... still alive!...

[Tim Sweetman]

The idea with branding is a bit like "user experience design". You  
claim that your remit is very broad, including everything about how  
the thing in question (the Perl language, the overground network,  
whatever) is perceived by its its users, but then, in practice, you  
just concentrate on sticking logos on things. If that involves  
sticking cheap looking stickers on Silverlink-branded trains, that's  
fine. If that involves creating a whole new category of train,  
"overground", which corresponds to nothing that the customer (or  
passenger) can make sense of, so be it.

To put it another way: the emperor is butt naked, and freezing his  
arse off.

On 9 Dec 2008, at 11:31, Nigel Hamilton wrote:
> Branding is important for idea packaging and transmission. A brand
> simplifies sending a message and in these agile, ajaxian times

To paraphrase Ian Hislop: If these are agile times, I am a fruit tree.

> where people
> are suffering from attention poverty Perl needs a way of attractively
> packaging some of its more hairy messages.

package Message::Hairy;
(etc)

> I'm really glad to see Perl6's branding strategy in action. It's a  
> great
> idea to make Perl the umbrella brand as it gives room for sub- 
> brands to
> grow: rakudo, pugs, elf, (smop - needs one) etc. and it also hedges  
> risk.
>
> Just look at the way the Apache and the Mozilla foundation manage  
> branding.
> There is a clear umbrella mark (the feather, mozilla) but there's  
> room for
> complimentary sub-brands (lucene, firefox respectively). So I think  
> the Perl
> foundation is on the right track with Perl(R).
>
> Although I think there are two further things that would help:
>
> * A Larry-approved strapline for Perl - what is it? why should I  
> use it?
> what itch does it scratch?
> * An assignment of "perl.com" back to the Perl Foundation [1]

* Perl 6 actually being able to do stuff

* A Perl user group that didn't just insult n00bs when they turned up

* A culture surrounding the language that didn't privilege obscurity  
over sensible engineering

(I know, crazy stuff)

ti'