Meetings:2006:May

From SPUG

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 -- Perl at !IMDb

The Internet Movie Database (http://imdb.com/) is a top-100 website with an large amount of highly-interlinked data. We see ourselves as a technology company rather than a media or entertainment company, having custom-built essentially all of our software in Perl. I would like to share some of the lessons we've learned about Perl: what works, what doesn't, and what we wish it could do -- as well as discussing practical information about building and operating an ultra-high-volume website as part of a team that is distributed across the globe.

About me:

I am the manager of the technology team at IMDb (http://imdb.com/); our team's role is to build and operate the website, development platform, and other internal tools. I have been with !IMDb since 1993 when it was a hobby project coordinated via rec.arts.movies. Following our April 1998 aquisition by Amazon.com I moved from Brisbane, Australia to Seattle to spearhead the integration effort. I'm a movie and computer geek, which makes !IMDb the perfect environment for me!