Olaf Alders

Award received in 2024

Most likely people recognize Olaf as the guy behind MetaCPAN. He co-founded the project in late 2010 as a means to aggregate data for an iOS application. The phone app fizzled, but MetaCPAN took on a life of its own. Olaf has been part of the team working on it ever since. MetaCPAN is a user-friendly search and discovery platform for Perl modules and distributions, based on CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network).

Olaf is also the person responsible for perl.com’s revival. After the site became inactive for several years, Olaf brought the site back to life. He’s always looking for new contributions. Anyone can submit an article via GitHub.

In 2023, Olaf also took over the Perl Advent Calendar, a long-running tradition previously managed by Mark Fowler, whom we would like to acknowledge for his 20+ years of dedication.

When Olaf is not working on websites, he is spending time with his family and his dog. He enjoys open-water swimming, biking, and running. He is in the pool regularly with his local Masters Swim Club. He is currently recording guitar parts for a post-punk song cycle about Ragnarök.

In his technical work, Olaf also helps to maintain the modules in the libwww-perl organization. He is the author of “perlimports” and several other modules. Olaf is a regular attendee of the Perl Toolchain Summit.

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