Yet Another Society (YAS) "is a non-profit 501(3)(c) corporation for the advancement of collaborative efforts in computer and information sciences." YAS collects donations, solicits sponsors and issues grants for Perl development. YAS recently merged with Perl Monks and Perl Mongers, and joined the Unicode Consortium. Damian Conway's efforts in Perl evangelizing and module development are funded by a YAS grant. Core Perl development and touring conferences sounds quite glamorous, though I'm not sure if that's how he'd describe it. I do like the idea of getting in the thick of an important technology enough to speak at conferences or publish papers, though, and that's how I'd like to develop my tech career if possible. That's many steps down the line, though. Just contributing to any open technology seems like a noble, yet attainable, goal.