I guess I'll throw my hat in the ring. Perl is awesome, and since I've been using it practically my entire career and have contributed quite a substantial amount of time developing libraries for CPAN I suppose it my core-competency.
Bottom line, CPAN is awesome ... but lets not be a one trick pony. When you hear things over-and-over you should probably take notice (and maybe even onus). "Perl is not newbie friendly, past or present (modern)", "Perl community is not friendly (rtfm)", "Perl is not used for the new web", "Perl has no good IDE", etc.
I'd like to see Perl restored to its former glory because it is an incredibly versatile language. IMHO, I think Perl developers need to develop more purty public-facing tools, e.g. Websites, Web Apps, Desktop Apps, etc. .. see Lacuna Expanse for example.
CPAN Modules are not public-facing (or are to a point) and do nothing towards altering the perception of Perl.