Titus Brown is speaking at the Michigan Python User Group in Ann Arbor tonight. Titus, who recently started his new job teaching at Michigan State, will speak about that job as well as his work with the Python Software Foundation (PSF). I'm interested to hear how things are going at Michigan State, where they're using Python for introductory CS classes (instead of C++, which they previously used). I've spoken to professors at other universities who haven't seemed interested in making the switch, and I'm curious to hear how MSU has accomplished it. Has it been, as in many cases of technology adoption, driven by a strong advocate? Committee? Was there pushback from faculty? Were there problems finding graduate students to help with those classes? Titus has blogged that the performance of students coming out of the new Python-based introductory class has not negatively impacted their performance in the follow-on class. It will be interesting to follow this migration.
The meeting starts at 7 pm and will be held at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200. That's at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington, in downtown Ann Arbor. We're right above the Linux Box, entrance is from Fifth Ave.
I don't know if I'll be able to attend the meeting or not (my daughter had her first full day of kindergarten today and I've felt drawn back home from the moment I entrusted her care to the bus driver this morning). Anyhow, I hope that someone will take good notes!
About Titus Brown:
Titus Brown runs the lab of Genomics, Evolution, and Development (GED) at Michigan State University. He is also an assistant professor in the departments of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and Microbiology and Molecular Genetics (MMG) at MSU. Titus has spent his career considering how to build better computational analysis pipelines and tools for interacting with scientific data, and he has spent a great deal of time working on large scale genomic analysis frameworks. Titus is also the primary author of twill, a scripting language for Web browsing.