Tag Archives: Python

Monthly user group meetings this week!

It's the first full week of the month.  Hoping I'm able to get away for some user group meetings.

On Wednesday August 6, AACS (Ann Arbor Computer Society) has Eric Inancich discussing Ruby and Domain Specific Languages.  The meeting starts at 6.  Pizza will be provided by AACS, free of charge.  The meeting's free too, but door prizes only go to paid-up members (note to self: remember to take $20 for annual membership).  AACS usually gives out gift certificates.  

On Thursday August 7, the Michigan Python User Group (MichiPUG) will be discussing the state of Turbo Gears 2.  Created in Ann Arbor by local Kevin Dangoor, another local (Mark Ramm) has taken over maintenance of the TG2 project.  Both are very knowledgeable and it's always interesting to hear where the project is, and where it's going.  MichiPUG starts at 7.

Both meetings are at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 and are free and open to the public. Hope to see you at a meeting or two.

Tech events in and around Ann Arbor

The end of the month is sort of light on tech events in Ann Arbor, but STILL there are things to do within driving distance!

PyOhio is going on in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday July 26.  It's a free event, and includes talks, open spaces, lightning talks, and poster sessions. If you're planning to attend and want to carpool, check with other Python developers on the MichiPUG Google group.

The Ann Arbor Java User Group canceled their meeting for next week (would have been on Tuesday July 29), but look for their meeting next month.  Rumor has it that the August talk will be on JavaFX, which is getting some air time at OSCON this week.  

Next week, Wednesday and Thursday (July 30-31) is the Michigan Flex Camp in Lansing.  The price is only $40 ($25 if you only want to attend the first day).  This hands-on interactive camp looks really interesting.  Registration is limited to 150 people, so sign up now if you're planning to attend: http://www.theflexgroup.org/camp/.

Lightning Talk Fridays, hosted by SRT Solutions, continue on Friday, August 1 from 3:30-5 pm.

And one non-technical event will be held next week as well.  The WXW Business group is holding a networking event for businesswomen at the Ann Arbor Art Center.  Cost is $10, and registration is limited to 120 people.  Wine and appetizers will be served. Registration is available at http://wxwbusiness.com/.

If you have any interest in traveling to North Carolina in next week or the week after, TrizPugBootCampArama is being held there, with 3 consecutive camps: PyCamp and 2 on Plone.

Oh, and of course, the first week in August will be busy event-wise, with both the Ann Arbor Computer Society meeting on August 6 (topic: Ruby for Domain Specific Languages) and the Michigan Python User Group on August 7.  More details on those meetings to come.

 

Technology events in Ann Arbor this week and next …

Even though it's summertime, there are still a lot of meetings in Ann Arbor this week, and next.   

On Wednesday, July 2, Chris Sellers will be talking about Amazon EC2 at the Ann Arbor Computer Society meeting.  That meeting will be held at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI.  The meeting starts at 6 pm and is free and open to the public.  AACS supplies pizza for all.  Supporting members ($20/year annual dues) qualify for door prizes.

On Thursday, July 3, the Michigan Python User Group will meet, also at SRT Solutions.  Kevin Dangoor will talk about ZODB, the Python Zope Object Database. MichiPUG meetings are free and open to all.

The following week, on Wednesday, July 9, the Ann Arbor Dot Net Developer Group will host Jonathan Zuck, from ACT Online.  Jonathan is a software developer turned lobbyist.  His cause is innovation, and his company ensures that our elected officials are informed about technology matters.  Jonathan's making the user group rounds, visiting Ann Arbor, Lansing, and Grand Rapids .NET user groups with his message about why we, as technologists, need lobbyists.  DotNetRocks listeners may be familiar with Zuck, since he's made several appearances on that podcast, including his most recent visit to discuss OOXML.  AADND meetings are also held at SRT Solutions and are also free and open to all.

If you want to participate in a developer-oriented charity event, check out Ann Arbor Give Camp, July 11-13 at Washtenaw Community College.  

Just outside of the Ann Arbor area, is the Michigan!/usr/group at the Farmington Hills Library.  The topic of their meeting on July 9 is "MythTV".

Oh, and if you were wondering about SRT lightning talks for this week, we've cancelled them because Friday IS the Fourth.  The next scheduled lightning talks are on July 18, which happen to be Art Fair week.  Hmm, we may need to rethink that date.  It seems unlikely that even the half million or so visitors to the art fairs will draw much foot traffic for technical topics!  

Events this week in Ann Arbor and Lansing

Thursday night, June 19, SRT's very own Darrell Hawley will be speaking on IronPython at the Greater Lansing Area .NET User Group.  If you read his blog, you will know that he's been working hard on this talk, refining the content as well as his speaking technique.  That's not to say that it was bad before (it wasn't).  I think it shows how much emphasis people are putting on delivering high quality talks these days.

On Friday, June 20, SRT will hold lightning talks, which are free and open to all for speaking and/or listening.  We love it when people come to speak from other companies because we enjoy learning about what others are doing.  The 5 minute talks are a great way to get your confidence up, if you're not a regular speaker, and a great way to distill a topic into its essential components if you are.  There's usually something for everyone. I always compare lightning talks to the "short films" at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. If the film (or talk) isn't of interest to you, you haven't made a big investment and another film (or talk) that may be more to your liking will soon follow.  Lightning talks will start at 3:30 and go until about 5.  If you can't get there right at 3:30, no worries. Show up when you can.  We're a casual bunch.

Saturday, June 21, is the Lansing Area Day of .NET.  You have probably heard about these free 1-day immersions into .NET technology.  The first one was in Ann Arbor a few years ago.  The events usually sell out quickly, so register soon if you would like to attend.

And I wanted to add a quick reminder in case you missed my blog earlier this week about Startup Weekend Ann Arbor, that's going on this weekend as well!

Tech events in Ann Arbor this week

It's the first week of the month again … so there are user group meetings galore.

Wednesday, June 4 at 6:00 pm is the Ann Arbor Computer Society meeting.  The topic is PostgreSQL 8.3 and Beyond.  PostgreSQL is a free and open source database.   The meeting will be held at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI.  AACS meetings are free and open to the public.  Supporting memberships of $20/year are available, which help to support the pizza and soft drinks served at meetings as well as the door prizes.  

On Thursday, June 5, the Michigan Python User Group will meet at SRT Solutions at 7:00 pm.  The topic is TBD but some ideas that have been thrown around include: Google App Engine, non-relational databases, and Jython.  I'm sure it will be an enjoyable meeting, as always.  It's a great group, very casual and welcoming (and the meeting is free).  Please join us.

And Friday is the "on" Friday for Lightning Talks at SRT. Head over to SRT at around 3:30 pm for 5 minute talks on any tech topic of your choosing.  We'll go until about 5 so stop by whenever you are free on Friday afternoon.  SRT's lightning talks are free and open to everyone in the community, both for speaking and listening.  We think that the entire community benefits when we all know what others are doing.

PyCon 2008: An Overview

I attended my first PyCon this year.  It was in Chicago, and I was able to take Amtrak from Ann Arbor to Chicago (for only $27!).  The trip was quite pleasant, and I will say that I am definitely going to take Amtrak to Chicago again in the future.  My kids are already looking forward to it (to wit: do not tell a 2 year old that we will take the choo choo train "someday"; that's way too similar to "Sunday").

Anyhow, I arrived in time for tutorials.  I had signed up for 3, and they ran from about 9 am until 9 pm.  I was wiped out by the end of the day.  Two tutorials would have been plenty!

The conference was interesting. I met up with some of the devchix, who I had previously only been acquainted with online.  We decided to arrange a Birds of a Feather session and invite all of the women who were in attendance.  I was surprised to notice that a lot more women seem to attend Python conferences than Java or .NET conferences.  Interesting ….  In any case, we had our meetup.  About a dozen people showed up, and we had conversations that ranged from computer science education to how people felt about the bathroom on the lower level being redesignated for "men".  On the latter, it didn't really bother me (there were a LOT more men there than women, and time between sessions was short).  OTOH, it would have made sense just to have made the bathroom gender-neutral, I suppose (which is what we did at the Java Posse Roundup).

I went to a variety of talks, including some open spaces sessions.  I also went to lightning talks.  These were noted by others as a huge bonus of the conference in years past, but as Bruce Eckel noted, they were a bust this year, dominated by vendor talks.  Fortunately, the conference organizers are open-minded and DO listen to attendees.  They have already said that they will not open lightning talks to vendors in the future, and that responsiveness is what I have learned is pretty common in the Python Community (and in community-based conferences in general).

Conference sessions are starting to be put online. You can access them at http://www.youtube.com/user/pycon08. 

  

Upcoming Tech Events in the Ann Arbor area (and Ohio!)

Yes, it's the first week of the month again.  The Ann Arbor Computer Society meeting is tomorrow night, April 2, at 6 pm.  Jay Wren will be speaking on the Boo Programming Language and DSLs (Domain Specific Languages).  Boo is a statically typed language that runs on the CLR.  It has Python-inspired syntax. 

AACS meetings are free and open to the public.  Pizza will be provided.   Meeting will be held at SRT Solutions' offices, at 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200.  That's at the corner of Fifth Ave and Liberty, just above the Linux Box.  Take the elevator to 2R or come up the stairs and wind around to the right side of the elevator.

On Thursday April 3 at 7:00 pm, the Michigan Python User Group will meet to discuss EasyExtend, which allows you to extend Python syntax.  New documentation tools may be discussed as well.  Like AACS, the MichiPUG meetings are free and open to the public, and held at SRT Solutions.  Pizza will NOT be served, but people often go out after the meeting.

Next week, on Monday, April 7, there is a Flex Camp in Cleveland, Ohio.  Go to http://flexcampcleveland.com/ for registration and more information.  Looks like a fun and interesting event.

On Wednesday, April 9, the Ann Arbor Dot Net Developer Group will meet, at SRT Solutions. Bill Wagner will be talking about how to make good use of the new releases in Visual Studio 2008.  Meeting is free, starts at 6, is at SRT, and yes, there will be pizza.

Attracting a younger crowd to user group meetings

We had a discussion at the office this afternoon that centered around how to attract a younger group of people to the computer user group meetings.  We got several suggestions out of this, but are looking for more ideas.

First of all, WHY do we want to attract a younger crowd?  Well, the average age of the groups (Ann Arbor Computer Society, Ann Arbor Dot Net Developer Group, Ann Arbor Java User Group, Michigan Python User Group) is … well … "experienced". We could all benefit from a younger perspective, and the groups could use an infusion of new members.  Makes sense to tap the untapped market. Winston Tsang tells me that the Ruby User Group is pretty young, and that's interesting.  What are they doing differently, except that it's Ruby?  Well, for one thing, the meeting is held on campus.  That's interesting, because I initially shyed away from AACS when meetings were held on campus because I thought that it was a student group (it wasn't).   I wonder if that would make a difference?

The programming has been pretty "hip" in recent years, and diverse.  AADND has been focusing on .NET content, which has left AACS to mainly do "other than .NET".  That makes sense.

This month's AACS topic is Domain Specific Languages in Ruby.  I think that might attract a younger crowd but I'm not sure.  We'll see.  Oh yes, and AACS provides free pizza to all attendees, as well.

If you know anyone under the age of 30 that isn't in the habit of attending the user group meetings, can you reach out and explain what they are?  Let them know that if they are looking for a job, want to learn more about the industry and/or the Ann Arbor area, or simply want to hang out with other techies for the night, the user groups are a good way to accomplish that.  The meeting is at 6 pm.

Hopefully we'll have a big crowd on Wednesday for Joe's talk.  And if you can't make it on Wednesday (ahem, or even if you can!), Thursday's MichiPUG (Python user group) meeting will be great as well.  The Thursday meeting is at 7 pm.
 

Both meetings will be at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Avenue, Suite 200, Ann Arbor. 

 

PyCon registration is open

PyCon will be held in Chicago from March 14-16 (with tutorials on the 13th and sprints afterward).  Registration is now open at http://us.pycon.org/2008/registration/new/

The tutorials and sessions both look great, and there are also lightning talks and open spaces.   I'm even hoping to lure my scientist husband into attendance.  He has looked at Python about a year ago and liked it.  He's not a programmer, but he did some programming in Pascal in college and briefly looked at C++ a few years ago.  He said that Python was the most understandable of the languages he has seen.  This seems to be a common reaction from scientists, and so I'm hoping that he will go and learn more.  He may even end up using it at work someday!

It's great having a conference like this in the Midwest, and I have already signed up.   I seem to recall that the conference filled up last year (in Dallas).  I didn't want to miss out.