Friday, April 24, 2009

TuPLE (Tucson, AZ) - April recap

The TuPLE (Tucson, AZ) group met on Monday, April 20th, attended by 10 members.
We had some good conversation and it was great to see more new faces show up. 

Rich Saunders gave a presentation on Pycon 09, touching on some issues relevant to his work at Rincon Research. 
General discussion of Pycon structure (tutorials, general conference, sprints), Lightning Talks, and Open Spaces.

3 of our members attended Pycon. Generally agreed the lightning talks and open spaces were popular and enjoyable conference additions.

All pycon videos are available at http://pycon.blip.tv/ 

Pycon Tutorial sessions (http://us.pycon.org/2009/tutorials/schedule/) were filmed and are available 
in addition to the talks and general conference videos. These look to 
be a great resource for in-depth exploration of python topics, from 
Python 101 to "A Curious Course on Coroutines and Concurrency" 

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O'Reilly User Group program 
We are now part of the O'Reilly UG program, which offers benefits to 
us as members (35% discount and free review copies)

Details and registration for other user groups available here: http://ug.oreilly.com/

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We also briefly discussed setting up a website for the group using Google App Engine as an exercise/group project. There seems to be some interest in possible group projects or hack days, but there wasn't much in the way of commitment moving forward. We aren't using meetup.com so it would be nice to have an RSVP function and a more active web presence than the google group.

Encouraged members to bring in their projects/code samples for group review and discussion for the next meeting. 


PyOhio: Call for Proposals

PyOhio 2009, the second annual Python programming mini-conference for Ohio and surrounding areas, will take place Saturday-Sunday, July 25-26, 2009 at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. A variety of activities are planned, including tutorials, scheduled talks, Lightning Talks, and Open Spaces. PyOhio will be free of charge.

PyOhio invites all interested people to submit proposals for scheduled talks and tutorials. PyOhio will accept abstracts on any topics of interest to Python programmers.

Standard presentations are expected to last 40 minutes with a 10 minute question-and-answer period. Other talk formats will also be considered, however; please indicate your preferred format in your proposal. Hands-on tutorial sessions are also welcomed. Tutorial instructors should indicate the expected length

PyOhio is especially interested in hosting a Beginners' Track for those new to Python or new to programming in general. If your proposal would be suitable for inclusion in the Beginners' Track, please indicate so. Organizers will work with speakers and instructors in the Beginners' Track to help them coordinate their talks/tutorials into a smooth, coherent learning curve for new Python users.

All proposals should include abstracts no longer than 500 words in length. Abstracts must include the title, summary of the presentation, the expertise level targeted, and a brief description of the area of Python programming it relates to.

All proposals should be emailed to cfp@pyohio.org for review. Please submit proposals by May 15, 2009. Accepted speakers will be notified by June 1.

You can read more about the conference at http://pyohio.org

If you have questions about proposals, please email cfp@pyohio.org. You can also contact the PyOhio organizers at pyohio-organizers@python.org.

Monday, April 20, 2009

pyCologne Python User Group, Cologne, Germany, April 8th Notes

Unfortunately, there were only 4 people at our meeting on March, 11th. Therefore the talks were postponed.

The Cologne Python User Group met on April, 8th at the computer centre of the University of Cologne. The meeting was attended by about 12 people. German speakers might want to refer to our wiki page http://www.pycologne.de.

Announcements
Proposals for upcoming pyCologne-Sessions
This time we had two talks:

Twitter with Python (Andreas Schreiber)

The Talk introduces the MicroBlogging Service Twitter and describes how to use the Python API and Library python-twitter, to write text-messages to a Twitter-Microblog.

You can find the talk (in German language) at http://wiki.python.de/User_Group_K%C3%B6ln/VortragTwitterMitPython

Google's App-Engine (Andi Albrecht)

Andi gave an overview about Google's App Engine and the APIs used. He covers development and deployment of web-applications on this platform and describes among other topics how to use the API Datastore and the SQL-like language GQL to fetch data.

You can find the full talk (in German language) at http://wiki.python.de/User_Group_K%C3%B6ln/VortragAppEngine

Announcements and Information on Twitter

Thanks to Andreas Schreiber you can find pyCologne now on Twitter: twitter.com/pycologne

The minutes of the meeting in German language can be found here.

The next meeting will be held on, Wednesday, May, 13th.

We enjoyed the rest of the evening in our usual italian restaurant having food, drinks and friendly conversation.

Monday, April 6, 2009

pyCologne Python User Group, Cologne, Germany, April, 8th, Announcement

The next meeting of pyCologne will take place

Wednesday, April, 8th
starting about 6.30 pm - 6.45 pm
at Room 0.14, Benutzerrechenzentrum (RRZK-B)
University of Cologne, Berrenrather Str. 136, 50937 Köln, Germany

Agenda:
  • Twitter with Python (Andreas Schreiber)
  • Google's APP-Engine (Andi Albrecht)
At about 8.30 pm we will as usual enjoy the rest of the evening in a nearby restaurant.

Further information including directions how to get to the location can be found at:
http://www.pycologne.de (Sorry, this page is in German only)

Friday, April 3, 2009

April Pyowa Wrapup

Our meeting was pretty poorly attended last night, but I think the four of us had fun discussing PyCon and then figuring out what we want to do to promote our group. We are currently thinking about getting a Google Ad for it. We went ahead an started a twitter feed using "pyowa" as our username. We may try plastering Iowa State University with flyers for our next meeting too.

Next time we plan to have am intro to sqlalchemy presentation and some kind of code review of a GIS model dump. We hope that one will be better attended. Until then.