Hello everyone, Originally I was starting with just the people that turned up to the local user group SIG at EuroPython. However, since Nicholas has outed us, here is an outline of where we are. Basically, we are talking among people who want to be actually be an organiser of a local Python User Group (PUG).
I organised a slot in the EuroPython programme which was attended by people from around the world, not just the UK. Everyone talked about their group or their wish for a group and we all shared what we had been trying to do. Afterwards a group of UK people moved to the weatherspoons. I was going to feedback the main points at the closing ceremony but there was confusion with the lightning talks organiser who overran by an hour and 20 mins and so the closing ceremony went a bit mental. The lightning talks were very good though! Python local user groups in the UK -------------------------------------------- The 2006 idea was to make 11 UK PUGs - at least one for each English region plus Wales and Scotland. (Northern Ireland is both part of Python Ireland and the PyConUK so we would let those in Northern Ireland work out how they want to do it). As things get more successful, each of the 11 group can have branches or more local meetings, so for example. We start with: Cambridge and East Anglia Python User Group Then the first branch might meet in Cambridge and another might start up in Norwich. Various branches could grow up and die off with the 12 group middle layer staying alive. Different branches could have different levels of organisation. Cambridge might have a fully fledged technical meet, while in Lowestoft they might just have a beer and an ice-cream together on the pier (are there any Python Programmers in Lowestoft?). At the 2010 SIG, people seemed to agree that this was still a good idea. Talk Swaps -------------- One idea from the SIG meeting was to prepare a new talk for your own PUG, then give that talk at other PUGs. This could help seed new PUGs, and help keep existing ones going. We tried to work out the practicality of that. We talked about how to reduce the costs before we incur them. We can feed speakers ourselves. If the trip requires staying overnight, we can sleep in each other's houses. However, travel by second class train or coach could still be £50 or more. Most PUGs would not hold any money as a deliberate way to avoid creating a bureaucratic overhead to running the group. So we thought about asking the PSF, or the EuroPython Society, or the proposed new European PSF branch, to handle the expenses for us. If we raise any money ourselves we could pay it upstream to cover these costs. One suggestion was to have a jobs board to cover these costs. Discussion has already started on this thread about that. Where Nicholas wrote "We might be able to support the costs of running the site", the speaker swaps are the only thing that we have suggested to do that could cost money. The site itself does not cost us any money at the moment, since Clocksoft generously allow us to put the site on one of their servers. If anyone has any other ideas for how to cover these traveling expenses, please do share them. Local User Group SIG IRC Meeting - 19th August at 7.30pm ---------------------------------------------- This is the first time I have used doodle, so I am not an expert. But I think I have to myself add email addresses to it, I can't seem to find an option for making it completely open. If someone can tell me how, that would be helpful for next time. Anyway this time, lets forget adding more people to doodle and just go for 19th August at 7.30pm (as long as it does not clash with a local Python group!). The meeting will last approx 1 hour and I will circulate an agenda nearer the time. The meeting is for people who are involved in helping to organise a local user group or want to be. After that meeting, if we want we can use ways to discuss among ourselves without making too much noise on python-uk (e.g. people that run Linux groups use the lugmasters list to cut down on noise for people that don't care and just find those discussions annoying). However, this email list is pretty low-traffic anyway, so we can use it until other subscribers on this list rise up and tell us off for making too much noise. Website ---------- I want to get beyond talking about websites since there is a lot more important things to running a local user group than the website, but here is an outline of what we are up to. I did the first version of python.me.uk during PyConUK 2007 and many people gave lots of different ideas, all useful and positive, although obviously in different directions. While some people say, 'just use a mailing list' or 'just use meetup' or 'just use X', I decided that this was not a good approach. As well as being fragmentary, as proved by Rob Cowie's posts in this thread, he did not know the magic solution (dig through the wiki) for finding the right site. When you talk about people who may be new to Python (as well as perhaps new to open source software projects like Python altogether), then requiring people to use certain systems acts as a barrier. For example. while old Unix-fans like myself love mailing lists, many people who started using computers in the 2000s find them obscure and confusing (look how many Linux user group mailing lists have a recurring thread about top-posting vs bottom posting). During EuroPython 2010, a couple of us did some work coding a new version of python.me.uk based on the ideas I have been given. This is in process and we hope to have things ready for the IRC meeting. Pinax is a content management system (based on Django) that is already aimed at social groups such as a local Python group, so the features we want are already there: profiles, calendar, photos, tribes, locations and so on. The Pinax site is up and functioning to some extent but still needs a little templating work before we launch it. If anyone wants to help, we need more graphics and CSS work rather than Python coding now. Basically, each local group (in internal Pinax terms 'a tribe') can have their own theme (colours, mascot etc), and subdomain, for example: http://wm.python.me.uk/ However, behind the scenes it all goes into one integrated calender and so on. If someone moves to another part of the country, they do not need to make a new login, they just change a few checkboxes which user groups (tribes) they are subscribed to. Also behind the scenes we can do a lot of automated updates to social networking sites etc, so when an event is added it updates twitter, facebook and so on. We can also do mailing list munging so that old Unix fans can ignore there is a website at all and just access the whole system via a mailing list. Each group's admin does not need to know Django, they just login to the website and use the web based admin. Groups can start up, grow and die off, and it will all be tracked on the site. I don't really care if you hate Django/Pinax and want me to use Turbogears or a wiki or some proprietary cloud. Pinax is off the shelf and easy to use and we have the people to do it. Getting stuck on arguing over the website is a dead end. Lets use our efforts to get the groups up and running. Anyway, I hope the meeting time of 19th August at 7.30pm suits everyone. If you cannot make it please send your thoughts to this thread or if you want to give your thoughts in private then send it to me. Best Wishes, Zeth _______________________________________________ python-uk mailing list python-uk@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk
