[python-advocacy] silent-movie slideshow?

[Jeff Rush]

Catherine Devlin wrote:
> Hi!  I'm thinking of putting up a table at the next Ohio LinuxFest to
> hawk Python and PyOhio.  One of the things I'd like to put on it is a
> computer screen paging gradually through some instructive and/or
> eye-catching samples of things Python can do... everything from
> "here's list comprehension" to "here's a tiny Pyglet game".  Stuff to
> catch the eyes of the passers-by and millers-about.

That would be very useful - lots of people would benefit.  Actually 
constructing dynamic slides for specific topics would be a good usergroup 
activity and then combine the efforts.  Hmmm, vpython, pickle, numpy, some 
data plotting, pyglet demo, something PDF with ReportLab, with scenes of the 
actual source intermixed.


> Before I go off writing one from scratch, does anybody know of an
> existing slideshow along those lines?  I didn't see one at
> http://wiki.python.org/moin/Advocacy.  (Some promising possibilities,
> like "http://advocacy.python.org/@@/collaterals/PythonAdvocacyGlossy-1-A4.pdf",
> give me "Service temporarily unavailable".)

I'm not aware of anything like that that already exists.  BTW, I did restart 
the advocacy server - it isn't in the system boot script so it goes down when 
they reboot it.


> Or a good tool to write it in?  I'm thinking maybe Bruce, but I
> haven't tried 2.0 yet.

Bruce or maybe just something custom, that pulls in various modules and runs 
them for awhile, like your neat vpython demo you have.  The variety of demos 
make it hard to use an existing tool to pull them together, especially if the 
demos aren't designed to relinguish control after a bit.


> Oh, yeah - and it would also be good to hand out some stuff.  A
> one-page Getting Started with Python guide would be nice.

Check the advocacy materials for something like this - not sure if you want a 
'what is Python and where do I find resources' paper or a 'programming 
reference sheet'.  Things like the former are on that site.

-Jeff