[Baypiggies] SF Meeting?

Simeon Franklin simeonf at gmail.com
Sun Oct 21 18:11:19 CEST 2012


I see a variety of issues here and I'd like a sense from the community
about them. Baypiggies has had valuable contributions from organizers
past and present - Wes, JJ, Aahz, and Tony are all admins on the
mailing list and have kept the group alive through various
contributions. Tony has done most of the organizing lately in terms of
speaker recruitment and running meetings and Jim has been the long
time meeting coordinator. I'm also not sure who the point person is
for our current host (Symantec Mountain View). I only attend about 2/3
of the meetings - there are very faithful participants like Vicky - I
don't think she ever misses a meeting... All those people should chime
in on this discussion. Here are my thoughts:

SF is currently under-served in terms of Python interest groups and
Baypiggies current location is not very convenient for folks up on the
Penninsula. It would be nice to have a single user group that rocked.
If we had a more centrally located meeting space and interesting and
diverse speakers I'm sure we could get the most important attribute -
lots of interesting Pythonistas to converse with.

The most obvious course of action is to see if we can coalesce the SF
Python Meetup community and the Baypiggies community and meet
someplace north of Mountain View at least part of the time.

Considerations include:

* Can we find a regular and reliable host for our meetings? We have
possible one-time offers and suggestions to try Mozilla and/or Yelp.
Are there any Pythonistas on the list who work at Yelp or Mozilla who
would be willing to inquire about hosting a regular Python UG?

* Would moving the location discourage participation from the current
community that does attend regularly?

It's also been discussed that we might try meeting irregularly,
alternately, or maybe even once, up in SF proper. This would eliminate
the need to find a permanent host.

* Would it be a negative to regularly alternate locations? Are we best
off trying to stick to one location consistently?

I really don't see any downsides to doing this once - even if it's not
what we want to do all the time Baypiggies ought to make the effort to
get to the Python community that doesn't currently have a meetup to
attend. +1 from  me.

Finally I see mostly familiar faces at Baypiggies. This is really good
(I really enjoy seeing you all) but bad in that I don't see growth,
new faces, or new energy. I also look around at the energy in the Bay
Area Python community and see lots of activity via PyLadies and
activity in specific sub-communities: Twisted, Django, and so on. I
also see Python UG other places (Boston! - everybody watched this
PyCon talk @ http://youtu.be/QrITN6GZDu4 right?) with huge
communities, active participation, great diversity and interesting
events and speakers. I would like to see Baypiggies support PyLadies
more formally and look to the Boston Python UG as a model for having a
more active, diverse and dynamic community.

I have a million specific ideas for events: Baypiggies should put on a
Python Workshop event, we should invite other communities like Twisted
and Django to reach a potentially larger audience. I've successfully
run hack-style and tutorial-style events with other user groups and
would love to see an occasional "Let's all write an X" for X in
['twilio app', 'game', 'data mining', 'mobile app'] event and suspect
we might get a totally different crowd if we promoted these sorts of
events to Python newbies.

Concretely I am willing to work harder at organizing - asking PSF for
money, contacting speakers and potential hosts and evangelizing and
promoting Baypiggies. I can also probably supply AV services via
Marakana. I just want to know if there's enthusiasm within the
Baypiggies community for change!

Ok - I know I'm typing a lot so:

tl;dr - I want to move at least some meetings up the penninsula and
reach more Pythonistas. I want to know if there is any strong
community opposition to this idea.

-best regards
SImeon Franklin


More information about the Baypiggies mailing list