[Baypiggies] BayPIGgies - a year later / Progress in 2017 / KUDOS to Jeff - he's so awesome!

[Glen Jarvis]

Year 2016 was quite a dramatic and difficult year for BAyPIGgies. Exactly
one year ago, there was confusion about the control of the MeetUp site and
potential dues being charged. Because the MeetUp site was set to charge
dues (not something that we agreed to), and because we had lost some
control of the site, we saw many members being automatically removed from
the MeetUp group. Our MeetUp membership dropped from many thousands to a
small handful.

However, we have been a group long before MeetUp (an awesome disruptive
tool in this space) was even around. And, we decided to focus on our
purpose and what we have always done: Bring speakers and an audience
together around the subject of Python.

This brought out the best in us. Volunteers from our community came
together and pulled together like never before. We had help in everything
from greeters to help people find the room to metric managers. For example,
Grant Ridder completely owned the attendance numbers so we have metrics on
our growth.

We were able to get over 100 people together for that first January
meeting. We were also able to sort out the MeetUp control issues as well.
And, our MeetUp numbers rebooted. We started with just a handful and, one
year later, we now have 1,559 members registered for the MeetUp site.

None of this would have been possible if it weren't for one member of our
community: Jeff Fischer. Jeff owned the lion's share of work. He helped get
speakers, he ran the full meetings, and he was at the "helm of the ship"
for months at a time completely by himself. And, not once did he complain.
He gave so much of himself to this community and is continuing to give more
this year.

I am so lucky to be part of this open source community. People often ask,
"I want to participate more in Open Source, but I don't know what to do."
There is always something that we can do to help our community, and we
don't have to be the most experienced coders to do it.

I believe the year 2017 will be even better for us. There is only one
change that we're implementing this year. Our audience interest pool seems
focused around three main areas:

1. New Learners - growing a new community of programmers
2. Data Science - Python has exploded in this area and we have a great deal
of interest here
3. Advanced topics - Our core audience, that has been around for many years
 has interest in those advanced talks, for example, talks from Alex or
Guido.

To keep talks that appeal to our audience balanced, we will try to organize
our talks in this manner:

January: Beginner talk
February: Data Science talk
March: Advanced talk
April: Beginner talk...
etc.

To kick this off, we have our first beginner talk: Python Buzzwords by
Charles Merriam.


Please RSVP today:

https://www.meetup.com/BAyPIGgies/events/233553028/



I look forward to another great year with a great community.


In awe of being here,


Glen Jarvis
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