[Chicago] The Portland group guards the door to their meetings...
kirby urner
kirby.urner at gmail.com
Wed Mar 10 00:22:40 CET 2010
On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 11:37 AM, <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
> Pretty serious Python group out there in Portland. Looks like they've begun
> stationing bouncers at the front door:
>
> http://wiki.python.org/moin/PortlandPythonUserGroup
>
> Skip
> _______________________________________________
Hi Skip, hi Chicago --
Writing from Portland here.
We had an idyllic meeting space on the 2nd floor of a bank building
called Cubespace. All the open source groups met there, or a lot
of 'em, including Ruby, Postgres and others.
http://coffeeshopsnet.blogspot.com/2009/05/local-politics.html
However, when Cubespace was forced to close, because US Bank
didn't see this as a top floor investment banking division (which
it wasn't), just a landlord relationship (which it was), the various
user groups had to disperse and find other digs. We've never
recovered the loss of cohesion. Admirers of Javascript (one of
the groups) now meets in a whole different building, to the lasting
detriment of Portland's developer community.
Python's user group now meets at the top of a business tower in
downtown Portland that technically closes around 5 pm. Not only
do we need the guard to let us in at 6:30 pm, but there's a key
in the elevator, without which it won't go to the 16th floor or whatever
it is. The guard escorts each party to the elevator and presses the
button.
So yeah, it feels more like a fortress, not like an open / academic
environment. WebTrends is generous in offering a space, and the
facilities are quite acceptable. However, in terms of having the
general public feeling welcome, that's not happening -- maybe
wasn't either at Cubespace unless you knew what web sites to
follow.
I think a paradigm Python user group should offer an intro
to generic Python, maybe some other classes, free to the general
population, with rotating presenters. Perhaps once a month?
This gives Pythonistas an opportunity to fine tune their teaching
skills, and it helps give visibility to the Python language. The
general public feels more welcome, senses the friendliness of
this community.
In practice, I don't know any user group doing this. The Portland
group certainly isn't, and, as you mention, we station a guard at
the door.
Kirby Urner
PSF '09
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