[Chicago] The Portland group guards the door to their meetings...

[Garrett Smith]

I think having bouncers would be *ridiculously* cool. Carl?

On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 5:22 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>>
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