[group-organizers] Hello from the heart of England

[Zeth Green]

Hello everyone,

I just discovered this list so I had better join in. I might as well
also introduce myself and my group if that is okay? My name is Zeth
and I started a user group called 'Python West Midlands' before Easter
and we have had several meetings and events since then.

The West Midlands is the dead centre of Britain, and includes
Britain's second largest city Birmingham (known as the 'heart of
England' as it is the centre of the road, train and canal networks),
as well as many other loosely connected cities such as Coventry,
Wolverhampton and Walsall among others. It is the home of William
Shakespeare, the steam engine and J.R.R. Tolkien.

So far we have about 40 people on our mailing list and our best
meeting had about 15 or so people (and our worst five), averaging
about 10 normally. We meet twice a month: we have an informal meeting
in a delightful pub (built in 1729) which provides us with reserved
space and wifi access; and we have a more technical meeting in the
premises of a local firm (The Linux Emporium). This 'technical meet'
is always on a Saturday and has talks or tutorials in the morning and
a practical group programming activity in the afternoon; the latter
often takes the form of two competing teams.

We are the first formalised Python user group in Great Britain,
although there is also a London Python Meetup which is well
established. We will host the first ever dedicated Python conference
in Britain this September, and we will try to match people up
geographically so hopefully there may be more British Python User
Groups in the future.

That's basically it, I have a question but I will save that for
another email since this is quite long already, more information about
us can be found at http://pywm.eu/

Thanks for reading and thanks for having us, hopefully we can all
share tips to make our Python user groups useful and welcoming for our
members.

Best Wishes,
Zeth