[group-organizers] Notes from the PyCon 2012 Community Organizers' BoF

[Michelle Rowley]

Thanks to everyone who was able to attend the Community Organizers' BoF at PyCon, this year! I compiled some notes on the resources that were mentioned in the meeting, as well as some ideas that were shared (broken out by general topic). Please chime in with the bits that I've missed. Let's keep the conversation going on this list so we can continue to improve our groups and share what we're learning.


Resources:

Bay Area Debian group's Shotgun Rules (hilarious/relevant/awesome): http://bad.debian.net/shotgun_rules.txt
Jessica's and Asheesh's talk from 2012 PyCon about Diversity in the Boston Python group: http://pyvideo.org/video/719/diversity-in-practice-how-the-boston-python-user
Yannick's talk from 2011 PyCon about bootstrapping Montreal-Python: http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-montreal-python-lessons-learned-from-bootstraping-a-python-community-4901495
Newbie Python curriculum on OpenHatch: http://bit.ly/python-getting-started
Example of how Austin Python uses Github: https://github.com/awpug
New Python Github account: https://github.com/python - currently work being done on a group organizer starter kit.


Discussion notes:

On group dynamic
- Newcomers make a group healthy, make sure you have new people coming.
- Invite people personally - on Twitter, IRC, at other meetups, etc.
- Persevere! It might take a bit of time to build up a healthy group size.
- A consistent meetup night (i.e. every second Tuesday) will help people remember when the meeting is.

On sponsorships
- PSF could pitch in some cash to help local user groups with things such as Meetup.com fees, and bringing in high profile speakers to the group.
- Kurt Kaiser (PSF Treasurer) is working on a system for UGs to be able to take sponsorship donations through the PSF. Boston has this set up already (see: http://donate.bostonpython.com).

On content
- Make sure there is a variation in the levels of content you present, i.e. beginner, intermediate and advanced talks.
- Breakout into smaller groups. The New York Python Meetup group has tried doing smaller groups in separate rooms, and then some of those breakout group talks turn into larger group talks if there's interest for others to see them.
- Run a project/hack night. Unstructured, and you can have a newbie corner.
- Encourage newer members to do lightning talks - that can help them become more comfortable with giving longer talks.
- Bring in a remote speaker using telepresence, but beware of technical problems.

On feedback
- It's important! Each community will have its own needs and dynamic. Feedback will help structure the group appropriately for the local community.
- It appears to be much easier to get feedback *right after* the meeting.

On management
- Get help! Doing it alone is a lot harder and less fun. Having the backup and support from one another on a leadership team is critical.
- Try splitting up the responsibilities by having a rotating organizer in charge of each meeting (Austin does this - check out their github profile).
- A project that documents the process of starting up a Python user group would be interesting. If you're starting up a new one, consider doing this for future generations of Python organizers.


---
Michelle Rowley
@pythonchelle
http://www.meetup.com/pdxpython





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