[python-uk] Code Dojo - yesterday and next year...

[Nicholas Tollervey]

Folks,

It was great to see so many people at the dojo last night. I'm relieved we had enough space to fit you all in.

Thanks also to Dave (ipython), Carles (OO.org Impress), Ben (Sudoku) and René (PyGame) for four excellent, entertaining and well presented talks. Well done to Dave for "winning" the O'Reilly book and thanks Fry-IT for the pizza and beer.

For those of you who were not able to make it or would like to see what we got up to - and have a Google Wave account - Bruce was "waving" notes including links, references and code examples. Many thanks Bruce! You can find it here: http://3.ly/KFK

Following on from the discussion afterwards about where the Dojo should go next... here's a summary of my takeaway from what was said:

* Everyone liked the live coding / interactive format.

* Tim, Ciarán and Bruce spoke up for *more* opportunities for attendee coding. It was pointed out that whilst the talks were great much of the appeal of the dojo format is in the opportunity for attendees (rather than speakers) to get their hands dirty with code and learn by getting feedback and observing how other developers tackle a problem.

* Bruce suggested alternating talks / regular dojo - where live coding of a solution continues over several dojos until the agreed problem is solved / complete (like we did with TicTacToe). Then hold a talks dojo followed by more of the same.

* Rather than rotation of pair programming (so only one person is coding at any one time), people suggested concurrent coding in smaller groups on a pre-agreed problem. I didn't catch _all_ the discussion but I'm assuming they mean an evening something like this:
	1) Pizza and Beer
	2) As a group we agree the problem to solve (perhaps even having a short baby-steps introduction to the problem [<20mins])
	3) Depending on the total numbers, split into "huddles" of 3-5 participants and attempt to solve the problem in the usual rotation or pair programming method.
	4) A deadline is set after which each group is asked to show-and-tell what they did so we can do a compare/contrast on the different approaches.
	5) Pub :-)

* DATES: So we don't have any further clashes - we bagsy the Thursday in the first week of every month for our meeting. For next year, this means the Dojo will meet on the following dates:

	7th January
	4th February
	4th March
	1st April (!) <- we must do something appropriate for this one - suggestions please.
	6th May
	1st June
	1st July (Europython happening 17th-24th July)
	August (Summer School Holiday!)
	2nd September
	7th October
	4th November
	2nd December

* As promised, I've created a wiki (PBWiki - it's free and feature-ful) where we can organise future talks. It's publicly readable and you'll need to pester me for edit rights from the wiki's front page... I'll immediately approve you as an admin so you can approve others. Obviously, this is so we don't get inundated with spam. The URL is here: http://pythondojo.pbworks.com/FrontPage

As always, comments, suggestions and ideas most welcome.

Best wishes,

Nicholas.