Happenings in Python Usergroups

Ben Reynwar gave us an intro to Django, including basic project setup and routing urls to python methods.

TuPLE (Tucson Python Language Enthusiasts) is off to a good start. Our first official meeting went well, with 6 attending.

Chris Merle started us off with an overview of Plone and two products that help to
inspect and interrogate the python objects in use:
DocFinderTab
DocFinderTab adds a tab to the ZMI that parses the docstrings of the class of the object you are using and presents them to you in the tab.
Clouseau
Clouseau embeds a live ajax based python interpreter into your plone site for debugging purposes. It looks to have some nice autocompletion features and lets you poke around the internals of a live instance.

Chris then demoed his news portlet modification that shows an excerpted portion of the news items (vs just the title and link), and explained how DocFinderTab and Clouseau both helped him determine which object attributes were going to be useful for displaying the content.

We had some good conversation about general interests, IDEs, reference books, and what kinds of presentations everyone is interested in. Django, advanced python, and C extensions are heading up the list for the future.

Misc. Notes:

• Civilization 4 allows mod authors to use Python to modify aspects of
  the game. Hopefully we'll hear more about it in the future.
• PyScripter - Free Windows Editor/IDE
• Core Python (http://corepython.com/) was recommended as a good
  reference, others thought the online docs were adequate.
• A couple of members are repeat pycon attendees. This year we'll have 2
  or 3 attending. April's meeting will be good for a pycon recap.
  
• A python obfuscation tool was discussed
  

Thanks to Chris for presenting and everyone for attending!

Well, I think it went ok.

Attendance was slightly lower than expected, but it's entirely my fault: the date clashed not just with a (very active) BSD user-group, but also with another OSS event and even a Manchester United home game (which means: terrible traffic as the multitudes move to Old Trafford, and people staying at home/local pub to watch the game). We ended up being 5 (17% of the list members), I expected 2-3 more. Better luck next time, eh!

My presentation about Django (which I uploaded to the Files section of the group page ) seemed well-received, and understood enough to be the conversation-starter which was meant to be. Skills in the group are different enough that it's not going to be a web-only thing.

People seemed happy to make this a regular event... there's another speaker in the pipeline which I hope will be available in two weeks, so that we can set on a fortnightly schedule; this should reduce the odds that we'll clash with other events in the long run. I warmly welcomed all suggestions about people who would/could speak, and I'll try to follow up as soon as possible. If I can't find anyone, I'll try to have a social event anyway and see what happens.

I posted to the group list thanking the attendants and pointing to the presentation... maybe I should also try to write down a couple of other points we discussed, to kickstart conversation and increase interest in the next meeting, but I don't want to sound too fanboyish... so I'll better wait a couple of days and then, if the list is silent, I'll post.

The room was very good. The people at Manchester Digital Development Agency were very kind and helpful and provided everything we needed (and more). I suggest people investigate if similar "public" organizations exist in their cities/towns (make that tax money work for you!).

All in all, it was a good experience. Next time, I'll make sure I stay away from football games (as much as possible) and I'll advertise the free nibbles!