From david.christian at gmail.com  Sat May 17 22:52:31 2008
From: david.christian at gmail.com (David Christian)
Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 16:52:31 -0400
Subject: [group-organizers] Thanks and request for advice
Message-ID: <63940b00805171352y1d6d5eb7oac7f0e5dc31c196a@mail.gmail.com>

Hello all,
I started getting more involved with the organization of my local
python group after Pycon, where Jeff Rush and several others had a BOF
session about how to improve your local Python Users Group.  It
inspired me to suggest changes to our group in NYC.

Since then, we've:

* added a website (wiki) at http://nycpython.org
* added an irc channel (#nycpython on freenode)
* moved to a location with more space, no preregistration required.
* started organizing a "hack night" for people who want to work on
projects in python to get together and do so
* shortened the length of our presentations to a half an hour (with
more time allotted for particularly interesting presentations or via
questions - this avoids potentially bad presentations going on
forever)
* started publishing an agenda for our meetings so people know (at
least vaguely) what to expect
* stolen chipy's idea of asking people to give their name and favorite
module  as an introduction, it's fun and python-related and lets
people say something about themselves that's different (though we have
a large percentage of newbie python users who don't have one)
* started having semi-regular social meetings at a bar where we talk
about what to do next with nycpython
* started advertising the social (bar) meeting after the meeting on
the same billing as the main meeting

Last month we had 20 attendees, which is about as many as our space
could handle.  The conversation was good, and the presentation, about
pdb, was well received.  So, first of all, *thanks* to those who were
at that BOF for your ideas and help and encouragement.  And if you are
a smaller group, the above are some ideas of things you can mostly do
quickly.

Secondly, I have a request: one place I feel like we're a little short
on is speakers.  I'd be interested if I could fill in that need from
outside of our current membership.  I looked on the speaker circuit
and didn't see any that were actually in town.  You'd think there'd be
some python developers at google NYC but if they are there I don't
know who.  If anyone has any leads on speakers in NYC or another
location that I should be searching for speakers, could you let me
know?

Thirdly, is there something else we're missing from that list that is
low-hanging fruit?  I'm looking for things we can do _now_ to make our
group active and lively in the hopes that by getting to some sort of
basic level I can create a virtuous cycle of involvement.  Although
another question I have is: how many people are involved in the
running of your groups?  Are there many volunteers, and what do they
do?)

Answers to any of these questions would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
David Christian
(P.S. is there a list of things you should do when creating your
python group?  Perhaps I'm missing a part of the wiki about this?)