From gslindstrom at gmail.com Sat Aug 14 15:04:10 2010 From: gslindstrom at gmail.com (Greg Lindstrom) Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 08:04:10 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] pyArkansas, 2010 Message-ID: Hello Everyone. School is just about to start, so it's time to get plans going for pyArkansas 2010. I went to pyOhio 2 weeks ago and am planning on going to pyTexas in 2 weeks. pyOhio was very impressive and I expect pyTexas to be, too. They both have active user communities; something that is not easy for us because there really isn't a concentration of us in any one location. Here are some questions for your consideration: 1. Do we want to do this again? I like the idea, but we have been unable to get any kind of meetings going and have been unable to get a web site up. I know that the CARLUG group is rethinking even continuing. Is this worth continuing? 2. I haven't asked, yet, but I'm willing to bet cash money that UCA would host us again this year. It really is a blessing to have their machines set up for our classes. And they throw in a system admin, too. 3. What about the format? I'd like some "Open Space" this year to allow people to sign up for talks on the spot. This is more like traditional conferences and can be a lot of fun. The last 2 years we have had 3-hour classes in the morning and 1-hour talks in the afternoon. Do we like that format? 4. The largest expense -- by far -- has been bringing in 2 speakers each year. I like the idea of bringing in experts from the community, but fund raising and budgeting is not my gift. I would like to lean a little more on our local talent, if possible. I know that Gloria Jacobs would like to come, again. She does a lot of classes/conferences and there is a chance the folks at Hendrix College may want to use her again this year (last year she help a "Women in Technology" seminar at Hendrix on Friday night before the conference). I'll get in touch with Dr. Birch, too. 5. For the past 2 years we have had great -- GREAT -- support from the COnway Chamber of Commerce; in particular from Chad Cooper. I read a couple months ago that Chad has left the Conway Chamber of Commerce. Ill see if we can get a new champion there. 6. Last year I sent a flier to every High School and College/University I could find on the Internet. It was quote a bit of work and cost well over $500.00 (we received a grant from the Conway Advertising and Promotion committee). We had GREAT turnout from the College/Universities (5 different schools and at least 18 people from Harding alone!). I'd like to send out fliers, but electronically would be more efficient. Any ideas? 7. Who wants to help? Even if you have never done anything like this before, I'd really like your help. I'll take the Coordinator position, but we could use: 1. Program Committee - Work on getting speakers and setting up the schedule 2. Promotion - Get the word out. Two or more would be good here. 3. Swag - Everyone likes getting free stuff and lots of stuff and many companies are willing to give if we ask. 4. Budget - Raise money and write checks. We won't need much $$ this year but, if you are good at asking, this is for you. 8. What about dates? We have normally met in late October or November. We need to avoid any UCA home football games (for obvious reasons). I can't think of anything else. The big question is #1; do we want to do this? If so, are YOU willing to step up and help out? Thanks! --greg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dr.cburch at gmail.com Sat Aug 14 16:00:14 2010 From: dr.cburch at gmail.com (C Burch) Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 09:00:14 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] pyArkansas, 2010 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 1. I'd personally like to see this happen again. In terms of attendance, it was a definite success these last two years. I realize that it can't be judged successful without volunteers to organize! 2. UCA is the right way to go here. I'm confident I could find good classroom facilities at Hendrix, but I can't imagine how we could get the classroom computers that UCA has provided. 3. I liked the format from two years ago best - the three-hour block in the morning followed up by hour-long blocks in the afternoon. Last year, the afternoon mostly turned out to be a three-hour block as well - I guess because we wanted to take full advantage of the visitors. My one biggest suggestion from last year (which I've already mentioned to you, Greg) is that it would be nice for the morning to offer a session that would appeal to Python experts. 4. I would definitely be happy to speak again - with a reprise of my Python-for-programmers talk or something different. By the way, Hendrix is now using Python in several of its courses, including the introductory computer science course. If we have Gloria Jacobs again, I'd definitely like to ask her whether we could host a women students' event with her at Hendrix like we did last year. In fact, our computer science department might be able to defray some of the cost of bringing her in. 6. My personal college-professor perspective on e-mail versus snail mail: Probably on balance you're better off with snail mail. While you're more likely to get my personal attention by e-mail, I'm more likely to display a flyer for students to see if it comes to me by snail mail, already printed. 7. I'd be happy to deal with contacting colleges in the area this year. And while I don't feel up to contacting high schools on my own, I'd be happy to help. 8. One date I'd suggest avoiding is November 6 - that's the regional ACM collegiate programming contest. Many faculty and students who would otherwise come to the Python conference will be committed to compete there. From the collegiate perspective, it's best if it's a few weekends away from that - like early to mid-October - though that's pretty soon! -Carl From gslindstrom at gmail.com Mon Aug 16 13:54:44 2010 From: gslindstrom at gmail.com (Greg Lindstrom) Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:54:44 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] pyArkansas, 2010 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 9:00 AM, C Burch wrote: > 1. I'd personally like to see this happen again. In terms of > attendance, it was a definite success these last two years. I realize > that it can't be judged successful without volunteers to organize! > > 2. UCA is the right way to go here. I'm confident I could find good > classroom facilities at Hendrix, but I can't imagine how we could get > the classroom computers that UCA has provided. > I agree. Dr. Hu and UCA have been very good to us and I'd like to ask them, again. I may see if we can get another room for Open Space. > > 3. I liked the format from two years ago best - the three-hour block > in the morning followed up by hour-long blocks in the afternoon. Last > year, the afternoon mostly turned out to be a three-hour block as well > - I guess because we wanted to take full advantage of the visitors. My > one biggest suggestion from last year (which I've already mentioned to > you, Greg) is that it would be nice for the morning to offer a session > that would appeal to Python experts. > Again, I agree. I wonder if the class for complete beginners is a good idea. We had 4 people in it last year (although, one was representing Philander Smith College to evaluate Python for their curriculum!). The other consideration is the Intro to Python for Programmers has been jam-packed the past two years. Having the computers set up is a huge plus for the conference! > > 4. I would definitely be happy to speak again - with a reprise of my > Python-for-programmers talk or something different. By the way, > Hendrix is now using Python in several of its courses, including the > introductory computer science course. > Your class was very well received last year and I'd love to have you present it again. I would also like more advanced talks. Let's see what develops. As for using Python in your classes, Hendrix has always been forward thinking :-). UCA has hired Dr. Chen, a Honco-Level Python coder/teacher from Georgia and I know that the Physics department at Henderson State University is using Python to analyze data from their telescope (I may even get the chance to write some software for them). > > If we have Gloria Jacobs again, I'd definitely like to ask her whether > we could host a women students' event with her at Hendrix like we did > last year. In fact, our computer science department might be able to > defray some of the cost of bringing her in. > I spoke to her at pyOhio and she would like to come. Maybe we could split expenses. I will speak with Jeff Rush at pyTexas at the end of the month to see if he will speak, too. He will drive, which is much cheaper than flying. > > 6. My personal college-professor perspective on e-mail versus snail > mail: Probably on balance you're better off with snail mail. While > you're more likely to get my personal attention by e-mail, I'm more > likely to display a flyer for students to see if it comes to me by > snail mail, already printed. > And the fliers last year looked great. We had them printed on glossy paper. Maybe we can hit all of the Colleges/Universities (and Tech Schools?) and then get the High School "in the neighborhood" (and the home schoolers, too). > > 7. I'd be happy to deal with contacting colleges in the area this > year. And while I don't feel up to contacting high schools on my own, > I'd be happy to help. > OK. I'll get the High Schools/Home Schoolers. We'll need to get a flier made up, but that can wait for now. > > 8. One date I'd suggest avoiding is November 6 - that's the regional > ACM collegiate programming contest. Many faculty and students who > would otherwise come to the Python conference will be committed to > compete there. From the collegiate perspective, it's best if it's a > few weekends away from that - like early to mid-October - though > that's pretty soon! > OK. Let's get to work. Here are dates: Oct 2 - Oct 9 - UCA Home Football Game Oct 16 - Oct 23 - UCA Home Football Game Oct 30 - Too Close to ACM Contest? It looks like either Oct 2 or 16. I'll write Dr. Hu at UCA to see if he would be willing to host the event and, if so, which date would be better for them. I guess it's time to get to work! --greg > > -Carl > _______________________________________________ > PyAR2 mailing list > PyAR2 at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pyar2 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From waynejwerner at gmail.com Mon Aug 16 17:34:50 2010 From: waynejwerner at gmail.com (Wayne Werner) Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:34:50 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] pyArkansas, 2010 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 6:54 AM, Greg Lindstrom wrote: > On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 9:00 AM, C Burch wrote: > >> > > 3. I liked the format from two years ago best - the three-hour block >> in the morning followed up by hour-long blocks in the afternoon. Last >> year, the afternoon mostly turned out to be a three-hour block as well >> - I guess because we wanted to take full advantage of the visitors. My >> one biggest suggestion from last year (which I've already mentioned to >> you, Greg) is that it would be nice for the morning to offer a session >> that would appeal to Python experts. >> > > Again, I agree. I wonder if the class for complete beginners is a good > idea. We had 4 people in it last year (although, one was representing > Philander Smith College to evaluate Python for their curriculum!). The > other consideration is the Intro to Python for Programmers has been > jam-packed the past two years. Having the computers set up is a huge plus > for the conference! > For the beginner class it might be useful to poll some of the schools, but my guess (based on the numbers from last year) is that most of the attendees probably came from at least a high school programming course so they know about if-statements and looping. > 4. I would definitely be happy to speak again - with a reprise of my >> Python-for-programmers talk or something different. By the way, >> Hendrix is now using Python in several of its courses, including the >> introductory computer science course. >> > > Your class was very well received last year and I'd love to have you > present it again. I would also like more advanced talks. > I think that would be a great class - especially for those non-repeat attendees, but I'd definitely love some more advanced talks. I'd be willing to present a shorter talk about device interaction with Python (Webcams, wii remotes, arduino, etc.), or perhaps if there's interest, I could give a class on GUI programming with either Tkinter or pyGTK, geared towards programmers with some Python experience, but little/no GUI experience. > > > OK. Let's get to work. Here are dates: > > Oct 2 - > Oct 9 - UCA Home Football Game > Oct 16 - > Oct 23 - UCA Home Football Game > Oct 30 - Too Close to ACM Contest? > > It looks like either Oct 2 or 16. I'll write Dr. Hu at UCA to see if he > would be willing to host the event and, if so, which date would be better > for them. > I'll put my vote in for the 16th. -Wayne -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gslindstrom at gmail.com Wed Aug 18 00:09:16 2010 From: gslindstrom at gmail.com (Greg Lindstrom) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:09:16 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] pyArkansas 2010 Message-ID: pyArkansas is on for Saturday, October 16th, on the campus of UCA. Once again we will be hosted by Dr. Hu and the gang in the Department of Computer Science and I would like everyone at some point to thank them; it is a HUGE help to have them step up and support us each year. For the program, I'd like to lean on Arkansas talent more than we have in the past. Gloria Jacobs (New York) has expressed interest in coming down again and may do some work at Hendrix College and I'd like to ask Jeff Rush from Texas to come speak, but the rest is us. This will save up lots of $$ (also, it's time for us to stand as a user community). This means I'd like for people to prepare talks -- we'll have 30 and 60-minute slots available -- on anything Python. It would be good to have a class or two in the morning for new users. We will also hold one room for open space, where people can sign up on the spot to give talks. This is common in community conferences and you never know what you'll get (both good and bad). Anyone want to take a crack at a flier? We'll get them printed on glossy paper again because it looks really cool. Dr. Burch (Hendrix College) has agreed to take on getting the word out to Colleges/Universities. I'll handle local High Schools, but there are a lot of professionals out there and we need to get to them! I'll get a budget set up this weekend and then we can start asking for support. Anyone want to contact O'Reilley, Manning, and others for Swag? I'll get the word out and send out a call for papers to present. If you have done anything or want to present on a particular topic (remember, we have lots of beginners wanting to learn), please consider presenting. Time to get to work, --greg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gslindstrom at gmail.com Sat Aug 21 14:34:57 2010 From: gslindstrom at gmail.com (Greg Lindstrom) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 07:34:57 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] pyArkansas 2010 Message-ID: Good Morning, Everyone - pyArkansas is scheduled for Saturday, October 16th and once again, our friends at UCA have agreed to host us. This is our 3rd pyArkansas and I'd like to start leaning on local talent more than we have in the past two years. Part of that is because I think there are plenty of Python developers/user right here and the other is that the bast majority of our budget the past two years has been devoted to flying people in and housing feeding them. I am going to pyTexas this Saturday and may ask Jeff Rush if he could come up (he was here in 2008) but, unless there is a huge cry from the masses, that will be it this year. Our format has been classes in the morning and talks in the afternoon. This worked well when our primary thrust was to introduce Python to people but, as I mentioned, there are a lot of people using Python and we need to accommodate them as well. To that end, I'd like to propose that we have at least 1 classroom devoted to talks or open space in the morning. We need a "Python for Programmers" class for experienced coders to learn Python (Dr. Burch from Hendrix College has already offered to repeat his class from last year) and I'm torn on the "Python for Complete Beginners" class. Dr. Chen (UCA) did a fantastic job teaching it last year but, if memory serves, we only had 4 people in it [however, one was a representative from Philander Smith College looking to evaluate Python for their CS curriculum!]. I have been contacted by Michael Finch, EAST Lab Facilitator out of Greene County Tech High School (Paragould) about pyArkansas. For those of you who are not aware, the EAST program -- Environmental And Spatial Technologies -- is an effort to get technology into High School classrooms and, I think, is a perfect fit for us. Michael has stressed that they do not promote one technology over another, but is interested in making his students aware of pyArkansas; this may be a perfect opportunity for us to offer the "Python for Complete Beginners" class. I've included him on this email and will contact him separately to see how we can work together. If we are going to have talks, we need people to speak! I will put together a "call for papers" and I need *YOU* to think about presenting something. If can be on a specific Python topic (how to program objects, database, web) or on something cool where you have used Python. I have even toyed with having 30-minute talks as well as 60-minute talks because I think we cold get more people to speak for shorted periods of time and I'd love to see all sorts of topics. We will need to get a list of topics people would like to see. I am working on getting our wiki up (friends from pyTexas are helping me with that). So, here's where we stand. We need to get word out to everyone (Dr. Burch has volunteered to get word out to Universities/Colleges and I'm handling High Schools). We need to get a wiki up (hopefully tomorrow) and then we can get a call for papers out. I need someone to handle swag (if we want it); I can help out, but someone has to do the legwork (write email/make phone calls). And we will need some $$. I'll ask Novasys but does anyone have a contact at Acxiom or HP? Anywhere else in Conway that we can think of? This may have repeated some of what I wrote two weeks ago, but I only received 2 responses. If this is going to go forward, more people have to get involved! Let me know what you want pyArkansas to be this year! --greg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scott.shellabarger at gmail.com Sat Aug 21 14:45:53 2010 From: scott.shellabarger at gmail.com (Scott Shellabarger) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 07:45:53 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] pyArkansas 2010 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'll help any way I can. I'll contact a couple people I know from Acxiom HR. As always NovaSys will give money for expenses. Sent from my iPad On Aug 21, 2010, at 7:34 AM, Greg Lindstrom wrote: > Good Morning, Everyone - > > pyArkansas is scheduled for Saturday, October 16th and once again, our friends at UCA have agreed to host us. This is our 3rd pyArkansas and I'd like to start leaning on local talent more than we have in the past two years. Part of that is because I think there are plenty of Python developers/user right here and the other is that the bast majority of our budget the past two years has been devoted to flying people in and housing feeding them. I am going to pyTexas this Saturday and may ask Jeff Rush if he could come up (he was here in 2008) but, unless there is a huge cry from the masses, that will be it this year. > > Our format has been classes in the morning and talks in the afternoon. This worked well when our primary thrust was to introduce Python to people but, as I mentioned, there are a lot of people using Python and we need to accommodate them as well. To that end, I'd like to propose that we have at least 1 classroom devoted to talks or open space in the morning. We need a "Python for Programmers" class for experienced coders to learn Python (Dr. Burch from Hendrix College has already offered to repeat his class from last year) and I'm torn on the "Python for Complete Beginners" class. Dr. Chen (UCA) did a fantastic job teaching it last year but, if memory serves, we only had 4 people in it [however, one was a representative from Philander Smith College looking to evaluate Python for their CS curriculum!]. > > I have been contacted by Michael Finch, EAST Lab Facilitator out of Greene County Tech High School (Paragould) about pyArkansas. For those of you who are not aware, the EAST program -- Environmental And Spatial Technologies -- is an effort to get technology into High School classrooms and, I think, is a perfect fit for us. Michael has stressed that they do not promote one technology over another, but is interested in making his students aware of pyArkansas; this may be a perfect opportunity for us to offer the "Python for Complete Beginners" class. I've included him on this email and will contact him separately to see how we can work together. > > If we are going to have talks, we need people to speak! I will put together a "call for papers" and I need *YOU* to think about presenting something. If can be on a specific Python topic (how to program objects, database, web) or on something cool where you have used Python. I have even toyed with having 30-minute talks as well as 60-minute talks because I think we cold get more people to speak for shorted periods of time and I'd love to see all sorts of topics. We will need to get a list of topics people would like to see. I am working on getting our wiki up (friends from pyTexas are helping me with that). > > So, here's where we stand. We need to get word out to everyone (Dr. Burch has volunteered to get word out to Universities/Colleges and I'm handling High Schools). We need to get a wiki up (hopefully tomorrow) and then we can get a call for papers out. I need someone to handle swag (if we want it); I can help out, but someone has to do the legwork (write email/make phone calls). And we will need some $$. I'll ask Novasys but does anyone have a contact at Acxiom or HP? Anywhere else in Conway that we can think of? > > This may have repeated some of what I wrote two weeks ago, but I only received 2 responses. If this is going to go forward, more people have to get involved! Let me know what you want pyArkansas to be this year! > > --greg > _______________________________________________ > PyAR2 mailing list > PyAR2 at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pyar2 From waynejwerner at gmail.com Sat Aug 21 17:35:10 2010 From: waynejwerner at gmail.com (Wayne Werner) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 10:35:10 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] [PyAR2-organizers] pyArkansas 2010 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2010/8/21 Greg Lindstrom > Good Morning, Everyone - > > pyArkansas is scheduled for Saturday, October 16th and once again, our > friends at UCA have agreed to host us. This is our 3rd pyArkansas and I'd > like to start leaning on local talent more than we have in the past two > years. Part of that is because I think there are plenty of Python > developers/user right here and the other is that the bast majority of our > budget the past two years has been devoted to flying people in and housing > feeding them. I am going to pyTexas this Saturday and may ask Jeff Rush if > he could come up (he was here in 2008) but, unless there is a huge cry from > the masses, that will be it this year. > I really wanted to attend one of Gloria Jacobs' talks last year, but there was another class that I wanted just a little more, but I'm bummed that I missed it. This year, I think we should really push filming the talks so that it won't be so terrible to choose one talk over another. Do they record talks at PyCon? I'd be happy to contact whoever is in charge of that to see what advice they have. If we are going to have talks, we need people to speak! I will put together > a "call for papers" and I need *YOU* to think about presenting something. > If can be on a specific Python topic (how to program objects, database, web) > or on something cool where you have used Python. I have even toyed with > having 30-minute talks as well as 60-minute talks because I think we cold > get more people to speak for shorted periods of time and I'd love to see all > sorts of topics. We will need to get a list of topics people would like to > see. I am working on getting our wiki up (friends from pyTexas are helping > me with that). > I've already offered, but again I'd be glad to give a talk/class on GUI programming. The 60 minute format would probably be ideal for that class. I could also give a 30 minute talk (or shorter) about some of the hardware interfacing I've done (webcams + PIL + numpy, Arduino, wii remotes). I'm really looking forward to PyArkansas this year. As an aside, have we talked to the Texas Pythonistas to invite their attendance? I know that happened the first year and our attendance suffered because of it. -Wayne -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gslindstrom at gmail.com Sat Aug 21 18:06:02 2010 From: gslindstrom at gmail.com (Greg Lindstrom) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:06:02 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] [PyAR2-organizers] pyArkansas 2010 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Wayne Werner wrote: > 2010/8/21 Greg Lindstrom > > Good Morning, Everyone - >> >> pyArkansas is scheduled for Saturday, October 16th and once again, our >> friends at UCA have agreed to host us. This is our 3rd pyArkansas and I'd >> like to start leaning on local talent more than we have in the past two >> years. Part of that is because I think there are plenty of Python >> developers/user right here and the other is that the bast majority of our >> budget the past two years has been devoted to flying people in and housing >> feeding them. I am going to pyTexas this Saturday and may ask Jeff Rush if >> he could come up (he was here in 2008) but, unless there is a huge cry from >> the masses, that will be it this year. >> > > I really wanted to attend one of Gloria Jacobs' talks last year, but there > was another class that I wanted just a little more, but I'm bummed that I > missed it. This year, I think we should really push filming the talks so > that it won't be so terrible to choose one talk over another. Do they record > talks at PyCon? I'd be happy to contact whoever is in charge of that to see > what advice they have. > I'll contact her to see if she can come. She does not demand an honorarium, but we would need to pick up air fare, hotel, car and meals. I'll see if she is available. As far as taping the classes, it's huge effort. I'll talk to the folks at pyTexas Saturday about it. > > If we are going to have talks, we need people to speak! I will put >> together a "call for papers" and I need *YOU* to think about presenting >> something. If can be on a specific Python topic (how to program objects, >> database, web) or on something cool where you have used Python. I have even >> toyed with having 30-minute talks as well as 60-minute talks because I think >> we cold get more people to speak for shorted periods of time and I'd love to >> see all sorts of topics. We will need to get a list of topics people would >> like to see. I am working on getting our wiki up (friends from pyTexas are >> helping me with that). >> > > I've already offered, but again I'd be glad to give a talk/class on GUI > programming. The 60 minute format would probably be ideal for that class. I > could also give a 30 minute talk (or shorter) about some of the hardware > interfacing I've done (webcams + PIL + numpy, Arduino, wii remotes). > I'll get a list started. That would be an excellent class. > > I'm really looking forward to PyArkansas this year. As an aside, have we > talked to the Texas Pythonistas to invite their attendance? I know that > happened the first year and our attendance suffered because of it. > Taken care of Saturday. I hope to get some up to give talks. --greg > > -Wayne > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bob.fahr at gmail.com Sat Aug 21 18:06:17 2010 From: bob.fahr at gmail.com (Bob Fahr) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:06:17 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] [PyAR2-organizers] pyArkansas 2010 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4C6FF979.7090807@gmail.com> Greg, First of all, thanks for continuing to drive this effort! I really like the idea of 30 min classes for a track. We can cover a lot of topics and appeal to a broader audience. I think it is great that the high schools are contacting us, if we are getting enough participation from the high schools I think it would be worth ensuring that we have present topics that would be useful to them. As an offshoot of our conference I'd be interested in presenting to the EAST classes or high school computer classes on-site too. I'll work on getting some donations of $$ and swag. Do you have a summary of the stats on the prior conferences we've held? That would be useful in persuading supporters that this is serious. Something like number of attendees, where they came from, number of presenters and their background, past sponsors, feedback from participants, etc. Bob On 8/21/2010 7:34 AM, Greg Lindstrom wrote: > Good Morning, Everyone - > > pyArkansas is scheduled for Saturday, October 16th and once again, our > friends at UCA have agreed to host us. This is our 3rd pyArkansas and > I'd like to start leaning on local talent more than we have in the > past two years. Part of that is because I think there are plenty of > Python developers/user right here and the other is that the bast > majority of our budget the past two years has been devoted to flying > people in and housing feeding them. I am going to pyTexas this > Saturday and may ask Jeff Rush if he could come up (he was here in > 2008) but, unless there is a huge cry from the masses, that will be it > this year. > > Our format has been classes in the morning and talks in the > afternoon. This worked well when our primary thrust was to introduce > Python to people but, as I mentioned, there are a lot of people using > Python and we need to accommodate them as well. To that end, I'd like > to propose that we have at least 1 classroom devoted to talks or open > space in the morning. We need a "Python for Programmers" class for > experienced coders to learn Python (Dr. Burch from Hendrix College has > already offered to repeat his class from last year) and I'm torn on > the "Python for Complete Beginners" class. Dr. Chen (UCA) did a > fantastic job teaching it last year but, if memory serves, we only had > 4 people in it [however, one was a representative from Philander Smith > College looking to evaluate Python for their CS curriculum!]. > > I have been contacted by Michael Finch, EAST Lab Facilitator out of > Greene County Tech High School (Paragould) about pyArkansas. For > those of you who are not aware, the EAST program -- Environmental And > Spatial Technologies -- is an effort to get technology into High > School classrooms and, I think, is a perfect fit for us. Michael has > stressed that they do not promote one technology over another, but is > interested in making his students aware of pyArkansas; this may be a > perfect opportunity for us to offer the "Python for Complete > Beginners" class. I've included him on this email and will contact > him separately to see how we can work together. > > If we are going to have talks, we need people to speak! I will put > together a "call for papers" and I need *YOU* to think about > presenting something. If can be on a specific Python topic (how to > program objects, database, web) or on something cool where you have > used Python. I have even toyed with having 30-minute talks as well as > 60-minute talks because I think we cold get more people to speak for > shorted periods of time and I'd love to see all sorts of topics. We > will need to get a list of topics people would like to see. I am > working on getting our wiki up (friends from pyTexas are helping me > with that). > > So, here's where we stand. We need to get word out to everyone (Dr. > Burch has volunteered to get word out to Universities/Colleges and I'm > handling High Schools). We need to get a wiki up (hopefully tomorrow) > and then we can get a call for papers out. I need someone to handle > swag (if we want it); I can help out, but someone has to do the > legwork (write email/make phone calls). And we will need some $$. > I'll ask Novasys but does anyone have a contact at Acxiom or HP? > Anywhere else in Conway that we can think of? > > This may have repeated some of what I wrote two weeks ago, but I only > received 2 responses. If this is going to go forward, more people > have to get involved! Let me know what you want pyArkansas to be this > year! > > --greg > > > _______________________________________________ > PyAR2-Organizers mailing list > PyAR2-Organizers at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pyar2-organizers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gslindstrom at gmail.com Sat Aug 21 22:33:20 2010 From: gslindstrom at gmail.com (Greg Lindstrom) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:33:20 -0500 Subject: [PyAR2] pyArkansas 2010 Call For Papers Message-ID: The 3rd annual pyArkansas conference, a gathering of Python programming enthusiasts, will be held on Saturday, October 16th, on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas (Conway) and we would like you to present a talk. We are accepting proposals for 30 or 60 minute talks (25 and 55 minutes, actually) on anything Python. Do you want to present on a particular topic (Python 3? Web? Database? Objects? Packages? Images? GIS? Sphinx?)? How about telling us about that cool program you just wrote? This is a conference run by enthusiasts for enthusiasts; you will never find a better audience. Last year we had 78 people attend including students/teachers from at least 5 Arkansas Colleges/Universities as well as High School and home school students. Professionals from 5 different states were on hand as well. We will have a wiki up in the next week but, if you are interested, please send your name and a brief description of the topic you would like to present (a paragraph would be just fine). Tell us if you would like a 30 or 60-minute slot and anything else we should know. We'll select talks by October 1st, so you'll know a couple weeks in advance if you were selected (and there will be open space so even if you are not selected you still can give it a go). Send you proposal to . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: