[PyAR2] [PyAR2-organizers] pyArkansas 2010

Sat Oct 2 18:14:36 CEST 2010

2010/8/21 Bob Fahr <bob.fahr at gmail.com>

>  Greg,
> First of all, thanks for continuing to drive this effort!
>

Thanks!  It gets take a lot of time, but I think we're going to have a good
year.

>
> 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.
>

Me, too.  I want to push it more next year because I think there are people
who are ready to step up.

>
> 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.
>

Yeah...I like the idea.  I think it would be very cool (tm) if we could have
people willing to go to High Schools and present talks on programming and
Python.  Time to get some year round exposure going.  I think there will be
interest and support from our University friends.

>
> 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.
>

Sure.  First year, 55 (or so) attended.  There was pretty serious weather
all day which hurt us a little.  Sponsors; Novasys Health, Southwest Poser
Pool, Conway Chamber of Commerce.  We brought in Jeff Rush and Noah Gift as
speakers and had great support from our friends in Texas.

Last year, I believe we had 78.  Sponsors: Novasys Health, Conway Chamber of
Commerce and Conway Advertising and Promotion Commission.  This year we lost
our supported at the CoC (Chad Russel) left and I have not made a new
contact.  We brought in Jacob Kaplan-Moss (developer of Django) and Gloria
W. Jacobs.  We had representatives from at least 5 Universities/Colleges
including about 20 from Harding University.  There was huge interest in the
Blender class which crosses over from Computer Science into the Arts.

HTH,
--greg

>
> 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
>
>
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