[PyLadies-BLR] [RFC] Weekly dojo's with an agenda

[svaksha]

Hi,

I was chatting with Sunita last week about reviving the weekly dojo's
where people meet each week for a short time and code and work on
something together - the focus is on "weekly" because even if you miss
one week the disconnect isnt as large as a monthly meet (speaking for
myself here). Does this seem interesting? Is it feasible?

As for the agenda, I realise the Python ecosystem is too large to be
able to accommodate all our diverse interests in one 3-hour meetup, so
I propose the following:

* Meet each Saturday for 3-hours (extendable, or you can leave early too.)
* Narrow the agenda and focus on one thing and make it work.
* Lightning talks at the end of the meetup where each person gets 5
min to speak about what they learned, discuss their problems, show
their code, etc...

To start out, we can..
1. Start with the basics: say, LPTHW and work out the exercises. (PS:
it could be any tutorial and there are quite a few, but I dont know
what to propose without knowing the attendee demographic.)

2. Once we establish a regular meetup pattern, we can pick higher fruits:
** Adopt one library package for a month and everyone pairs on either
learning it or fixing easy bugs;
** Or, form teams and delve deeper on a specific topic, say, "data
types in python / numpy", or "learning _your idea here_"
** Or, tackle MOOC courses <-- This one is a bit tricky as coursera,
udacity, et al.. have a code of conduct that prohibits code sharing,
so no pair programming etc..

The finer details (should we pair, group work or individuals hacking
alone?) can be decided and modified on-the-spot, by the people who are
attending on any given day so that the group can ensure flexibility
and interest in learning.

I propose one, at 1000 hrs (or post lunch at 1400 hrs) on Sat,
26-Oct-2013 at either CIS or TW (<-- Sunita is TW available this Sat,
or should I ask CIS?). Sunita had mentioned that TW is available on
Friday evenings (iirc, 4 pm?) too, so would people prefer that over a
Saturday? Keeping it very late would ofcourse make it harder for
people to stay late to hack away, as traveling late is not safe at
all.

Thoughts?

-svaksha