[Baypiggies] BayPIGgies - a year later / Progress in 2017 / KUDOS to Jeff - he's so awesome!

[Guido van Rossum]

Thanks for creating BayPiggies, Deirdre! And thanks to all piggies for
being my greatest audience.

--Guido

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 1:47 PM, Deirdre Saoirse Moen <deirdre at deirdre.net>
wrote:

> I want to thank all for taking this little group I started in 1999,
> keeping it going, and making it far bigger than I ever did.
>
> Deirdre
>
> On Jan 2, 2017, at 10:07 AM, Jeff Fischer <jeffrey.fischer at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Happy New Year!
>
> I'm looking forward to another great year of talks. I think 2016 turned
> out great for BayPiggies, in spite of the rough start. Thanks, Glen for the
> kind words, for all your help, and for using your extensive connections to
> line up great speakers. A thanks also to:
>
>    - Bill Deegan for redoing the baypiggies.net website
>    - All those who helped with logistics at the meetings
>    - LinkedIn for hosting us and providing food
>    - Everyone for coming to the meetings, providing a lot of positive
>    energy for the speakers, and asking great questions
>
>
> Here's to a great 2017! See you all on the 26th (note it will be back to
> the normal 4th Thursday).
>
> Regards,
> Jeff
>
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 10:18 PM, Glen Jarvis <glen at glenjarvis.com> wrote:
>
>> Year 2016 was quite a dramatic and difficult year for BAyPIGgies. Exactly
>> one year ago, there was confusion about the control of the MeetUp site and
>> potential dues being charged. Because the MeetUp site was set to charge
>> dues (not something that we agreed to), and because we had lost some
>> control of the site, we saw many members being automatically removed from
>> the MeetUp group. Our MeetUp membership dropped from many thousands to a
>> small handful.
>>
>> However, we have been a group long before MeetUp (an awesome disruptive
>> tool in this space) was even around. And, we decided to focus on our
>> purpose and what we have always done: Bring speakers and an audience
>> together around the subject of Python.
>>
>> This brought out the best in us. Volunteers from our community came
>> together and pulled together like never before. We had help in everything
>> from greeters to help people find the room to metric managers. For example,
>> Grant Ridder completely owned the attendance numbers so we have metrics on
>> our growth.
>>
>> We were able to get over 100 people together for that first January
>> meeting. We were also able to sort out the MeetUp control issues as well.
>> And, our MeetUp numbers rebooted. We started with just a handful and, one
>> year later, we now have 1,559 members registered for the MeetUp site.
>>
>> None of this would have been possible if it weren't for one member of our
>> community: Jeff Fischer. Jeff owned the lion's share of work. He helped get
>> speakers, he ran the full meetings, and he was at the "helm of the ship"
>> for months at a time completely by himself. And, not once did he complain.
>> He gave so much of himself to this community and is continuing to give more
>> this year.
>>
>> I am so lucky to be part of this open source community. People often ask,
>> "I want to participate more in Open Source, but I don't know what to do."
>> There is always something that we can do to help our community, and we
>> don't have to be the most experienced coders to do it.
>>
>> I believe the year 2017 will be even better for us. There is only one
>> change that we're implementing this year. Our audience interest pool seems
>> focused around three main areas:
>>
>> 1. New Learners - growing a new community of programmers
>> 2. Data Science - Python has exploded in this area and we have a great
>> deal of interest here
>> 3. Advanced topics - Our core audience, that has been around for many
>> years  has interest in those advanced talks, for example, talks from Alex
>> or Guido.
>>
>> To keep talks that appeal to our audience balanced, we will try to
>> organize our talks in this manner:
>>
>> January: Beginner talk
>> February: Data Science talk
>> March: Advanced talk
>> April: Beginner talk...
>> etc.
>>
>> To kick this off, we have our first beginner talk: Python Buzzwords by
>> Charles Merriam.
>>
>>
>> Please RSVP today:
>>
>> https://www.meetup.com/BAyPIGgies/events/233553028/
>>
>>
>>
>> I look forward to another great year with a great community.
>>
>>
>> In awe of being here,
>>
>>
>> Glen Jarvis
>>
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>
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-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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