[Chicago] New Member

[Garrett Smith]

Could have a Gong Show rule -- take as much time as you like, but you run the risk of getting booed off by raving and violently impatient geeks craving more and more for their ever feeding brains.

But AFAIC, if there's beer, folks can take as long as they like :)

----- "Kumar McMillan" <kumar.mcmillan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 9:54 AM, Jordan Sherer <jordan at widefido.com>
> wrote:
> > I *am* planning on attending the meet-up on Thursday. However, since
> this
> > will be my first ChiPy meetup I am unsure about giving a talk. If
> people
> > have enough interest in desktop apps built with Python, I can give a
> quick
> > one.
> 
> fwiw, I can't imagine my talk being longer than 10 - 15 min.  Quick
> talks are good.  If you want to plan a talk for 5 min then I'd say go
> for it.  We have done meetings with just lightning talks before
> (strict time limit) and usually those turn out well.
> 
> >
> > A few questions:
> > What is the atmosphere like for talks?
> 
> very informal.  the audience varies in size, it seems that we've been
> getting a lot more people to meetings lately.  Some people make
> slides, others just talk.  Some demo code and break stuff.
> 
> > Are there any general recommendations for giving a talk?
> > Is there anything in particular that people would like to hear about
> Python
> > powered desktop apps?
> 
> personally, I'm always curious to see how people write automated
> tests
> for desktop apps.  and when writing black box tests, what strategies
> people have for getting meaningful failures.
> 
> >
> > Do you think I should wait until the November meet-up to talk?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Best,
> > Jordan
> >
> >
> > On Oct 6, 2008, at Oct 6   9:41 AM, Kumar McMillan wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Allan, welcome.
> >>
> >> On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 11:34 AM, Allan Spale <allan2600 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> My name is Allan and I am interested in learning more about the
> Chicago
> >>> Python users group and where and when your next meeting will
> occur.
> >>
> >> Our next meeting will be the best ever.  I just updated the wiki
> with
> >> details: http://chipy.org/
> >>
> >> Chris is giving a talk on Miro and I'll be giving a talk on
> freebase
> >> but I'm not an expert on it.  I think Jordan Sherer might also give
> a
> >> talk on desktop apps?
> >>
> >> If there's time for discussion, maybe we can talk about the future
> of
> >> "semantic web" -- freebase is just one of the semantic tools
> emerging
> >> but I also don't know much about this so-called movement.
> >>
> >> Kaleidoscope looks interesting but ambitious.  I get overwhelmed
> >> easily when I hear of tools designed to organize all the data of
> the
> >> world.  Not that I don't think it's possible, it just seems really
> >> hard.  One thing is for sure, the Google model is far from perfect
> and
> >> if something comes along and does it better then they will be in
> >> trouble.  Freebase is pretty ambitious too.  But then again so was
> >> wikipedia and that worked.
> >>
> >> -Kumar
> >>
> >>>
> >>> To give you some background about myself...I have been working on
> an
> >>> internet startup for the past year or so in which I am developing
> an
> >>> open-source semantic database system that takes some of the ideas
> from
> >>> Freebase but goes into a somewhat different direction. You can
> read more
> >>> about the system here: http://my-kaleidoscope.org/platform.html.
> The
> >>> datastore I am using is pybsddb (BerkeleyDB module for Python),
> but the
> >>> system was designed in such a way to support any datastore whether
> it is
> >>> a
> >>> traditional SQL system or something more non-traditional like
> Amazon S3.
> >>> I
> >>> did a very scaled down demo at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo in New
> York City
> >>> a
> >>> few weeks ago doing a mashup of the working parts of my database
> system
> >>> and
> >>> using Twitter as a frontend:
> >>> http://en.oreilly.com/webexny2008/public/schedule/detail/5266. I
> would
> >>> invite all of you to take a look at it, but I am having a terrible
> time
> >>> trying to get my code to work on the web server space that I
> listed (the
> >>> demo was a hack of running mostly local and partially on the
> webserver).
> >>>
> >>> Attending this conference made me realize that I am probably not a
> good
> >>> candidate for funding my startup, but as I look for a job now (any
> leads
> >>> would be appreciated), I still want to develop this system for the
> Python
> >>> community. So, I am also interested in meeting developers who
> might be
> >>> interested in working on this project because my established
> codebase is
> >>> fairly large (about 15000 lines) even without many features being
> >>> implemented.
> >>>
> >>> I look forward to meeting all of you at the next meeting.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Allan
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Chicago mailing list
> >>> Chicago at python.org
> >>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago
> >>>
> >>>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >
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