[TriZPUG] Caktus Moving To Durham

[Chris Calloway]

On 3/26/2014 8:58 AM, Calvin Spealman wrote:
> Well, I have been waiting for a public announcement to clear my way to
> discussing this and I did get a greenlight to doing so yesterday, so
> this is as good a thread as any. Thanks for the good wishes, Chris! It
> has been pretty great to watch this growth from the inside, too. I have
> been with Caktus for /most/ of its existence and certainly got to see it
> grow at an amazing pace.
>
> As the article says, we won't be ready to move until the end of the
> year. We have plenty of time to enjoy our existing Carrboro location,
> the fantastic atmosphere and lunch options of the Carrboro summer, and
> ongoing project nights and quarterly TriPython hosting.
>
> However... I'd like to start the search now for a replacement
> Carrboro/Chapel Hill location to host every third month in our place,
> after we finally move to Durham. I don't want to create a vacuum, so
> please if anyone knows a possible new location that could pick up in
> 2015, speak up.

Well, I have had a very recent serendipitous development just in the 
last couple of days. I thought Monday was going to be my last day at 
UNC. After ten years of good luck with soft funding, the government's 
create jobs by eliminating jobs program called the sequester had finally 
caught up to me and robbed me of all my funding from all sources all at 
once. And my brightest job prospect was in Nags Head. I was kind of 
planning on moving to the beach in a few months, which has been my 
lifelong dream.

But as of Monday I will instead be a Marine Sciences employee on loan to 
RENCI, UNC's supercomputing center (http://www.renci.org/). They are 
starting to get more serious about Python, finally. They've been doing 
bits and pieces with it here and there. But now they've seen the bright 
shining light and want a lot more. They called up my boss and bada-bing, 
I suddenly had to cancel my plans on how to spend my severance pay 
sprinting in Italy (http://abstract-technology.com/plog-event-plone-italy).

The thing about RENCI is, really nice meeting rooms. And a desire to be 
seen doing community outreach.

However, I have to keep a watch on this. There is still a possibility 
that I may become a Marine Sciences employee on loan to RENCI in Nags 
Head because of a possibly advantageous three-way funding model with the 
Coastal Studies Institute which would require my work on CSI premises at 
the coast. I just won't know for sure until a few more months go by. 
There are too many moving pieces in play at the moment to predict. But 
for right now if nothing changes, I think we could start meeting at 
RENCI soon. My involvement with this group is one of the reasons I'm 
being hired, so I plan to bring it up at my first meeting with them on 
Monday.

I'm also really looking forward to project night in Durham. :)

-- 
Sincerely,

Chris Calloway http://nccoos.org/Members/cbc
office: 3313 Venable Hall   phone: (919) 599-3530
mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599