[Python Wpg] Notes from organizational meeting.

[Stuart Williams]

The Winnipeg Python Users Group had its first organizing meeting
Tuesday December 13th.  Five persons attended.  We made introductions,
chatted about Python, and discussed how to organize.

We talked about meeting times and the advantages and disadvantages of
meeting over the noon-hour.  We scheduled our next meeting for
Tuesday, January 17th at 12:00 noon, location to be announced.  We did
not assume that we would always meet during the day.  There was
considerable interest in meeting on a weekend, perhaps Saturday
afternoon which could then spill over to dinner.

>From our experiences in other computer-related user groups we
discussed how to organize.  There was general enthusiasm for a fairly
loose organization.  There was also strong sentiment that some will
only attend regularly if it continues to be interesting and worthwhile
to them.

With respect to a web site, we thought it made sense to use the
python.org wiki (http://wiki.python.org/moin/WinniPUG) at least for
now.  Several names were discussed including WPG and WinniPUG, but no
strong direction set.

With respect to getting the word out to others who may be interested,
we noted the Winnipeg PC Users Group Linux forum, CIPS, St. Boniface,
U of M, U of W, RRC, and SAGs (Special Area Groups) affiliated with
The Manitoba Teachers's Society (Science, Math, Business and IT, and
Computing groups might have interest).  For high school teachers, we
talked about targeting a meeting in late winter for educators, or
taking a presentation to them elsewhere.

The following topics were mentioned (with a few added later via email
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/winnipeg/2005-December/000015.html)
as possible foci for meetings, with the first two slated for January
and February:

  Dave's recent projects (January)
  Database access (February)
  Visual Python and/or Python in Teaching (programming or ?)
  Zope, and Plone
  replacing shell scripts
  scientific computing
  Python enhanced shells like ipython and emacs python mode
  IDEs
  OO features

Stuart.