Need advice on starting a Python group

[gb345]

I'm hoping to get advice from anyone with prior experience setting
up a Python group.

A friend of mine and I have been trying to start a
scientific-programming-oriented Python group in our school (of
medecine and bio research), with not much success.

The main problem is attendance. Even though a *ton* of people have
told us that it's a great idea, that they're *very* interested,
and have asked to be added to our mailing list, the attendance to
our first few meeting has never been more than 5, including my
friend and I. Last time just he and I showed up.

The second problem is getting content. The format we'd envisioned
for this group was centered around code review (though not limited
to it). The idea was that at every meeting a different member
would show some code. This could be for any of a number of reasons,
such as, for example, 1) illustrate a cool module or technique; 2)
present a scientific research problem and how they used Python to
solve it, or get help solving it; 3) get general feedback (e.g. on
code clarity, software usability, module architecture, etc.). But
in principle just about anything is OK: e.g. a talk on favorite
Python resources, or a comparison of Python with some other language,
or an overview of Python gotchas would all be fair game.

Also, we stressed that the talks were not expected to be polished:
no need for PowerPoint slides, etc. Just project any old code onto
the screen, and talk about it, or scribble stuff on the chalkboard.

Still, we have a hard time finding volunteers.

And even when we've had volunteers, hardly anyone shows up!

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

GB

P.S. There's a Python Meetup we could go to, but it does not fit
the bill for us: it doesn't meet often enough, it's sort of out of
the way, and has practically no one doing scientific programming.

 

[Jonathan Gardner]

And even when we've had volunteers, hardly anyone shows up!

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Two things: One, only you and your friend really care. Let that sink
in. No one is going to carry the group but you two, at least
initially.

Two, there's a lot of people at movie theaters and the county fair.
Why? Because it is interesting and fun. Scientists work the same way.
Yes, a lot of people are interested in Python. Why don't you do a bit
of snooping around and see what people want to know about?

Let me give some examples:

* Interactive numeric programming with Python
* Rapid website development with Pylons (Trust me, everyone wants to
make a website.) Show how you are showing off data from one of your
experiments of projects and how easy it is to organize and manage
data.
* How you used Python on your latest and greatest project

Don't expect the audience to participate, except to show up and ask questions.

If you want to build a Python support group, then form an informal
group with your friends. Start a public mailing list and offer Python
advice and support for free. Integrate whatever code your org has with
Python, and manage and maintain that code so others can use it.

Finally, advertise. The more people see "Python", the more they will
be interested. Coca-cola and Pepsi are really good at this!

 

[News123]

Two things: One, only you and your friend really care. Let that sink
in. No one is going to carry the group but you two, at least
initially.

Two, there's a lot of people at movie theaters and the county fair.
Why? Because it is interesting and fun. Scientists work the same way.
Yes, a lot of people are interested in Python. Why don't you do a bit
of snooping around and see what people want to know about?

Let me give some examples:

* Interactive numeric programming with Python
* Rapid website development with Pylons (Trust me, everyone wants to
make a website.) Show how you are showing off data from one of your
experiments of projects and how easy it is to organize and manage
data.
* How you used Python on your latest and greatest project

Don't expect the audience to participate, except to show up and ask questions.

If you want to build a Python support group, then form an informal
group with your friends. Start a public mailing list and offer Python
advice and support for free. Integrate whatever code your org has with
Python, and manage and maintain that code so others can use it.

Finally, advertise. The more people see "Python", the more they will
be interested. Coca-cola and Pepsi are really good at this!

attendance will be very low and be sure nobody cares to check whether
anything happened on this group.

My suggestion is:


I'd suggest to setup a group, to which one can subscribe with mail
notification and for all the old ones perhaps even via nntp ;-) and of
course via a web front end (though I personally hate web groups)

Afterwards you can 'friendly-fore-subscribe' some collegues. ;-)
Just talk about your new cool group during lunch, etc.

Be sure, that most will be to lazy to unsuscribe.

Start discussing interesting topics on this group and then . . .
maybe others start joining. maybo nobody cares and you have just to
accept it.

bye


N

 

[Jean-Michel Pichavant]

attendance will be very low and be sure nobody cares to check whether
anything happened on this group.

My suggestion is:


I'd suggest to setup a group, to which one can subscribe with mail
notification and for all the old ones perhaps even via nntp ;-) and of
course via a web front end (though I personally hate web groups)

Afterwards you can 'friendly-fore-subscribe' some collegues. ;-)
Just talk about your new cool group during lunch, etc.

Be sure, that most will be to lazy to unsuscribe.

Start discussing interesting topics on this group and then . . .
maybe others start joining. maybo nobody cares and you have just to
accept it.

bye


N

Python is not interesting enough by itself to grab students attention.
It's just a tool to solve some technical problems.

So, either python has a direct benefit on the study itself (meaning it
can help getting better results), or you'll have to make it intereseting
as a hobbit. But python is not music, video, dance nor it is related to
sport, sex or whatever things that usually interest people. So I really
don't know how to make it interesting, I'm not sure it's even possible
nor desirable.

Good luck anyway.

JM

 

[Steve Holden]

Python is not interesting enough by itself to grab students attention.
It's just a tool to solve some technical problems.

So, either python has a direct benefit on the study itself (meaning it
can help getting better results), or you'll have to make it intereseting
as a hobbit. But python is not music, video, dance nor it is related to
sport, sex or whatever things that usually interest people. So I really
don't know how to make it interesting, I'm not sure it's even possible
nor desirable.

Good luck anyway.

JM

All the advice you have had is good. You need to turn around your
enthusiasm and look at it from the potential visitor's point of view -
what's in it for them?

You don't say where you are (and your invalid domain doesn't really help
identify that), but if you have any of the superstars from the
scientific Python world around you, invite one of them as a guest speaker.

Take a look on the web - e.g. in pycon.blip.tv, where all the PyCon
talks for the last two years are available. Maybe you could start each
meeting by showing one of those videos? Also take a look to see what
SciPy conferences have made available (though I don't think they do
videos yet).

The PSF has invested hugely in making that information available, and
the more they get used the happier we will be. But mostly it's a matter
of focusing on what your community needs from the group, and providing that.

Good luck!

regards
Steve

 

[bartc]

A friend of mine and I have been trying to start a
scientific-programming-oriented Python group in our school (of
medecine and bio research), with not much success.

The main problem is attendance. Even though a *ton* of people have
told us that it's a great idea, that they're *very* interested,
and have asked to be added to our mailing list, the attendance to
our first few meeting has never been more than 5, including my
friend and I. Last time just he and I showed up. ....
Still, we have a hard time finding volunteers.

And even when we've had volunteers, hardly anyone shows up!

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Try and get a girl or two interested in coming to the meetings...

 

[CM]

I'm hoping to get advice from anyone with prior experience setting
up a Python group.

A friend of mine and I have been trying to start a
scientific-programming-oriented Python group in our school (of
medecine and bio research), with not much success.

The main problem is attendance.  Even though a *ton* of people have
told us that it's a great idea, that they're *very* interested,
and have asked to be added to our mailing list, the attendance to
our first few meeting has never been more than 5, including my
friend and I.  Last time just he and I showed up.

The second problem is getting content.  The format we'd envisioned
for this group was centered around code review (though not limited
to it).  The idea was that at every meeting a different member
would show some code.  This could be for any of a number of reasons,
such as, for example, 1) illustrate a cool module or technique; 2)
present a scientific research problem and how they used Python to
solve it, or get help solving it; 3) get general feedback (e.g. on
code clarity, software usability, module architecture, etc.).  But
in principle just about anything is OK: e.g. a talk on favorite
Python resources, or a comparison of Python with some other language,
or an overview of Python gotchas would all be fair game.

Also, we stressed that the talks were not expected to be polished:
no need for PowerPoint slides, etc.  Just project any old code onto
the screen, and talk about it, or scribble stuff on the chalkboard.

Still, we have a hard time finding volunteers.

And even when we've had volunteers, hardly anyone shows up!

Do you advertise each time and describe what the topic will be for
that meeting and why the attendees should care? That might make a
difference. I.e., there's a big difference between:

a) The Thursday afternoon Python for scientific applications is
meeting, and I should remember that this week amidst all the other
stuff I have going on.

and

b) Wow, this Thursday there will be an hour workshop on how to create
publication quality graphs (somewhat) easily in Python using ready-
made tools...and there will be pizza!

Also, giving it a cool acronymic name doesn't hurt.

Che

 

[Kurt Smith]

I'm hoping to get advice from anyone with prior experience setting
up a Python group.

A friend of mine and I have been trying to start a
scientific-programming-oriented Python group in our school (of
medecine and bio research), with not much success.

The main problem is attendance.  Even though a *ton* of people have
told us that it's a great idea, that they're *very* interested,
and have asked to be added to our mailing list, the attendance to
our first few meeting has never been more than 5, including my
friend and I.  Last time just he and I showed up.

The second problem is getting content.  The format we'd envisioned
for this group was centered around code review (though not limited
to it).  The idea was that at every meeting a different member
would show some code.  This could be for any of a number of reasons,
such as, for example, 1) illustrate a cool module or technique; 2)
present a scientific research problem and how they used Python to
solve it, or get help solving it; 3) get general feedback (e.g. on
code clarity, software usability, module architecture, etc.).  But
in principle just about anything is OK: e.g. a talk on favorite
Python resources, or a comparison of Python with some other language,
or an overview of Python gotchas would all be fair game.

Also, we stressed that the talks were not expected to be polished:
no need for PowerPoint slides, etc.  Just project any old code onto
the screen, and talk about it, or scribble stuff on the chalkboard.

Still, we have a hard time finding volunteers.

And even when we've had volunteers, hardly anyone shows up!

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

GB

P.S.  There's a Python Meetup we could go to, but it does not fit
the bill for us: it doesn't meet often enough, it's sort of out of
the way, and has practically no one doing scientific programming.

There's a general Scientific Computing interest group that gets
together here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it has a
significant Python component & focus. They put on a Python bootcamp
this January that was a huge success.

http://hackerwithin.org/cgi-bin/hackerwithin.fcgi/wiki

They have bi-weekly meetings, sometimes it's of the 'come and share on
X topic,' although many times its 'local guest speaker is coming to
speak about Y'. My impression is that the latter meetings grabbed a
number of people around campus -- 'hey, I need to do Y, I'll see what
the speaker has to say,' and then they started coming for the
show-and-tell meetings. My recommendation would be to provide
something of value every meeting, the more specific the better.
'Python' in this regard is a bit open ended. You'd likely get more
involvement if you had meetings that focused on, e.g., parallel
computing (and have examples in python (mpi4py), and have someone come
and talk about MPI or something), or scientific data formats (with
examples of pyhdf5 or pytables...), or you could advertise a tutorial
on some scipy & numpy features and their advantages over using
matlab/octave/idl.

It's more work than show-and-tell meetings, but look at it as priming the pump.

There is much interest around here re: Python in science, but many
have only heard about it, some have dabbled but put it on the shelf,
others couldn't get it to work (they're scientists and used to
prepackaged software that works out of the box -- if it doesn't, it's
somebody else's problem), many others can't justify the time it would
take to learn it when they already have something else working. Until
something with value comes along (like your meeting with specific
topics) to change their minds, an open-ended meeting won't appeal much
to them.

Just some thoughts, and an example of what's worked here. Personally
I tend to make it to the meetings with a specific topic, and end up
skipping the ones that are more open-ended.

Kurt

 

[Mike Orr]

I'm hoping to get advice from anyone with prior experience setting
up a Python group.

A friend of mine and I have been trying to start a
scientific-programming-oriented Python group in our school (of
medecine and bio research), with not much success.

The main problem is attendance.  Even though a *ton* of people have
told us that it's a great idea, that they're *very* interested,
and have asked to be added to our mailing list, the attendance to
our first few meeting has never been more than 5, including my
friend and I.  Last time just he and I showed up.

The second problem is getting content.  The format we'd envisioned
for this group was centered around code review (though not limited
to it).  The idea was that at every meeting a different member
would show some code.  This could be for any of a number of reasons,
such as, for example, 1) illustrate a cool module or technique; 2)
present a scientific research problem and how they used Python to
solve it, or get help solving it; 3) get general feedback (e.g. on
code clarity, software usability, module architecture, etc.).  But
in principle just about anything is OK: e.g. a talk on favorite
Python resources, or a comparison of Python with some other language,
or an overview of Python gotchas would all be fair game.

I've been involved in a Python users group since 2000, and have
attended or heard about a few others. The ones that have 20+ attendees
have a speaker every month. Our group is usually a show-and-tell and
open discussion, so we get around six people each month (but not the
same six). We've decided to solicit more talks as a way to increase
attendance.

I have never heard of a Python group focusing on code review, so I
don't know what attendance to expect for that. One problem is that
much of people's code is private at their workplace, and they can't
bring it to a meeting. I'd suggest expanding the focus a bit: code
review, writing unit tests for each other, pair programming, some open
"How do I do this in Python?" discussions, etc.

You're also limiting the pool of potential attendees by targeting one
institution. There are only a subset there who are interested in
Python, a smaller subset who can attend meetings, and an even smaller
subset who are willing to attend meetings even if they can. A citywide
group or at least bringing in other institutions would hopefully
increase attendance. Although it may be harder to keep the scientific
focus with that. But on the other hand, here the specialized groups
are getting more attendance than the general groups are. The local
Plone and Django groups get more people than the Python group does.

--Mike