[Events] South Carolina and my wacky idea

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2011, Deborah Nicholson wrote:

> Hi all,
> I mentioned in passing to the organizers of SELF (
> http://www.southeastlinuxfest.org/) something like, "maybe if there's space
> we could replicate the python workshop we're planning here in Boston." SELF
> is in June so I was sort of expecting a slow or noncommittal response if
> any.
>
> Instead, I got "WOW! that would be awesome! Can we give you a giant room 
> and start telling people yesterday?" Which is nice, but way out of 
> order. I was just hoping to find out if there might be a room and then 
> coming back to you guys with a *potential* opportunity.

Wow.

> In my mind, the idea would that we'd have a template for these worked out by
> June and could host a small workshop with just a few of us plus people from
> the large local Atlanta python group and the smaller but very nearby
> Charlotte group. We'd basically be demoing to the Atlanta/Charlotte folks
> how they could hold such an event at home. (SELF is actually in Spartanburg,
> but most of this con's attendees come from the nearby cities of which
> Atlanta is the largest and Charlotte is the closest.)

Interesting. I'll be going to PyCon in mid March in Atlanta.

Atlanta is a 3 hour drive from the SELF location. It's not *that* close. 
Charlotte is 1.5 hours, which is slightly more reasonable.

(Aside: PyCon is still accepting poster slots, so if someone wants to make 
a poster about these events, I suspect they're likely to accept it.)

> I'm happy to do the initial outreach to the two local groups and explain 
> what we are looking to do. What we'd need to do is be committed to 
> documenting our upcoming workshops by June so that folks in the Atlanta 
> and Charlotte groups could take the whole workshop idea home. Of course, 
> if we're not interested or if the Atlanta and Charlotte groups aren't 
> interested, then I'll just tell SELF no.

What I like the most about these events is:

* Even though they are gender-specific, but *goal* is to integrate people 
into an existing multi-gender community (in San Francisco, the Ruby 
meetups; in Boston, the Python meetup). So the *results* are seen by 
everyone, people of all kinds, and the community that grows up around the 
events are inclusive ones.

* They draw on a large urban area of people with easy access to attend the 
event.

In a way, what I worry about is that if we run an event whose goal is to 
teach programming to women and their friends in the Spartanburg, SC, area 
-- even if we can find good people to attend and learn Python, they won't 
have a local community to fall back on and "stick" to (and through which 
to find each other again later).

As I think about it, I'm lukewarm on a SELF event.

Can you say more about the goal of the event you want to run?

> The sticky part is that SELF wants to go live on February 1st with all 
> their sessions and mini-conferences listed on their website. So the 
> timeframe is possibly the wackiest part of this idea. Voila, the magic 
> of coffee plus unemployment.

*gulp*

(-:

That's exciting and scary.

I can help, too, on Monday (Jan 31), if needed, if there's critical 
mass of people who want to do it, and doubly so if I'm one of the 
people who will help out.

-- Asheesh.

-- 
Never reveal your best argument.