[Events] User group outreach, weekly report, 2014-01-29 edition

[Carol Willing]

Asheesh,

This summary is really useful for those of us that are organizing events 
for PyLadies or Python User Groups in smaller cities (at least relative 
to Boston, SF, Portland, etc.).

We've got some good momentum building in San Diego re: outreach events. 
I will share the update with you after our Monday PyLadies meeting. For 
now, the highlights for San Diego (SDPUG and PyLadies SD):

* January SDPUG meeting: Presentation about PyCon and its value to the 
San Diego Python community whether or not one is able to physically 
attend the conference this year. Sent presentation link to Lynn @ 
PyLadies. Also, presented PyLadies SD 2014 plans for outreach to the 
SDPUG. Both presentations are at: https://github.com/willingc/python-sd-ug

* Geek Girls Tech Conference - San Diego - "Intro to Python" Outreach 
Workshops by PyLadies SD and SDPUG - Late June 2014

* SDPUG "Intro to Python" Workshop - May 2014 as preparation for Geek 
Girls event and for the benefit of our user group members

* PyLadies SD "Test Driven Development with Django" (Second half of 
2014): Using materials from the very successful November SDPUG workshop, 
we will be offering this again later this year

* SDPUG - Began offering "Intro to Python" informal meetups where those 
new to Python can ask questions and team up to help each other. For now, 
they will be monthly. In the process of setting up a standing weekly IRC 
office hour (similar to OpenHatch's).

* PyLadies SD/SDPUG - "Intro to Python for Science: NumPy, SciPy, 
pandas, etc." - In response to interest from users, our hope is to offer 
this as a series of meetup presentations. Schedule:TBD

Asheesh, Shauna, and Britta get much thanks for all of their hard work 
this past year. Their kindness mixed with the efforts to improve 
documentation and communication have enabled me to show our local group 
organizers that there are materials out there to support these workshops 
and outreach.

> * Generally, I'm less certain of what to recommend for small Python 
> user groups (of size 5-25 people) in smallish cities than I am for 
> big-ish ones (40+) in big cities. For big ones, the project night 
> and/or Workshop for Women and their Friends strategy seems reasonable. 
> For smaller ones
>
Quality materials, like OSCTC in a box, and OpenHatch's friendliness to 
help or support are really helpful to bringing outreach to our 
community. One thing that would be great would be some sort of remix of 
existing materials that could be offered in 1 hour meetings for small 
groups of users (so we could embed in a PyLadies meeting or offer as 
smaller group outreach within the larger SDPUG).

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Carol

-- 
Carol Willing
Developer
Willing Consulting