October 2009 Meeting
Thursday, October 9, UW Allen Computer Science building room 303.
Attendance
- Miles
- Justin Svendsen
- James Thiele
- Luke Stebbing
Talk
Python Day organization
We still need an overall coordinator to manage/delegate the program, talk proposals, site selection, marketing, food, etc. James Thiele managed the talks last time and is willing to take some role now.
Meeting members stated the following preferences:
James proposed having two tracks. These could be simultaneous talks, talk + sprint, talk + Open Space, etc. We had 8 timeslots last time, and that was the main limitation on what we could do. It could be two large rooms, or a large room and a small room. Maybe the UW Gates Commons, room 303, and the Atrium, if they're OK giving us 2+ rooms on a weekend. At least some Lightning Talks should be plenary though, because they are widely popular.
Ask the Plone group, Django group, Portland Python group, and Vancouver Python group if they would each like to run a track or mini-track as part of the event. The Plone group or Django group may may be able to help find a venue too. (Is there a Victoria group too?)
The wiki signup for talk proposals worked well. James suggested a more formal talk acceptance/scheduling procedure, though I've forgotten the details.
We want to hold the Python Day before PyCon (2/17 - 2/25/2010). It's probably too late for 2009. The Saturdays in 2010 are 1/9, 1/16, 1/23, 1/30, 2/6, 2/13. (Mike may be gone 2/13.) The UW is an obvious free venue but we should look for other suitable locations to consider. The "Day" may be Saturday, Sunday, or both, though Saturday has the biggest preference because it's easier for Portland/Vancouver and for churchgoers.
Attendance January 2009 was 60, which was tight in the Gates Commons. With program innovations and the our cousin groups, we could reach 100+. Can we arrange the Commons tables in columns going from front to back? That would fit more people and avoid the big empty square in the middle. Ideal venue capacity would be 100-150.
Note: we'd need Internet for sprints, and open Internet for sprints at the UW. Saturday House used to have a Clearwire account; is there still one of those we could borrow?
Other topics
There was a free dicussion on:
- SQLAlchemy vs Django ORM: the unique merits of each, and which to use for a simple project that may be maintained by beginners
TurboGears 2 admin interface: it does database CRUD using Sprox
Is NumPy written in Pascal? Fortran?
Attending in Spirit
I spend 1/2 an hour looking for a place to park and ended up getting herded over the Montlake Bridge before giving up. Next time I'll arrive 1/2 an hour early, park far away and walk in.
Does the Allen building have hardwired internet? If so, it would be easy to setup a temporary wireless hub. I have used the Undergraduate Library because it is the only place I know where I can plug in my ethernet cable for free. -- JeffSandys