Python Events Calendars - Please submit your 2015 events

Introduction

As some of you may know, the PSF has a team of volunteers who are maintaining a set of central Python event calendars. We currently have two calendars in place:

• Python Events Calendar - meant for conferences and larger gatherings focusing on Python or a related technology (in whole or in part)

• Python User Group Calendar - meant for user group events and other smaller local events

The calendars are displayed on http://pycon.org/ and also on the new https://python.org/ website at https://www.python.org/events/python-events/ and https://www.python.org/events/python-user-group/.

You can subscribe to the calendars using iCal and RSS feeds and also embed the calendar widgets on your sites. We have also added a Twitter feed @PythonEvents to get immediate updates whenever a new event is added. Please see our wiki page for details:

   https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEventsCalendar

The calendars are open to the world-wide Python community, so you can have local user group events, as well as regional and international conference events added to the calendars.

News

Looking back on 2014, the calendars have proven to be a great tool for the Python community to connect, with more than 60 conferences and more than a hundred of user group events listed.

We would therefore like to encourage everyone to submit their 2015 events, so that the Python community can get a better overview over what's happening in Python land.

Adding Events

Please see the instructions at https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEventsCalendar#Available_Calendars for details on how to submit an event. We've made it really easy for you: just need to send an email to our team address using the email template we provide for this. Thanks.

PS: Please help spread the word about the calendars - we'll all benefit from knowing more about Python events happening around the world. Feel free to forward this posting to your local user groups and conference teams. Thanks.

Python Events Calendars - Please submit your 2014 events

Introduction

As some of you may know, the PSF has put together a team of volunteers who are maintaining a central Python events calendar. We currently have two calendars in place:

• Python Events Calendar - meant for conferences and larger gatherings focusing on Python or a related technology (in whole or in part)

• Python User Group Calendar - meant for user group events and other smaller local events

The calendars are displayed on http://pycon.org/ and in a smaller version in the sidebar of the http://python.org/ website.

You can subscribe to the calendars using iCal and RSS feeds and also embed the calendar widgets on your sites. Please see our wiki page for details:

   https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEventsCalendar

The calendars are open to the world-wide Python community, so you can have local user group events, as well as regional and international conference events added to the calendars.

News

Created in Oct 2012, the project has proven to be a success as you can see in the past events listed in the calendars.

We would like to encourage everyone to submit their 2014 events, so that the Python community can get a better overview over what's happening in Python land.

Adding Events

If you want to have entries added to those calendars, please write to events@python.org and include the following information:

• Name of the event
• Type of the event (conference, bar camp, user group, etc)
• Focus on Python and approximate size
• URL
• Location and country
• Date and time (if relevant)

For recurring events, please also include a description of the recurrence in a way that's compatible and supported by Google calendars.

PS: Please help spread the word about the calendars - we'll all benefit from knowing more about Python events happening around the world. Feel free to forward this posting to your local user groups and conference teams. Thanks.

User groups: the PSF can help cover your meetup.com fees

Did you know that the PSF has a budget to cover Python user groups' meetup.com fees?
Well, we do! The PSF can:

• reimburse user group organizers for fees paid to meetup.com in the past year
• prepay annual fees for meetup.com Python groups

You can read the comments on the proposal that established this budget in the PSF board meeting minutes from April, 2009. To get a grant to cover your user group's meetup.com fees, please submit a proposal to psf@python.org.

Here is a sample proposal:

Grant Proposal: $144 to cover the cost of the Boston Python user group’s meetup.com subscription for six months: January through December of 2012.
Grant Objective: Fund the use of meetup.com for organizing and managing the Boston Python user group for a 12 month period. meetup.com helps to increase the visibility of the user group, as well as boost attendance through automated reminders, RSVP functionality, and other tools. It also makes organizing and promoting the group easier, as well as providing a platform to garner sponsorships and thank sponsors publicly.
Grant Size: $144 total, which is the cost of 12 months to organize a group on meetup.com.
Grant Beneficiaries: The Boston Python user group has over 1500 members on meetup.com. We have had monthly meetings since before 2007 and have an average attendance of 60-100 Python programmers. meetup.com provides a centralized location where our members see what’s coming up and who has RSVPed for the meeting. Members can also leave comments about the group itself.
This subscription will also benefit Python programmers who may not yet know about the group by providing highly visible insight into what we do and why they may want to join. meetup.com is a well-known site for people looking for like-minded individuals, providing us good visibility for new members. It also cross-promotes groups to each other, encouraging members of other tech groups to consider joining ours. We get several new members each month who find us on meetup.com.
Preferred method of funds delivery: A deposit into the PayPal account for meetup@bostonpython.com.

Q: My user group uses a site other than meetup.com to advertise events. Can we still get reimbursed?

A: The April 2009 proposal is specifically for meetup.com fees, but you are still encouraged to submit a general grant proposal for a particular expense to psf@python.org.

Q: How else can the PSF help my user group financially?

A: You can apply for a grant through the PSF Grants program.

---

Edited 15 February 2016 to remove references to the Sprints and Outreach and Education Committees, which are now retired.

Boston Python Workshop PSF Grant

(This is a guest post by Jessica McKellar, a Boston Python User Group organizer and co-organizer of the Boston Python Workshop for women and their friends.)

I am thrilled to report that the Python Software Foundation's Outreach and Education Committee awarded a $3300 grant to the Boston Python Workshop to support and grow the workshop over the next 8 months. We are excited to continue our successes at bringing more women into the Boston Python community and to take the show on the road!

The Boston Python Workshop

The Boston Python Workshop is a free, volunteer-driven introduction to the Python programming language for women and their friends who have no or limited programming experience. We run the workshop every 2 months for between 30 and 50 women, and it has run 4 times so far. We strive to:

• Show new programmers and the Boston Python community examples of smart, confident, capable programmers of all backgrounds.
• Bring new, awesome, diverse people into the local Python community through diversity and outreach events.
• Inspire others to run their own introductory workshops and outreach events, and to get more user groups thinking about diversity and outreach.

An important part of our philosophy is a commitment to running the workshop as part of the local user group.

This Python Software Foundation grant will help us run the next three workshops in Boston and bootstrap workshops in 3 new cities. As a result of this grant:

• Over 200 women will learn Python fundamentals and join their local programming communities as empowered, confident beginners who are excited to continue learning.
• 3 new Python user groups will learn how to run high-quality diversity outreach events.
• Volunteers at the workshops will get experience with public speaking and teaching technical content -- a great stepping stone to leading future PyCon talks and tutorials!
• The Python community as a whole will continue to benefit from our shared, online, Creative Commons-licensed workshop material as we expand and refine it.

Results

The workshop has resulted in dramatic, lasting diversity improvements for the Boston Python User Group. Many workshop alums are now fixtures at our hack nights and lecture-style events, and the group has gone from 0-3% women at its events to consistently over 15%. Additionally, group membership has doubled since the workshops started, to over 1350 people, making it the second-largest Python user group in the US.

If you do the math you'll see that we aren't just bringing women into the user group through the workshop. The secret is that running beginner-friendly outreach events for women focuses the group on being more welcoming to everyone. Our monthly hack nights grew out of the workshop and are one example of bringing beginner-friendly ideas from the workshop to the group as a whole. The Boston Python user group is now a more diverse and vibrant community full of beginners, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and people switching to a career in software/IT, and we're very happy that the workshop has played a significant role in this.

Beyond Boston

We want to help other user groups see the same kinds of successes that we've had here in Boston, and a large part of this PSF grant is dedicated to bootstrapping workshops in other cities. If you want to bring the workshop to your city, read the full grant proposal and get in touch!

All of our material is online and shared through a permissive Creative Commons license. Check out an example curriculum and photos from the workshops. Our goal of stress-free experiences for attendees makes our material a good base for other intro events; for example, we believe our cross-platform installation instructions for Python are the best we've seen.

We look forward to a larger, more diverse Python community, and we want to thank the Python Software Foundation for supporting our efforts. The Outreach and Education Committee, PSF Grants program, and PSF Sprints program are all interested in new grant requests to push the Python world forward. Make something awesome happen in your city!