Python West Midlands

Yesterday was the Python West Midlands Technical Meeting. The night before I had arrived just arrived back in the UK, so I was a bit bleary eyed.

The group started about two years ago. After I learned Python I wanted to meet with other Python users in the area so we could share knowledge and have fun. So eventually I started a mailing list and website and put out a request to some local Linux group mailing lists for others to join me.

Before I know it I had a dozen people on the mailing list, then two dozen, then three. We then managed to have meetings in real life, we started off with evening pub meetings as the main thing, but later this turned to technical meetings one Saturday a month.

PyCon UK

One of the first people to respond was a guy called John, who quickly became my co-conspirator and co-leader of the group. He already had an idea to run a national UK Python day. Now we had a group of people, we could turn that idea into reality. I was thinking of the name "Python Saturday".

There had been previous Python events in the UK such as a Python track at the ACCU conference, so John estimated that there would be 80 people who would come to such a day. I was more sceptical, I estimated 60 people, 20 from Python West Midlands, 20 from London Python and 20 from everywhere else in the UK. We were both very wrong, this was clearly an idea whose time had come, we ended up with 200 delegates!

When the call for talks went out, and John had emailed all his Python friends, we had more talks that we could reasonably fit into a day, so we expanded the event to two days, then we expanded that to two rooms at once, lastly we expanded to four rooms of talks on the Saturday and three rooms of talks and one room of 'open space' on the Sunday. This was PyCon UK 2007, and it was a surprise success.

The Bennett incident

There were of course some mess ups, the Friday night social was a bit of a disaster, the place we had chosen was completely unsuitable for such numbers and the chef had a row with his manager and stormed out just before we had arrived, meaning there was no food! We were stuck with a terrible dilemma, people would we arriving (hungry) at the pub all night from around the UK and beyond so we couldn't change the venue, yet food was needed for many dozens of hungry geeks.

We tried to fix it by getting everyone to contribute a fiver and then buying food from a nearby Thai takeaway, this was a bad idea because firstly we didn't have any serving implements, so could not separate food into x portions, secondly it became a huge scrum, meaning the food was really hard to distribute. In the end the PyCon UK Treasurer saved the day by authorising us to buy a second round of food using money from the conference budget, so we raided John's wallet and we made sure the takeaway packed the food into separate portions. Despite such things, the treasurer still managed to break even, absolute genius, I have no idea how he got so much out of such a small budget. Hopefully, the delegates managed to get on and chat with each other, while the organisers pulled their hair out.

Although the Bennett incident was caused by a disappearing chef, the root of the problem was that a social meeting expected to have a small group had a very large group instead. Not knowing how many delegates you are going to get is the main problem of conference organisation. Plans laid for 100 people, fall apart with 200. Plans for 200, fall apart if you only get 100. After doing this a few times now, I think the answer to is pick the number you want before you start, and then declare the conference full when you hit it.

PyCon 2008

So last year was the practice, this year we would like to think we know what we are doing! We also opened bookings very early with a large early-bird discount, this not only enabled us to get a good idea of numbers, but also to put some money in the bank to pay the bills and deposits that we needed to pay for. Yes this year we have a bank account! Last year we ran the whole conference using John's credit card. We have also managed to get an impressive list of sponsors, so the conference finances are secure, we have a firm foundation to build on.

We far more talks and events than last year, and I am pretty confident that we will meet or beat last years attendance. However, due to the sponsors and more organisational experience, we can comfortably grow a little and still not have to declare full.

Python West Midlands August Meeting

Anyhow back to the last Python West Midlands meeting. This time we did a bit of organising for PyCon UK, thankfully this year we have some friends elsewhere in the country to help us, but much of the practical work is still done by Python West Midlands.

One onerous task that we had been putting off was typing in the feedback forms from last year. As vice-chair of the organising committee I had a lot of other things to do so first, however some other members of the group gritted their teeth and typed out all the returned forms, before I know it they had typed my share also, so lucky bastard that I am, I escaped, cheers to everyone who did the hard work, while I sat on my arse sending emails.

We had 108 forms returned, and they contain lots of interesting comments. Of course whenever you ask the people for their views, some a bit unrealistic, some are mad and some have absolutely fantastic ideas. It is the latter that hopefully will make the typing worthwhile.

You can read the full results here.

As well as questions about what they thought of the conference, they was some interesting statistics about the 108 Python programmers who replied to the questionnaires:

Firstly, we asked them how much experience they have with the Python programming language:

Secondly, we asked about what kind of programmer they are.

In retrospect, it would have been nice to have "I use Python in Open Source projects" as one of the options.

Lastly, we wondered what Operating Systems the programmers worked on:

As you might expect, Linux is very popular among this sample of programmers. I wonder if that is the same in the wider Python world, or whether people with the type of personality to get involved, meet with their peers and contribute, are the same personality type as people who are willing to use an open source operating system?

I wonder how our delegates compare to the Python world generally?