It didn’t take long to hear back from eight people in southeast lower Michigan (with a disproportionate percentage in Ann Arbor), so I have gone ahead and started the Michigan Python Users Group (michipug) mailing list.
People have different agendas for their user groups. Jim Holmes appeared to be seeking World Domination with his .NET user group in Dayton, Ohio. I’m going to toss out an opening volley in what I’d like to see in a user group:
- Semi-regular, face-to-face, semi-structured meetings to meet up with smart people and exchange useful and practical info about software development in Python.
- Exchange of useful local information on the mailing list (relevant job postings, events, etc).
- Occasional sprints, for people interested in writing some code together
- An organized group that can harrass Python dignitaries that happen to come to Michigan into sharing a slice of their knowledge. (Consider yourself warned, visting dignitaries!
This all sounds fairly similar to ChiPy, which doesn’t seem to be a bad thing, because those guys seem to be enjoying themselves.
So, if you’re somewhere in Michigan, use or want to use Python, and have email: sign up now for michipug.
Wow, Jim certainly worked a hell of a lot harder than we did. Though sometimes I think we should do a little more work; we get a few new people every meeting, but mostly it’s the same core. Which is nice, it’s a good group, but it wouldn’t hurt to add a few people.
I think ChiPy hate 8-10 people when we started, so that’s a pretty good number I think.