Fantastic inaugural Python meetup
The first ever Python Hamilton meetup took place last night at The Pheasant Plucker! About 25-30 or so attendees took in the inaugural meetup, and I’m glad to say it was very successful.
I missed the talk, but Colin Gorrie (@colingorrie) spoke about inflect, a string formatting package that makes plurals, verb-agreement, and spelling out numbers a breeze.
Brandon Aubie (@brandonaubie) talked about Boost.Python, which allows for interoperability between C++ and the Python, and how he used it as part of his SpikeDB neuroscience data analysis platform:
“SpikeDB is a cross-platform database and analysis application for use in electrophysiological labs that employ the SPIKE data acquisition software. SpikeDB is useful for organizing data files from multiple cells and animals and for quickly viewing the results of each recording session. For analysis, SpikeDB integrates the Python scripting language to enable users to write arbitrary data analysis scripts that operate over their entire collection (or a subset of) their data.
SpikeDB was written by and is currently maintained by Brandon Aubie while working in the McMaster Bat Lab. SpikeDB is open source and free for anybody to use.”
And to close it off Danny Vacar (@FlyingDan) talked about his Wifi User Detection System application!
There were a bunch of things I really liked about this new meetup:
1) Like every other “new group” that starts, I saw a bunch of faces I’ve never seen before. The more people engaged in the tech community the better, and the more events targeting different niches within tech the more people that will become engaged.
2) The focus on a specific technology / programming language helps in terms of putting everyone on the same page and giving the event a focus and direction.
3) The talk line-up was nice and technical. There’s an added level of problem solving when you go from using APIs and tools that perform computation/analysis/rendering, to creating the APIs and tools that perform the computation/analysis/rendering. The former is more akin to software carpentry or plumbing – which is critically important, but the latter is more akin to software R&D or software architecture. It’s a small point, and I’m not sure I’m making it correctly or elegantly… but especially for a more nascent tech community such as Hamilton, it was great to see technical talks with that added level of problem solving.
4) There was some kind of venue double-booking mix-up with GameDevDrinks, and the meetups chose to collaborate, with the Python meetup being followed by board game talks + fun!
Hats off to organizer Colin Gorrie (@colingorrie) for the community leadership! There’s so many “technology areas and subareas” that could be catalyzed in Hamilton (e.g. JavaScript, AI, hardware, big data, etc.), and I hope others follow this leadership with even more meetup groups catalyzing new subareas. Make sure you join the Python Hamilton meetup group and/or follow them on Twitter for details on future meetups!
