About Us

The Front Range Pythoneers is an active Python users group in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Activities

We hold a regular monthly meeting every third Wednesday. We are in the process of planning the next BoulderSprint on Jython. Looks like we will be holding these sprints on a regular basis! In the future we may hold a BoulderJam to play with an exciting new technology together.

Lastly, there has been talk of helping pair mentors with aspiring Pythoneers. If you are so aspirationally inclined, please contact us!

Mailing List

You can subscribe to our [http://lists.community.tummy.com/mailman/listinfo/frpythoneers mailing list]. We also have a [http://lists.community.tummy.com/pipermail/frpythoneers/ mail archive].

Meetings and Sprints

We just happen to have the friendliest bunch of Python people coming to our meetings. So why not come too?

• Date/time: Every 3rd Wednesday, 6-8 PM. Calendars [http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/frpythoneers%40gmail.com/public/basic XML] [http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/frpythoneers%40gmail.com/public/basic.ics ICAL] [http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=frpythoneers%40gmail.com HTML]

• Location: watch this space, our emails, and other announcements, because it's been changing from meeting to meeting recently. The next location returns to bivio Software.

Sprints are usually held the 1st Saturday of each month, also at bivio.

Next Sprint: February 3, 2007

• JythonSprint. Part of our BoulderSprint series. Topic TBD.

• Location: [http://www.bivio.biz/ bivio Software, Inc.], 28th and Iris. Above Hair Elite in Suite S. [http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=2701+Iris+Ave.,+Boulder+CO&ie=UTF8&z=15&om=1&iwloc=A Google Maps link]

Next Meeting: February 21, 2007

• Location: [http://www.bivio.biz/ bivio Software, Inc.], 28th and Iris. Above Hair Elite in Suite S. [http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=2701+Iris+Ave.,+Boulder+CO&ie=UTF8&z=15&om=1&iwloc=A Google Maps link]

PyCon: February 23-25, 2007

• [http://us.pycon.org/TX2007/HomePage PyCon 2007] Dallas/Addison TX

Previous Events

Meeting: January 17, 2007

• Location: [http://www.churchillnavigation.com Churchill Navigation], 100 Arapahoe Ave, Suite 10, all the way at the end, in Boulder, Colorado. [http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=100+Arapahoe+Ave,+Suite+10+Boulder+CO+80302&ie=UTF8&z=15&ll=40.012792,-105.297904&spn=0.017289,0.05064&om=1&iwloc=addr Google Maps link]. There is abundant parking.

Topics and people attending include the following:

• BoulderSprint. We had a great JythonSprint, focusing on design. Momentum is really building, Jython might actually get the love that Charles Oliver Nutter of !JRuby proposed. More interestingly, there's a chance for people in the dynamic language community to work together on JVM implementations.

• Tom Churchill and Vinny Fiano will demo Churchill Navigation's earth-rendering engine (which looks like Google Earth, only apparently even better and faster ). Vinny (their main Python guy) will explain how they built the glue logic (and why they decided against SWIG) and perhaps some of the implications of using Python as a scripting language in a real-time (60 fps) environment, and the techniques we employed to keep the graphics pipeline from stalling when making an expensive call into their engine from Python.

• Brian Granger from [http://txcorp.com/ Tech-X] will help us think more deeply about concurrent Python programming, especially as seen in a new version of [http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/IPython1 IPython].

Sprint: January 6, 2007

• JythonSprint. We talked about rethinking the existing compiler to converge on !CPython 2.5/trunk.

Meeting: December 20, 2006

Canceled! We were going to plan the JythonSprint and see some demos. But a blizzard intervened. Fortunately, we should be able to do all of that instead in January.

Meeting: November 15, 2006

This was a fun meeting! Even if Jill's has increasingly been high decibel. But we really can't complain about the success of our venue.

• Steve Rogers showed up for his first meeting with us. He credits seeing the [http://zyasoft.com/pythoneering/ Pythoneering blog], now that it's included in the [http://www.pythonware.com/daily/index.htm Daily Python-URL]. It's good to have the visibility. With Steve around and fresh from [http://sc06.supercomputing.org/ Supercomputing 2006], we talked a lot about parallel computing paradigms in Python, among other things.

Meeting: October 18, 2006

• Discussed possible proposals for PyCon2007. The basic consensus was that it was a great idea that for PyCon "we're especially interested in presentations that will teach conference-goers something new and useful." In particular, we all would like to see talks with more useful takeaway code, not just talks saying, hey we are doing great things with Python. Trust us .

• Began planning of BoulderSprint, which apparently has been a burning desire for JimBaker for a while.

Guide to Front Range Pythoneering

• [http://amath.colorado.edu/faculty/fperez/ Fernando Perez], CU Applied Math, and Brian Granger, [http://txcorp.com/ Tech-X], both work on [http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/ IPython].

• Eric Dobbs, [http://www.bivio.biz bivio Software, Inc.], works on PyQScimpl as a contractor with Tech-X. SciPy 2006 [http://dobbse.net/thinair/2006/08/scipy/ presentation] of PyQScimpl.

• Fred Clare and Mary Hall, [http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/ NCAR], are behind [http://www.pyngl.ucar.edu PyNGL].

• Jeffrey Whittaker, contributed this [http://www.scipy.org/Wiki/Cookbook/Matplotlib/Maps plot] to matplotlib for geospatial projections of data.

• Yeong-Shang Log, [http://casa.colorado.edu/ CASA], is exploring space with the [http://www.stsci.edu/hst/ Hubble Space Telescope] in [http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyraf/stsci_python Python].

• [http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~martin/ Jim Martin], [http://www.colorado.edu CU Boulder], teaches [http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~martin/csci5582.html Intro to AI] and [http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~martin/csci5832.html Natural Language Processing] in Python. The NLP class uses the [http://nltk.sourceforge.net/ NL toolkit].

• [http://verbs.colorado.edu/~mpalmer/ Martha Palmer], [http://www.colorado.edu CU Boulder], teaches a [http://verbs.colorado.edu/mpalmer/ling5200/ class on linguistics] in Python.

• Ravinder Singh and Scott Kelley, [http://www.colorado.edu CU Boulder], teach a [http://mcdb.colorado.edu/courses/6440/index.html class] on bioinformatics and molecular biology, using Biopython.

• [http://oubiwann.blogspot.com/ Duncan McGreggor], [http://pymon.sourceforge.net/ PyMon] and other projects.

• [http://rmi.net/~lutz/ Mark Lutz] has taught over 170 [http://home.earthlink.net/~python-training/ Python training sessions].

• [http://www.softwaresummit.com/2005/speakers/smith_mitchell.htm Mitchell Smith] led the adoption of Python at [http://www.arraybiopharma.com/ Array Biopharma].

• [http://uche.ogbuji.net/ Uche Ogbuji] keeps us honest about XML.

• Joe VanAndel, [http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/ NCAR].

• [http://www.ophinity.com Demian Neidetcher], currently at [http://www.avaya.com Avaya], wrote a simple web gallery in Python called [http://pix.sf.net pix].

• [http://www.jim-baker.com Jim Baker], [http://www.zyasoft.com Zyasoft] maintains the [http://zyasoft.com/pythoneering/ FR Pythoneering blog]. He also likes iterators. A [http://www.tummy.com/journals/entries/jafo_20060817_003823 lot]. Jim also co-founded Empact Solutions and [http://www.bizlogix.net BizLogix] and is now at [http://www.bivio.biz bivio Software].

• [http://www.tummy.com/journals/users/jafo Sean Reifschneidner], [http://www.tummy.com tummy.com, ltd.], maintains many projects, including the [http://www.tummy.com/Community/software/python-memcached/ Python client] to the ever-useful [http://www.danga.com/memcached/ memcached].

• [http://shrogers.com/weblog Steve Rogers] does systems engineering at [http://www.seagate.com Seagate Technology].

• [http://www.churchillnavigation.com Churchill Navigation] in Boulder builds high-end navigation systems with a high-level Python interface.

Please help expand this local guide! (Also feel free to remove yourself from this list, if that makes sense personally.)

Acknowledgments

Thanks to [http://tummy.com tummy.com, ltd.] and their principals, SeanReifschneider and Evelyn Mitchell, for generously hosting our web site and mailing list.