On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 8:37 PM, Kevin LaTona <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Thinking out loud here but I wonder if the need for a "local user group" > has come to end of life? > I haven't been very active on here yet because we just recently convinced the powers that be at my employer to make Python our primary language, but I couldn't disagree more with the notion that local user groups aren't necessary in the age of all the online resources you cite. There's no question that things like stackoverflow are where people go to get specific questions answered quickly. But to me that's not at all what a local face-to-face user group is about. There's something much more powerful about an in person, interactive presentation that still can't be matched online, and I for one always learn a great deal more valuable lessons from in-person presentations. To put it another way, stackoverflow et al are great for getting answers to all the "How do I do X?" questions we run into frequently as programmers. User group presentations and face-to-face interactions with other Python developers on an ongoing basis are more to answer bigger questions like, "How do I continually work towards becoming a better programmer?" You can't get that from stackoverflow. I'm not saying I have any answers since I have yet to attend a meeting myself in person (mostly because I was living in other languages until recently), but having run a few user groups in the past myself I'm a firm believer in the power they can have. I realize none of you have ever even met me in person but I'm happy to meet for a beer and brainstorm or offer whatever help I can. I'd love to at least meet some of the local Pythonistas since I'm finally getting to use what has been my favorite pet language for years in my day job. Is anyone going to PyCon? I'll be there with my team from work so it'd be fun to meet some of you there as well. Matt -- Matthew Woodward [email protected] http://blog.mattwoodward.com identi.ca / Twitter: @mpwoodward Please do not send me proprietary file formats such as Word, PowerPoint, etc. as attachments. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
