Montreal Python

We are excited to announce the first ever Introduction to Programming with Python class held in Montréal on May 3rd, 2011. This class is intended for women, and is open to all, not just programmers. The class is, as the title suggests, of an introductory nature, and will consist of two parts. The first part introduces the fundamentals of programming, as implemented in Python, and the second part will be a hands-on session where you will get to take Python for a spin and bend it to your will. See the wiki for the outline and other information.

The event is free to attend, but since there are space limitations, please sign up using the guest list. Also, please bring a laptop if you can or make a pairing agreement beforehand. If you would like to bring a male friend as a guest, by all means feel free.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Under the theme of creation and entertainment with Python, Delicate Decadence, the next Montréal-Python event will take place next Monday, April 11th.

It will be a great occasion to listen to and to meet some of the most energetic and creative presenters that we have in Montréal, makers. Among the many flash presenters, we count so far:

• Python-controlled slide shows, Amos Latteier
• Blender does Python: programming the three dimensions, Adrian Ghizaru
• Diving into the Mandelbrot fractal with Python, Yannick Gingras
• Myths around coding in game industry, Hadrien David
• Blender Games, Faral Averill

As usual, the event is free of charge and does not require pre-registration. Snacks will be provided but do not plan for a full meal.

Thanks to our sponsors for making Montréal-Python 20 possible:

• Benelux
• UQAM
• Le Site
• Savoir-Faire Linux

On Wednesday March 23rd was held the first of what is sure to be a series of Python workshops held at McGill University. Organized by Professor Derek Ruths and I of Ruths Research (http://ruthsresearch.org), the workshop attracted more than 80 attendees, most of them students from McGill University.

The purpose of this first Python workshop was to introduce attendees to the simplicity of working with the language. Professor Ruths started the session by talking about some of the reasons people are choosing Python over other languages: easiness in learning the language, the amazing power it has under the hood and the speed with which one can go from idea to prototype. He then introduced the containers that are built in to the language (list, dict, set, tuple) and presented ways that code can be made simpler and more readable using standard methods on these containers.

I then built, in front of the audience, an application that interfaced with the Twitter API. This allowed me to introduce great modules that are offered with Python: urllib and json. Attendees were guided through the steps of working with an API (from reading the documentation to making a GET request) and shown how simple it is to get from an idea to a working Python program in less than 30 minutes.

Overall the organizers were quite pleased with the event and plan to organize more of them in the future. Materials from this last event can be found on their website (http://ruthsresearch.org/mpw).

Reposted from http://blog.simonmathieu.com

What a weekend! This Saturday, 60 hackers, including myself got a pretty unique opportunity. We were given a cluster of 100 machines, 400 cores, to do with what we please.

The event is called HackReduce, the goal was simply to give large amounts of computational power to whoever wanted it for a day. The cluster came preloaded with several datasets like Twitter data, the whole of Wikipedia, usage data from Montréal’s public bike service BIXI and many more.

For me, it was an awesome opportunity to play with technologies like Haddop and EC2, without having to go through the pain of configuring the cluster itself. Engineer’s from Hopper Travel, the main sponsors, did a great job of setting everything and providing code samples for the various datasets. This saved us from having to write all of the boring boiler plate code, but instead, let us focus on the Map/Reduce part.

Although the code samples where all in Java, some teams decided to write their Map/Reduce using Python instead. There was actually a fairly big delegation from Montréal-Python present at the event. Although some succeeded, the use of Python made it impossible to use 3rd party library because of the way the cluster was configured. Nevertheless, the organizers of the event showed interest in organizing another similar event and to collaborate with groups like Montréal-Python and Montréal Ruby to have better support for those languages.

I’d like to thanks the sponsors for organizing HackReduce and making Montréal an awesome city for geeks to live in.

Right after PyCon (victory!), I went to Seoul. Before leaving, I figured “Hey, they may have a Seoul-Python or something!”, so I looked around, and found a forum: python.kr.

I posted a message there introducing myself and asking if anyone wanted to meet to discuss our favorite language. I got a few responses, and I met 7 of them a few days ago.

What surprised me at first was how similar to our community they all were: they enjoy beer, and more than half of them were in startups, one similar to groupon, and the other one is kind of a mix between foursquare and kik.

One of the first things I asked was if they had regular meetings, much like we do, and I was surprised that they didn’t. They explained that in 2006, everyone wanted to do Python, so they held a conference in Seoul that ended up attracting over 1500 programmers! They continued to explain that Python was now the mainstream language, it is even taught in their universities.

They concluded by saying that a community like ours was no longer necessary, but a FAQ forum like they have now was more than enough.

I think we have a lot to do to reach that point, but it certainly gave me hope!

(cross posted from savetheions)

Montréal returns glorious from Atlanta, and yes, PyCon is coming to town in 2014 and 2015. It’s time to gather and exchange, celebrate and shout out loud our pride at this April’s meeting, Montréal-Python 20: Delicate Decadence.

This meeting will be held at the famous SH-R810, UQAM Sherbrooke Building.

Art, creation, culinary style and a pinch of decadence will be at the rendezvous. Our main presentation will be:

• Olivier Bélanger: Sounds Delights for Pythonistas

The simplicity of its syntax combined with its vast range of libraries makes Python a ideal environment for the development of all kind of applications.

There are libraries for almost all kind of process you can imagine, from scientific calculus to image manipulation including the random numbers generation or user interface creation.

Name it, you got it… except for sound. Indeed, to develop a sound application in Python, until recently one had to use an external audio engine (Csound, SuperCollider) and to communicate through a network protocol (usually OSC) in order to transmit control data, incoming from the interface, to the sound generator. The *pyo* library is now bridging this Python sound gap, delivering an audio engine and an library of objects for the design of signal processing solutions fully integrated to the language. Developing a standalone audio application in Python is now simple, pleasant and efficient.

We have some flash presentations confirmed, yet. There still room for some more. If you are interested, send an email at team@list.montrealpython.org.

Montréal-Python 20 will start at 6:00 PM with the regular schedule:

• 18h00: Doors opening
• 18h20: Announcements
• 18h30: Flash presentations
• 19h00: Break
• 19h20: Main presentations
• 20h30: Discussions and refreshments at Benelux

The event is free to attend and no registration is required. Some snacks will be provided but do not expect a complete meal.

Thanks to our sponsors for making Montréal-Python 20 possible:

• Benelux
• UQAM
• Le Site
• Savoir-Faire Linux

We’ve never really waited after a special occasion to share the pleasure of getting together in front of a good beer from Montréal. But with all the good news brought back from Atlanta, it’s more than ever the time to see if our burst of enthusiasm will add to Montréal’s taste.

Pythonistas, let’s welcome back our Montrealer’s Delegation to PyCon 2011 that, rather than the Stanley Cup, have brought the Superbowl of Python to Montréal [1].

“What?” “Where?” “Why?” [2]
PyCon in Montréal in 2014 and 2015?
It clearly deserves a good spontaneous 5-à-7.

See you at our beloved Bénélux, Tuesday 2011-03-22, starting when ever you want.

Cheers!

[1] Bring the Superbowl of Python to Your Hometown
[2] Welcome Back, Kotter

As most of you know, we have been working pretty hard during the last few months to get PyCon in Montréal.

The Python Software Foundation held, today the 13th of March 2011 at PyCon 2011,
a Site Selection Meeting to choose the host city for PyCon 2014 and 2015…

It’s with great honour that we announce that Montréal has WON the bid!

On behalf of the whole crew, I have to say thanks to all of you, the pythonistas of Montréal. If we were able to win this bid, it’s because we have awesome speakers, regular attendees, people who show up at the pub, sprinters, free software hackers, and a whole bunch of very enthusiastic people.

What we did in here at PyCon, was simply to carry your enthusiasm and your passion. You are the community of Montréal pythonistas and we owe PyCon 2014 and 2015 to you.