PythonUsersGroup - Emergent Wiki

1. Philly Python Users' Group

This page documents the activities of the Philly Python Users' Group. Please feel free to add/edit at will.

Next Meeting: (this page is dead.)

1.1. Mailing List

Visit the mailing list page at http://mail.claws-and-paws.com/mailman/listinfo/python-users

1.2. Meetings

Python.Meetup.com /

7pm Thursday, Nov 14, 2002: Last Drop Coffee House - Our first meeting
7pm Thursday, Dec 12, 2002: Bryn Mawr College - Demonstration of Pyro - Python Robotics. BrynMawrCollegeDirections
7:30pm Thursday, Jan 09, 2003: FlyingPigDirections

1.3. Roll Call

If you are interested in having/creating/joining a Philly/Main Line users group add your name to the list. Leave as much or as little personal info as you wish.

Troy Sorzano (troyweb@infopackaging.com) - I work in Conshy live in Wynnewood (why the heck did we meetup in philly?). Newbie to Python. I was a programmer at one time but now am a jack of all trades with a focus on security. Python is great for me because it is easy to read and understand and quick to hack together working scripts. I don't have the time or interest to write huge applications I just need to solve specific problems and Python seems to be a good fit.
Carl Husa (carlhusa@hotmail.com) - Systems analyst, virginal programmer, with an interest in natural language processing of medical narratives (clinician (physician, nurse, laboratory, etc) notes, with goal of correlating naarative data with data held in database stores. Interested in Python as an alternative to Prolog.
Daniel Drucker (dmd@3e.org) - Former network operations for: Qwest, Bristol Myers-Squibb, AT&T Easylink. Losing faith in unix lately, though OS X has brightened things a bit. I do most of my web coding in PHP, but Python just screams elegance to me; I try to use it whenever I can. Currently a graduate student at Penn's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.
Raj (r0x61j@comcast.net) - I work as a consultant for International Business Machine and live in DE (like in First State). I am also a newbie to py. My interests with python are hobby/geeking. Some of my interests (not just limited to) are application level protocols, distributed systems and security.
Doug Blank (dblank@cs.brynmawr.edu) - Teach computer science (artificial intelligence, robotics, cognitive science, etc). Have been working on creating Pyro Python Robotics system so that students without programming background can leap into advanced robotic and AI topics.
Samantha (sollinge AT sas.upenn.edu) - Work as unix sysadmin/programmer at UPenn. Live in W. Philly. Currently trying to figure out openssl, and the defrag utility in xfs.
Fred (follinge AT sas.upenn.edu)
Doug Muth (http://www.claws-and-paws.com/) - I live in Ardmore and work as a web developer for a small company in Philly, and my first major Python project was writing a multi-threaded bulk mailer as an in-house project.
Michael Chermside (dm2kpx5l02@sneakemail.com) - Working in the architechure group at ING Direct -- an online bank based in Wilmington, DE. I've been using Python for a while (though not necessarily for work projects). Also expecting my first child to be born sometime in December... so I may not make that meeting!
Andy Diller (dillera@isc.upenn.edu) - I work primarily as a unix admin, but mess with with networking and dabble with programming at UPenn. Hey, I live in West Philly also. I love python and use it for lots of little things. I'm proud to say I don't know any perl. I have been messing a bit with php lately, though. Did the Zope thing for a while too. Python experience is mostly web apps.
Rob Bender (http://www.robbender.com/) - I'm a web developer for a company in Bala Cynwyd. I've used Python (and Jython) for a few projects over the years and created a few websites with Zope.
Hank De Gregorio (hankd@alumni.duke.edu) - I did Python dev and XSLT work for a natural language search engine company in Cambridge, MA. I now work in NJ on image processing software, but use Python for quick and dirty file diffing and such.
Sam Hunting (shunting@etopicality.com) - I work with XML and markup languages generally. My main focus is topic maps http://www.etopicality.com and I've used Python to write a browser, based on an open source toolkit for topic maps. Any help about how to think in objects and program in-the-large, much appreciated. Zope, too!
Thomas Thurman (phlpython@marnanel.org) - I work as a programmer, though I'm currently between jobs. Python is my language of choice for day-to-day work. The largest project in Python I've yet worked on is http://freshmeat.net/projects/yarrow

1.4. Future Meeting Topics for consideration

Intro to Python
Python and COM
Using Python in a web project
Sendmail Milters and spam filters in Python
Multi-threaded programming in Python
<<and on and on>>

1.5. Discussion Topics

Is there any interest to attend the PyCon'03 thats planned for March 26-28 in DC? http://www.python.org/pycon/PyCon.

1.6. Resources

Some pointers to projects mentioned at PPUG meetings:

Parrot - Interlingua for Perl/Python (similar to JVM or .NET)
IDLE - Integrated Development Environment
Jython - Python in the Java Virtual Machine
ZOPE - Zope
OSAF - OSAF, Chandler etc. built using ZODB, Python, Jabber et al.
Psyco Make Python run as fast as C with Psyco
Bogofilter ESR's Bayesian spam filter. (not python but we talked about it)
PyZine I (Troy) orded the first two issues for $3 each. Price and content goes up for issues 3 and on. The editor mentions moving to Philly. -- Actually, the editor (hi, that's me, Kendall Clark) is desperately seeking a move from Dallas to Philly... So if you know of Python job openings, ping me: kendall@monkeyfist.com. And someone say 'hi' to Rob Bender at the next meeting for me; we've chatted via email many times... -- Kendall Clark.

http://wiki.cs.brynmawr.edu/index.cgi/PythonUsersGroup