Python community and the goal of the meetings

[Gabor Szabo]

Hi,

20-25 years ago when I was organizing the Perl community the whole hi-tech world was much smaller. Our meetings had 5-10, sometimes even 15 people. There was a core that showed up at every meeting and there were a few people who showed up occasionally. Our mailing list had some 2-300 members in total. (It was before Meetup.) We helped each other a lot. It felt like a community.

For many years PyWeb functioned in a similar way, but now PyWeb on Meetup has 4,300 members, the PyWeb-IL mailing list has 500 members. 20-30 people show up at the meetings and at least half of them are first-timers. As the meetings don't grow in size this means that most people registered either come only once or not even once.

On one hand it is great that new people show up, but the fact that most of them don't return and don't become active in the group troubles me. It feels way less of a community than earlier.

So now I wonder - aloud, so you might also provide your thoughts - what is the goal of the group? What is the goal of these meetings? What can we do to make it more engaging?

Gabor

https://szabgab.com/

[Ram Rachum]

I sympathize but have no opinion on what would help. The fact that web or python haven't been "the cool new thing" in a long time is the main reason, I think. People just don't have a reason to congregate around these things anymore.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PyWeb-IL" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pyweb-il+u...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pyweb-il/CABe4FJAsXQXfqmSEdz299%2Ben5OpY2Az_P6Um3E%2BpwSi1vPKysQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Abe Kohen]

Hi Gabor,

I hear you.

In an ideal world I would show up at all your meetings, but the world is not ideal. Traveling from Tzfat by public transportation is a lesson in masochism. Driving is a lesson in sado-masochism. The Ministry of Transportation does nothing to alleviate the serious lack of decent transportation up North. So my only option if I don't want to spend 8 hours commuting back and forth, is to attend online sessions only. 

Before Covid-19 I attended a variety of in person meetups on various topics in Manhattan. People came for the networking as well as for the free food. In some venues a whole dinner was provided. People passed around business cards looking for the next opportunity. For software meetups people came with laptops to follow along.

Good luck.

Best,
Abe Kohen

www.linkedin.com/in/abekohen

abek...@gmail.com

ako...@cs.stanford.edu

[Gabor Szabo]

Given that the attendees change a lot I had two thoughts

1. We can have the meetings at various other places - not necessarily in Tel Aviv. In fact the last meeting was in Herzliya, the next one is in Petach Tikva, and the one in December is in Ramat Gan. We might have meetings in places even further from the center. In Haifa, Jerusalem, Beer Sheva, etc. For this I'll need someone who works in these places at a company that wants to host one of our events. I have put together some info about it https://python.org.il/en/pyweb-hosting

2. We need a message to get people who arrive at the meetings to get them more involved. Thinking about this, actually I already started something related - even without thinking about it. Every event I say a few words about getting involved in Open Source. I just need to improve the message to get more people involved in development, organization or some other aspect of the general Open Source community in Israel. I am working on a page on the ways people can help https://hamakor.org.il/en/help 

BTW I am looking for volunteers to help with both sites.

regards

     Gabor

[Meir Kriheli]

As a past active participant (attending and giving talks) in those meetups (was at PyWeb-IL from the start), I'd like to add to this:

• The "not so cool anymore" is not an issue, as the same happens in other meetups (Rust, Front End, etc).
• I've stopped going to PyCON IL, f.ex., as there's a feeling that "it's not my tribe anymore", the make-up and interests of the community changed.
• Same happened to the, once prevalent, Linux User Group meeting - once things get larger, the "community fragmentation" grows as well,
  leaving smaller and smaller fragments, thus dwindling number of attendants.
• This is related IMO to the same participation decline we're witnessing in forums, blogs, mailing lists, stack overflow, etc.
  Most of the action moved to instant chats groups (Telegram, Whatsapp, etc) and AI.

That's natural evolution I guess, which I'm sorry for, as we lose the searchable archives of knowledge we had with the previous platforms.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PyWeb-IL" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pyweb-il+u...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pyweb-il/CABe4FJAdxc5WKF_DkfBjEjZ7F%2BnvjvA_M1uya0F%2B4WS1Gtvd_A%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Meir Kriheli
http://meirkriheli.com