Moving to Open Source Initiative

Today, I shut down the hosting service I was using for PRPIG.  So for a little bit until I get the connections all worked out, I had to revert back to the Blogspot address.  Don't worry, prpig.org will be back online soon, but it will not be with Blogger.

So until I can get the new web content up on the new web hosting, please bear with these changes as I sort out all the bugs....

October 2014 PRPIG Meeting

On October 16, the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (PRPIG) will celebrate it's recent acceptance as an affiliate of the Open Source Initiative, with a new series of user group meeting cohosted within the University of Puerto Rico. PRPIG will be collaborating with respective campus student associations for computer science (AECC, initials in Spanish), to produce user group meetings for students. 

The user group meetings will feature introductory Python sessions by students and user group members. The October PRPIG meeting will be held at Universidad de Puerto Rico en Bayamón, #170 Carretera 174 Parque Industrial Minillas, in the Reception Hall at 7:00pm.

On November 20^th, PRPIG will collaborate with the UPR Rio Piedras chapter of the AECC to produce the “Puerto Rico Intellectual Property Summit.” The user group meeting will feature sessions from the UPR Law Clinic, Startups of Puerto Rico, and Ferraiuoli LLC. Sessions anticipated include the Puerto Rico implementation of Creative Commons 3.0, intellectual property protection for startups, and a side-by-side comparison of software licenses.

These student collaborations Provide teens with the opportunity to build skill proficiency in open technologies not typically covered locally in the standard proprietary software driven, technology-based degree programs. For participants, they gain valuable skills that will help prepare them for future education and career success.

PRPIG Gains Affiliate Membership in Open Source Initiative

August 24th, the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (PRPIG) was formally accepted as an affiliate member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).  With this honor, PRPIG joins a litany of IT (FLOSS) giants, such as Mozilla, the Python Software Foundation, The Linux Foundation, Debian, and the Drupal Association.  #humbling

"We are pleased to have prPIG join our community,” 

said Patrick Masson, general manager of the OSI.

“prPIG captures the very essence of the Open Source movement, where communities of practice self-organize around common goals to share and co-create. prPIG is helping set the standard for peer-driven development across Puerto Rico while also contributing to the larger Python community."

prPIG offers free workshops and seminars to educate about and advocate for the benefits of Open Source. To grow our community and increase our reach we will continue to build bridges among different constituencies, focusing especially on high school and university students.

Wish For The Future Technology Workshop

“The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed,” William Gibson.   What will you do? How will you make sure that you, or your children, thrive in the future?  Will you settle for merely surviving the future?  Or will you create the future by inventing it? What will do to master the future and make technology work for you, your children, and your business?

The Puerto Rico Python Interest Group, along with Optico Fiber from Critical Hub Networks, is proud to present the first ever “Wish For the Future” (W4TF)  technology workshop.  The week long workshop is open to ages 9 to 99 and will provide an introduction to digital media technologies.  As space is limited, tickets are available on a first come, first serve basis.  Interested participants can find out more information by visiting the PRPIG community on Google Plus, the PRPIG Facebook Page, and Twitter @pr_pig.

Wish For The Future

The W4TF is a hub of inspiration, ideas, and activities to facilitate cross-generational learning among kids and adults aged 10 - 99. It’s aim is to foster a creative platform for envisioning a future in which the world will work for 100% of humanity. How do we make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone? If you were the pilot of “Spaceship earth.” how would you operate it to sustain humanity and the planet? What do you want to make of the future?

The workshop is planned for July 28th until Aug 1.  Sessions will be from 12:00pm to 4:00 pm.  Critical Hub Networks has generously donated the theater of the art deco El Telégrafo building in Santurce.

The workshop will consist of workstations that participants will rotate through during the course of the week.  In each workstation the participant will interact with some advanced technology to help create a time capsule with the workshop's collective wish for the future.  The time capsule is scheduled to be opened in 2112.

February prPIG Meeting

Puerto Rico Python User Group Celebrates First Anniversary

One year ago the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (prPIG) was founded on one purpose; to create a sustainable user community based on software development in Puerto Rico. On February 20, 2014 we will celebrate our first anniversary with an open format meeting with lightning talks from the community.

prPIG is looking for volunteers from the community that are willing to give a short introduction to their favorite Python library, some popular modules we'd like to see include: math, decimal, datetime, time, dateutil, re, sqlite, json, urllib2, pyquery, and sh. Suggestions are also welcome.

During their first year, the Puerto Rico Python user group hosted 18 events, and established an active community online. According to founder Kevin Shockey, “prPIG has successfully established an online network that is helping to sustain our software development user group in Puerto Rico. We've gained many new partners and collaborators in our first year. They have really helped us and we look forward to more collaborative opportunities.”

The February meeting of prPIG will be held at 7:00pm in 2nd Floor Conference Room, Puerto Rico Science, Research, & Technology Trust, Rd. 21, Río Piedras.

Note: prPIG is kindly sponsored by the Internet Society, through their Community Grant program. We are deeply grateful for all of the support we have received so far, it has been well beyond our wildest expectations.

More on the Python Software Foundation Code of Conduct.

I found this in the Python Software Foundation's explanation of the new Code of Conduct. I'm particularly interested in their(our) effort to grow a more diverse Python community. This section resonates with me:

"we can advance towards a more diverse representation, one that we see throughout the rest of the community being increasingly populated by women, students, and with the popularity of pocket-sized computers, children will soon be in the ranks." 

 I hope that prPIG can embrace that future...

Python Software Foundation Code of Conduct

prPIG adopts PSF Code of Conduct

In accordance with the Python Software Foundation, when you're working with members of the community, we encourage you to follow the guidelines identified in the Code of Conduct. These guidelines, will hopefully steer our interactions and keep Python a positive, successful, and growing community.

prPIG Partnering With EFF To Help Civilize Electronic Frontier

Effort brings new attention to critical Internet freedoms, including privacy and security.

As the Puerto Rico Python Internet Group (prPIG) completes its’ first year of meetings and activities, the software development user community is partnering with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to help spread the word about the EFF, their mission, and work.

In addition to becoming an affiliate member of the EFF, prPIG will actively conduct meetings to share EFF prepared materials to the Puerto Rico software development community.  The EFF provides a timely “Take Action” center on their web page where citizens can actively engage citizens to help inform netizens about hot issues.  

prPIG is dedicated to ensure that the local software development community is exposed to the EFF, their work, and the valuable information they publish.  This material covers a wide range of issues likely applicable to technology professionals, such as blogger’s legal rights, coder’s rights, and ripped from the headlines, the EFF’s fight against NSA's Warrantless Surveillance.

About Puerto Rico Python Interest Group

The Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (prPIG) is the leading software development user community in Puerto Rico. Our mission is to create a sustainable user community for software development in Puerto Rico.  With more than 170 members, the prPIG has successfully organized 18 activities and meetings during 2013.

Puerto Rico Python UG will host a look at Blimp in next prPIG meeting

Puerto Rico Python is pleased to announce our next meeting.  The meeting will be April 9th at 6:30 in the offices of Vasa Consulting.  Be advised that this is a new date.  Our normally scheduled Wednesday meeting was not possible, because the conference room was already booked. 

We will start a new content track with this meeting.  From now on, all meetings of the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (prPIG) will include a tutorial or demonstration from a group member or a specially invited guest.

Our first tutorial will be offered by the co-founders of Blimp, a project management web service built in Python.  You can get blimp at http://getblimp.com.  prPIG members Giovanni Collazo and José Padilla will be offering us a long behind the curtain at their software development stack.

Our "Hack the Hackathon" meeting was a smashing success.  You can watch the recording and see the fluid flow of great ideas.  The prPIG "Hackathon" meeting from 3/27 is available from Youtube via an On Air Google Hangout.

Although we are still seeking a date to lock in our first Python Hackathon, what we have decided on is the content.  The prPIG Python Hackathon will consist of three tracks. The first track will be a Python Install Fest; anyone wanting to install Python can bring their laptop and prPIG will make sure they walk away with a working version of Python.  

The second track will be tutorials given by prPIG members.  The final track will be a Python Sprint.  Using the Hacker League, prPIG will host a Python hacking contest.  More details of the hackathon will be available soon.  

An example of the type of content that prPIG will strive to produce in our Hackathon was recently created by one of its' members.  Robert Rosario produced "Screencast de como comenzar un proyecto de Django + Virtualenv;" thus completing one of prPIG's original goals, generate Python-related content in Spanish.  

Meeting on 3/27: Hacking the Hackathon

The Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (prPIG) will hold their 3rd meeting on March 27th at 6:30 PM.  The meeting will dedicated to hacking away at the prPIG process to host collaborative events, such as a Python Hackathon, in the San Juan, Puerto Rico area.  We will brainstorm how to use what's already known and adapting (translating) it to the types of projects, processes, and activities that will be successful in Puerto Rico.

Our next scheduled regular meeting will be on April 10th, 2013 at 6:30 PM.  The co-founders of Blimp (a local startup based on Python) will give us an inside look at their SD stack.

All of the prPIG meetings at sponsored by the Internet Society, ASOPYMES, and Altamente.  Meetings are held in the ASOPYMES offices in the Teachers Association Building in Hato Rey, Suite 403.  prPIG can be contacted through a variety social networks: Google Communties, Google Groups, our Facebook Page, and here on the prPIG homepage.

prPIG was founded to create a sustainable user community based on software development in Puerto Rico

Google Group Moved

If you are looking for the Google Group, I moved it to the "Follow prPIG!" page.  It just wouldn't fit in 250 characters.

Slowly but surely, I'm getting all of the plumbing setup so that prPIG announcements will go out to every major social network, including email, all simultaneously.

prPIG Meeting - 2/28/13

I'm organizing the next meeting of the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group.  It will be February 28 at 6:00pm in the facilities of the Teachers Association in Hato Rey. The address is 452 Ave. Ponce de León, San Juan, PR 00919.  I'll have the details promptly in Facebook.

The tentative agenda is to introduce the mission of prPIG and begin planning our first joint project.  I hope to see you there!

Making Bacon

Come all ye Phythonistas!

The feedback from the meetup last night, is that Puerto Rico is ready for a software development community. With pleasure, prPIG is here to serve.

I'd like to announce that we will hold the 1st Puerto Rico Python Interest Group meeting before the end of the month (2/28).

Tentatively, the meetup will be at the UMET Cupey campus, unless someone would like to volunteer a location in the SJ Metro area? With WIFI por favor? :-)

Thanks for the leadership of Axel Rivera!  It was great networking with other Pythonistas!

Don't forget to like the prPIG Facebook Page!

First Puerto Rico Python Interest Group Meeting

Long live Puerto Rico PIG!

2/06/13 @ Ficus Cafe at 8pm

We will conduct our first meeting on February 6th at 8:00 pm at the Ficus Cafe in front of the Puerto Rico Convention Center.  Alex Rivera, founder of Startup After Hours Puerto Rico, has graciously allowed me a few minutes to introduce prPIG to his community during their scheduled meetup.

My objectives are simple. First, in order to prepare for the meeting, I wanted to launch a minimal viable product website and email mailing list, which I completed yesterday.  That's why I reached out to Alex, because...

An second, I wanted to get the word out as quickly as possible. At the event I will share the mission of the prPIG community, invite new members (free), and review the types of activities we have planned.  I hope to see you there!

P.S. I'm in the process of getting us listed on the Python Foundation Local User Group page of official list of Piggies on the Python Foundation Wiki. Soon it will be official, Puerto Rico will have their very own Piggy!(*)

(*) The Python Foundation refers to their local user groups as Python Interest Groups (PIG).