PyCamp Argentina

You settle into a deck chair in the sun. All around you are the hills, streams, and spectacular greenery of Cordoba Province, Argentina. You could take a nap, or a hike. But best of all, you can write code with friends. "There's a particular energy you can't find elsewhere. It comes from everybody working together, playing together, discussing ideas," says Facundo Batista. "You can devote your time to your community, because everything is taken care of. You spend all day programming, then take 40 steps to your bed."

PyCamp is Argentina's annual outdoor code sprint. This year, Facundo Batista organized PyCamp in the small town of La Serranita. For four days, 24 coders hacked on a dozen open source projects, with the help of a $600 grant from the Python Software Foundation.

"It's especially fruitful for newbies," says Batista. "You can be a 22-year-old with a couple years of college, and you are working on an open-source project side-by-side with someone with 25 years experience at big companies. The amount you can learn, it's awesome!"

The idea for PyCamp arose from Argentina's Python community, beginning in 2008. The camp isn't really outdoors: there is a roof, walls, beds, bathrooms, even electricity and WiFi. But despite these amenities, the location is always abundantly green and rural.

Batista used the PSF grant to bring several new coders, improving the group's diversity. One first-time participant, Ariel Ramos, says, "Thanks for the grant, I liked the experience a lot, and it was very useful to be there. I liked the openness to the newbies and the special attention to ensure they enjoyed the event and learned." Another participant, Pedro Nieto, says PyCamp "allowed me to participate in several interesting projects that normally I wouldn't have even known about. It gave me more confidence to program, and encouraged me to participate in the free software community."

PyCamp participants each arrive with one or two ideas, and the sprint begins with pitches to recruit contributors. "You end up working on 5 or 6 different projects," says Batista. "No attachments." At the end of the sprint, the teams present their work in a series of lightning talks.

Batista's favorite project this year was a tower defense game, built from scratch. Half the participating programmers wrote the game's core, and coded its UI using pyglet, the Python OpenGL library. The other half invented an AI to play the game. With their responsibilities neatly divided, the teams were very productive: they completed a working game in four days. Inexperienced members were mixed in with experts on each team to accelerate their learning. "I actually knew only a little Python," says Agustín Curto. "I was just starting with the language, and it helped because I learned a lot by asking."

Tower defense game

By sponsoring new PyCamp coders, the PSF wasn't merely generous: it also made an investment in the future of the Python community in Argentina. José Luis Zanotti says, "It was such an incredible, fun, and educational experience that I decided to commit myself to be an active member of the community, working in their projects, and overall promoting the usage of Python in my geographic area."

Photos by Facundo Batista; full gallery on Flickr.

Read More

Highly Contagious: Python Spreads through South America!

As you may recall, I previously posted about a wonderful project in South America that has been funded in part by the PSF. That first blog post described the Python events that Manuel Kaufmann had organized in Argentina and his plans to move on to Paraguay and then Bolivia. Please check it out at Python in Argentina.

I’m very happy to report that Manuel Kaufmann has continued to be busy bringing Python events and knowledge to more and more people, as he left Argentina for Paraguay. He recently reached out to us to tell about his experiences. Here's a recap:

First of all, PyDay Asunción took place as scheduled on March 28th. This event was the culmination of Manuel’s efforts in creating the brand new Python Paraguay community. His Paraguayan adventure began by meeting with people from different Software Libre groups (PHP, OpenStreetMap, Sugar, Google Code In, etc) in an attempt to merge them into a new community focussed on Python. Their first meeting had 13 attendees who immediately began organizing for PyDay Asunción. 

This first PyDay (or mini-conference) in Paraguay was a great success. Over 100 people with varying levels of programming and Python skill attended. Manuel was pleased to report that among the presenters were a 17 year old boy and a young woman–clearly the diversity of our community is growing demographically as well as geographically. In addition, the importance of this event was marked by the Paraguayan government, who declared PyDay Asunción an official Technology and Cultural Event. Congratulations to Manuel and everyone who worked to make this a reality.You can read more about the day (in Spanish) at Manuel’s own blog post.

PyDay Asunción

Of course, as before, the momentum didn’t stop at one event. With a new community formed, new events were bound to occur. It always amazes me the way hard work and a good idea will grow. In fact, Manuel reported that some of the attendees of last month’s PyDay Formosa, Argentina were so enthused that they travelled 400 km to attend and help out at PyDay Paraguay. That kind of passion and commitment says a lot about the quality of these events and the desire for more. Perhaps Python is contagious!

Similarly, Manuel tells us that a talk at PyDay Paraguay gave rise to another event: HACKÁra Asuka Guaraní: an event to translate the Sugar platform to Guaraní. This event was organized by Ricardo Saucedo and Martín Abente (one of the members of Python Paraguay). In fact, the idea of this event came out of Martin’s talk at PyDay Asunción. There were around 15 teenagers including 6 girls and a teacher who helped with the translation into their native language. According to Manuel, this potentially could lead to many people who don't speak Spanish being able to learn programming.



Manuel has no intention of slowing down. Although his original plan was to spend three months on the project, he hasn’t yet made it to Bolivia, so he’s going to extend his time commitment. One problem he’s having is with his car. Apparently it needs quite a bit of TLC to keep it going. If you’d like to help with that, Manuel is accepting donations at Manuel’s Project. Since a little goes a long way to keep a car running, I hope you'll join me in giving him the cost of a latte or two.



In any case, his project appears unstoppable, with many future events either completely set to go or in the planning stages. The following events are already scheduled for May: 

• PyDay at Apóstoles Misiones, Argentina on 7 May


• 20-22 May - Educational Track for secondary students at SciPy LA 2015, Posadas, Misiones, Argentina (http://scipyla.org/conf/2015/)


• PyDay at Encarnación, Misiones, Paraguay on 30 May.

In addition, Manuel has some exciting ideas for future projects, such as creating a Robot Course for kids, and bringing Facundo Batista (one of the best Argentinian Python hackers) to Asunción, Paraguay to develop a 3-days course. These are in the early planning stages, but if I know Manuel, I think we can look forward to hearing about their successful completion in the future.

If you’d like to follow Manuel’s travel plans, or provide some support, please visit his website.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

Read More