Python Practice Coding Mentor-Connect | It's (Finally) Happening!

NOTE: Date has been updated to 1/21/2012 (and it's final :) Also, please RSVP "No" if you won't be coming. We're limited on space already.

The Important Stuff:

What is this?: We'll be discussing the potential of creating a formal mentorship program through the Python Practice Coding group. We have some ideas about what this could look like, so we'll spend time discussing that, figure out how you want to be involved, and then mix-and-mingle a little bit to discuss what everybody is working on, and how you want to work together.

There's no guarantee that this mentor-connect meeting will turn into a real thing long-term, but lots of you are interested, and we want to see where that leads.

Who should come: Anybody! If you want to learn or teach coding in any language, this is for you. You don't need any level of experience, and this is for all languages -- not just Python. As long as it talks to the computer, it's all good.

What else: Bring your smile, bring your awesome, and bring a friend! If you know anybody who wants to learn or mentor, please invite and bring them along. We don't have any Pizza / Beer yet, but would are working on finding a sponsor.

If you'd like to mentor, please leave a note in the comments, or email the co-organizers.

Other, potentially interesting, but non-critical stuff:

Who are you?

This is organized by three guys (Brian, Ryan, and Max) who hang out in the Python community (http://www.bostonpython.com) and recently graduated from Boston Startup School (http://www.bostonstartupschool.com). Our group is primarily beginners and intermediates that try to meet every other week or so to write code (minus a two-month hiatus, but we're back :). Several members of our group are very motivated to learn Python, and some are working their way into professional software/web development. As such, we would love it if we could find mentors to "show us the ropes".

The details are not completely fleshed out, but we're thinking mentorship might look like one of two things:

1. Agreeing in advance to attend our meetups, and then coming to troubleshoot during that meetup.

2. Working one-on-[one, two, three, four] to oversee the mentee(s) as he/she writes a program or works through a tutorial over a few weeks or months.

3. Managing a small, easy-entry project on Github that learners can pull, update, and send back. You do a code review.

Most importantly, a mentorship would be focused on teaching us how to write good code, and introducing interested folks to the software engineering processes used in the real world.