Chipy: Mike Hall Interviews Brian Ray
Meet Brian Ray, a founding member of the Chicago Python Users Group (Chippy). Learn about the group's history, growth, and challenges. Discover the importance of resilience, scalability, and collaboration in building a thriving community. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from Brian and the Chippy team! #chipy #pythoncommunity #chicagopython #techcommunity #communitybuilding
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Brian Ray
ChiPy
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Hi, I'm Mike. I'm sitting here with Brian Ray from the Chippy, the Chicago Python Users Group. Hi Brian, thanks for sitting down. We're about to go into a meeting, but I thought we'd sit down and talk about the group beforehand. So Brian, can you tell me a little bit about Chippy and the Chicago Python community?
Brian Ray
ChiPy
▶ Speaking
Well, since 2003, I call myself a founding member along with Ian Baking and Chris McAvoy and a group of others that showed up at Goose Island, literally could fit around this table, talking about a language at the time that wasn't as popular as it is now, called Python, which has become a very popular language in recent years. Yeah, Google's really embraced it. Google's embraced it, you know, a lot of other companies and businesses have embraced it. It came at the time when we started meeting, one of our largest draws was from the scientific community, in fact. So a lot of scientists from the universities here and even professors doing research would show up to our meetings.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Isn't Python one of the few languages that's interstellar?
Brian Ray
ChiPy
▶ Speaking
I thought one of the rovers had some scripting in Python. It does. In fact, one of our very active members, David Beasley, who also teaches a specialized class here in Chicago and also presents at Jippy quite frequently, did go down to NASA and taught Python to a lot of the engineers there recently. That's quite intimidating. He's quite a smart guy. In fact, we record a lot of our meetings and the one meeting he spoke about the GIL, which is an element of Python, an internal, had 41,000 downloads or something like that in a short period of time. So, you know, you know, Shippy does a lot more than just have a monthly meeting, which we do have, you know, obviously. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, as we kind of were talking before the interview, I had noticed meetings looked like they had gone back to 2004, but really you said 2003 and, I mean, that was the first recorded meeting. Yeah, right. So the very early meetings, you know, consisted of us meeting up in various locations, including like the Mananak building, the famous building in Chicago. And we kind of got into the trend of moving our meetings around a lot. And that's worked well with Chicago because there's a lot of different places that use Python for very different things. You know, so meeting in a university would be totally acceptable. And Chicago Tribune, like last year alone, we met at Chicago Tribune Towers for a meeting that drew over 150 people. We met at Morning Star, which had a good draw last year. You know, even at Google's Chicago office, we've had some very successful meetings this last year. Now, most places, when they move to different locations, it can be kind of hard to attract people, but, I mean, it sounds like you have a following that's going to go wherever you're at. Yeah, we're the Grateful Dead of User Groups, for sure. We've got a lot of following and people that can't make it because it's in one location or another. Generally, we want to be somewhere where people can get to it via public transportation as well as traditional transportation. It will be as centralized as possible and accessible. Another big challenge now is finding a space big enough to fit 70, 80, 100, 150 people for some meetings. Yeah, and it's funny because until I joined Groupon and Ken Stocks had sent out the blast to the internal dev mailing list, I didn't even know there was a... I should say, that's not correct, I knew of a group a while ago, Cosman had mentioned it a few years ago at Chicago Code Camp, but I didn't realize it was so active. You have your own website and you kind of manage your group outside of the popular mainstream meetup and Eventbrite. Right, so we directed a lot of those ideas early on, and I think that was really out of resistance of becoming the shiny new thing. Because a lot of times with the shiny new thing, we found when we were watching other groups, they're gone before you know it. And so that's really been a point of resilience for us, is to not be the shiny new thing.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Brian Ray
ChiPy
▶ Speaking
And despite all of our efforts to be unsuccessful, and here we are again, and we are. Yes. So, you know... Well, it sounds like you have a little bit of success with 80-plus people, 50-some-odd for this meeting. Sure, yeah, we do, and you know there's a lot of new members that are coming this time. Probably presence at Groupon for instance, but there's also a lot of well-seasoned members. There's a lot of professors and scientists coming, as well as very well-known web developers and mobile developers as well. I did not realize that there was such a vibrant Python community here in Chicago. Yeah, there is. That's, you know, because I mean, the Ruby is very good at being the shiny new thing. So, I just wonder how much do you have, do you feel in any competition or is there cross-pollination with, like you have two dynamic languages, two scripting languages. They're both kind of answering the same domain of problems, or at least from my perspective, do you get much cross-pollination with the groups? Yes, so, you know, very early on, Ruby days, you know, we already had an establishment and there was a lot of recruitment from the Ruby community coming into our user group. And I don't know if the same is true in the opposite direction, but certainly that was true. You know, we had Snakes and Rubies at one-time conference where we put DHH, the writer of Ruby on Rails, who came to Chicago for 37 Signals. We had Adrian Hlavarti, who came, who was a Chicago guy as well, who wrote Django and Python from two different worlds. And we put them in front of each other at DePaul University and expected a couple of people to show up to see them. And then we filled the entire place with over 120 people. Yeah, I think I had heard about that. That was kind of a, kind of a famous, I didn't realize that was Chicago. Yeah, it was kind of a famous thing, but that was actually sponsored by Chimpy, that event was. And as a lot of other events, like I said, we have a mentorship program, you know, we have other events. Like we sent three guys to PyCon this year, a couple of weeks ago, that was paid completely out of Chimpy funds. All of our meetings are completely free. There's always food and drink there.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Well, if they're free, how did you get the funds for sponsorships?
Brian Ray
ChiPy
▶ Speaking
So yeah, so we get the sponsorships from various organizations. And lately, one thing we've been doing is doing some of our, doing some recruiting connections. So some organizations are looking for high notch, you know, developers, they come to us and we'll say, okay, sure, we can, we can find one of you. If we don't find one easy to do a lot of work, it'd be nice if we donate a couple hundred dollars to our user group so we can buy beer for the meeting. That makes sense. That's a good way, it's like a little good pro quote.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Sure.
Brian Ray
ChiPy
▶ Speaking
We'll do something for you, you do something for us. The community's all the better for it. Somebody's got a job. That's right. And the community is able to fund itself for a little bit longer. It's a very interesting and kind of grassroots way of finding funding. Also, it's not just shilling for donations. It's very, I'm going to have to edit that out because I'm at a loss for words. But anyway. Well, they get something out of it and we get something out of it. Yeah, exactly. So it works really quite nicely.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay. And so what is a typical schedule?
Brian Ray
ChiPy
▶ Speaking
So, Chippy meetings are on the second, always on the second Thursday of the month at 7 p. m. somewhere. And you really have to go to Chippy. org and join the mailing list if you want to find out where, because we move around so much. So it's C-H-I-P-Y. org. That's right. C-H-I-P-Y. org. And, you know, we post the meetings there when we know enough information. We have an announcement list if you only want to get announcements and we have a general mailing list for a lot of discussion.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Okay.
Brian Ray
ChiPy
▶ Speaking
Well, thank you very much, Brian. Thanks for your time. Nice to sit down. I'm looking forward to the meeting.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Great.
Brian Ray
ChiPy
▶ Speaking
Thank you.
Critical Insights
durable
"Chippy's success is due to its ability to adapt and move its meetings to different locations, making it accessible to a wider audience."
durable
"The group's resilience is a key factor in its longevity, as it has not become the 'shiny new thing' like other groups."
durable
"Chippy's funding model is innovative and effective, as it encourages organizations to donate to the group in exchange for recognition and support."
durable
"Chippy's events, such as the mentorship program and PyCon trips, help to foster a sense of community and provide opportunities for professional growth."
durable
"Chippy's meetings are always on the second Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. and are held at different locations around Chicago, making it easy for members to attend."