What is PyGameSF?
Who?
PyGameSF is a community of people interested in multimedia programming. The group is comprised of amateur enthusiasts, software engineers, indy game developers, musicians, electrical engineers and artists looking to share experience/ideas/tips learned from working on various projects.The group name is a bit of a misnomer. It comes from the fact that the original idea for the meet up was floated in the IRC channel #pygame hosted on Freenode. Another reason is that most of the people who show up use python hybrid systems, where python is the glue that binds things together.
However PyGameSF is not purely a python focused group or even a group focused just on software development. A large number of our presentations have been in other languages and used frameworks that have no python bindings. Apart from software, other technical endeavors such as hardware projects involving wireless controllers being used to control lighting for performance art have been demoed and well received. The group has in the past also hosted non technical presentations on topics such as how to promote indy games and the challenges in writing for non traditional media.
Where?
Once a month the group hosts an informal meet up in San Francisco usually within walking distance of BART down town. The format of these meetings typically involve several people giving presentations on projects they are developing followed by group discussion and feedback. Demoed projects don’t have to be open source, Linux only or purely technical. The only stipulation is that at the meet up you should be willing to explain how everything works and be open to questions.Why?
The monthly meet ups are a great opportunity to show finished projects or works in progress, get high quality feedback, throw out ideas for constructive criticism, get advice and find other people to collaborate with on projects.Apart from the monthly meet up’s people get together periodically in smaller more focused groups either to compete in competitions such as pyweek or to hack on projects together in cafes. The group also encourages people to become involved and produce podcasts/articles/tutorials/interviews for the main PyGameSF website so that other people can learn from their efforts and experience.