Three lucky volunteers, Emmanuelle Gouillart, Daniel Nouri and I, went to Dakar three weeks ago (from July 6 to 10) for the second Python African Tour stop. The hosting organizations were the AUF (Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie), the Dakar Linux User Group and the ESP (Ecole Supérieure Polytechnique, a master-level engineer school).
In addition to helping for the organization, three members of DakarLUG, Thomas Noël, Ousmane Wilane and Sergiu Mihai, served as additional volunteer trainers, which allowed having each class/workshop led by a pair of trainers.
Our busy week featured the following activities:
- A general Python tutorial (1.5 day) for 3 groups of 15 participants. One of the tutorial sessions was oriented toward using Python’s scientific tools (SciPy/NumPy), and was led by Emmanuelle Gouillart.
- A barcamp day with informal talks showing how we use Python and its related technologies in our daily work.
- A workshop either on Django mainly led by the Ousmane - Daniel - Sergiu trio, or on “Python for scientific computing” led by Emmanuelle. The last day of the workshop part was advertised as a sprint, but was more practical work or achieving a small goal the participants set themselves for the day.
In addition, the core of Python fans in Dakar has decided to continue to promote and exchange on the use of Python ; a mailing list has been put in place by the end of the week to facilitate that.
Some pictures of the event are online at http://dakarlug.org/pat/galerie.
You can also read the report sent by Emmanuelle to the SciPy/NumPy mailing list.
Again, we want to thank the companies, organizations and people who helped make this possible :
We are already preparing the next possible countries. Zambia is not confirmed yet, but Nigeria has expressed strong interest for early 2010, and we have been thinking about Togo and Benin too. Next stops and their dates will be announced once organization details are confirmed.
As already announced, the second “Python African Tour” stop is Dakar, next week. A set of events are planned all over the week, thanks to the unstoppable contribution from the DakarLUG guys (Thomas, Ousmane, Serguei, and the others) managing the organization with love. What’s more amazing is that we will be training and showing Python-related stuff to more than 60 people ! Thanks to the companies and groups/organizations sponsoring these events.
Here is an overview of our busy agenda:
Trainings and workshops (monday, tuesday, thursday)
- Python tutorial
- Advanced Python training (objects, classes, iterators, decorators, etc)
- Scientific Python training
- Django tutorial
- Django workshop and Scientific Python workshop (taking place at the same time on thursday)
The conference day (wednesday) ; we will have various talks and discussions on topics including:
- The “Python African Tour” project
- The Python language for newcomers
- Using Python for scientific applications
- Demos on tools and applications (DemoCamp)
Other activities
- A sprint on friday and saturday, for those interested.
- A PloneGov meeting (friday morning).
We’re really excited about this, and hope Python will really take off in West Africa !
For more information and following our activities:
We now have several volunteers getting involved with Python African Tour :
- Amine Souleymani gave a Python tutorial for the Morocco stop of the tour.
- Daniel Nouri gave a Python tutorial (for an english-speaking group) in Morocco, and also took part to the PloneGov sprint that was organized after the training days. Daniel has accepted to be on board again for Senegal (the next stop) as a trainer.
- Emmanuelle Gouillart will be contributing to the Senegal sessions with a Scientific Python tutorial.
- Thomas Noel and Ousmane Wilane, our main facilitators in Senegal, are taking care of all the organization details, including finding sponsors, and will also serve as trainers. Ousmane has proposed a Django training that will really be interesting to follow.
- I (Kamon Ayeva) will be part of the Senegal volunteers team. In Dakar, we are hoping to have at least 4 trainers, so we may deliver some of the trainings with pairs. We’ll see how it goes.
Of course others have expressed interest in helping and they should jump in as we go. We are slowly building a geographically diverse team that can collaborate and help deliver our message in these countries where Python is often underrated or unknown.
A big thank to all the “PAT” project contributors.
I’m pleased to announce that our next event will take place in Dakar, Senegal, the week of July 6-10.
The event is organized with the help of AUF (Campus numérique francophone de Dakar), some local Open Source advocates and developers (DakarLUG), ISOC Sénégal and NIC Sénégal. I really want to thank them.
We are planning several tutorials/workshops during two or three days:
- Python introduction
- Advanced Python (an overview of design patterns)
- Django
- Scientific Python
There will also be a barcamp day and a sprint for the social and exchange part of the deal 
We are still in need of sponsors, so if you want to help promote Python in Africa, if you have some interest in Senegal, or if you want to help in any other way, please contact us. You can sponsor the event as a whole, or just contribute to the sprint or the barcamp.
For more information, check the event site.