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 :

• PloneGov / CommunesPlone represented by Joë­l Lambillote, who sponsored the Moroccan stop.
• ­Onyx / Proxyma, NIC Senegal, ISOC, ADIE (Senegal’s government agency for IT), and AFPY (in France) who sponsored the Senegal stop.

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.

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:

• DakarLUG PAT microsite
  
• PythonAfricanTour-related tweets

• 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.

­

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.

We’ve been having discussions and started work for organizing a Python event with training, democamp, and sprint in Senegal, and possibly in Zambia too, this year. If you are based in one of these regions or have partners there, and you see an opportunity to help or participate, get in touch with me (kamon dot ayeva at gmail.com).

Also, this project will be featured at the talk “Giving back and helping expand the Python community. A roadmap for South America and Africa“, at PyCon in Chicago next month. Roberto Allende and myself are going to present our ideas to spread Python in new regions, taking South America and Africa as examples. After the talk, we hope to contribute more by organizing discussions and some kind of advocacy mini-sprint in one of the Open Space rooms.

­

Thanks to the involvement and talents of Amine Souleymani and Daniel Nouri, we were able to introduce Python to students of EMI (Ecole Mohammadia d’Ingenieurs) in Rabat. Daniel blogged about his participation here.

A sprint also took place in Casablanca to get the PloneGov team and some african partners to work on Plone and PloneGov related stuff.

A detailed report of these first events and achievements will follow !

A big thank goes to our initial supporters and facilitarors:

• The PloneGov team for supporting the tour, by accepting our sprint idea and finding funding to help us with the organization costs for Morocco.
  
• The EMI students and staff who helped organizing the Rabat sessions. You can check their local site here. A special thank to Aida El manar El bouanani for her enthusiasm and hard coordination work.
  
• Nextma for supporting the sprint in their offices in Casablanca.
  

Next things that should happen:

• We are going to work for the next interested countries (Zambia, Senegal, Nigeria, etc) and the precise plan should be announced in January.
• We will make a proposal for involving the trained people on technologies, beyond the Python language, that they could use for enterprise projects.
  

Amine Soulaymani, a developer living in Morocco, and Daniel Nouri have volunteered to participate as instructors for two groups of students at Ecole Mohammedia d’Ingenieurs, ­the school who has accepted to host these free Python introduction events in Rabat on December 18, 19, and 20.

After the fisrt 2 days dedicated to training, we would like to have at least 3 days of community activities: an unconference-style day with demos and talks, followed by a sprint to learn more and contribute.

A group of people from Belgium, participating to the PloneGov project, have agreed to join us, and co-sponsor the sprint, to work on Plone and PloneGov related stuff.

Other possible topics, still in discussion, are:

• WSGI and Repoze
• ­OpenERP

What we need to make sure all this can work:

• A host for the sprint, since Ecole Mohammedia will only host us for the training and unconference part.
• Other co-sponsors who could put money to help assist in the travel costs of Python developers who will participate, and contribute to the work that will be done.

­­Contact us and let’s discuss about this opportunity to promote Python in Africa and get new developers from that continent on board !

To bring even more value, there is also the idea of mentoring new African talents, interested in embracing a career in the scientific, engineering, and/or software fields.

Once we have detected such talents, through the training activities, we want to encourage a learning/mentoring relationship and set up an environment (via remote/virtual presence and physical meetings when possible) to:

• Motivate them in pursuing the work started,
• Guide them in the process of becoming Open Source software contributors.

The mentoring would really complement the trainings. Ideally, each training will immediately be followed by 1 or 2 day(s) of gathering with the people trained in order to socialize, discuss and continue working in a free spirit.

The main idea behind this is to get people into joining the emerging Python community in Africa, and start discussing and working together and contributing (through mailing lists, forums, and other tools).

Examples of useful initiatives for this program may include:

• Sprints/hackathons organized in such a way that newbies can participate and be  introduced to the Python community practices.

• Demos of specific tools and projects.

• Helping newbies understand important aspects of Open Source through general presentations such as Community collaboration practices, participation to the next Google Summer of Code, participation to the next PyWeek challenge, etc.

You see, it is really about new learning paradigms !

We hope to get started in the coming months, once we find sponsors and with the help of local organizations (schools, universities, NGOs, etc).

The proposed trainings are:

• Python introduction (the main one)
• System and Network Administration with Python
• Scientific Computing with Python
• Databases with Python
• Web Development with Python
• Desktop GUIs with Python

Any organization can discuss with us (through the mailing list, python-african-tour-discussion AT lists.openplans.org) about preparing a training with specific topics as long as we get the request early enough to be able to find qualified volunteer trainers for those topics.

We are currently having final discussions on how we do things, and how we get the trainings sponsored.

Any help or giving ideas or feedback is welcome !

Last week-end, she had the opportunity to present the project at the AfREN (Africa Research and Education Networking) meeting taking place as part of the AfNOG and AfriNIC events called “9èmes Rencontres AfNOG - 8èmes Rencontres AfriNIC”.

She reported that, after her presentation, she talked with several participants who expressed interest in the project. Participants from organizations such as:

• A research center in Egypt
• A university in Senegal
• A university in Malawi

It’s great to see such interest and we hope to quickly start organizing these local events across Africa, and help students, engineers, researchers and others discover or increase their usage of Python.