This is a combined writeup for my two meetups: TriPython and Pyladies.

The first one I went to was the TriPython Durham project night at Caktus Group. There was a couple of people sitting around, kind of focusing on their own thing so my first impression was “Oh no I dont know what to do. Who do I talk to?”. Luckily Erica was there and she was already talking to a girl so I just joined them. The conversation turned to Django and I’m not planning to do anything with Django so I wasn’t really paying attention. Then long story short, I talked to Chris, who was organizing all these Python events and he was kind enough to show me some of the data cleaning and data analysis thing he does with Python. This was way back when we have not started data analysis yet so it was kind of went over my head. So in the end I feel like I did not get much out of this first meetup because: 1. I dont branch out enough to meet people. I’m pretty shy and nobody was really talking so it’s even harder for me to approach anyone. 2. I did not really have any project going on at that time so I did not have any specific questions or any talking points to break the ice. 3. I wanted to get acquainted with data analysis but because I had no background yet, I didnt understand the things that people were showing me.

The second one I went to was last week PyLadies Project Night. This time I came prepared with questions! I was stuck not know how to open and extracting a large file (2Gb) and was hoping somebody could help me unstuck. This time the meetup was also better held I think. Chris, the organizer asked everybody there to introduce themselves, which gave a good background of who is who and I could target the people I want to talk to. I was able to talk to a very kind lady who helped me with my problem. But another problem I realized is that people there are kind of on a different level. Sometimes they talked about things I dont really understand and suggested solutions that were complicated and I would not be able to do them. So the second meetup was more successful than the first one but there were still some issues: 1. People didnt know my level of knowledge, which is very basic, so they might talk about or suggest things that are out of my ability to do. 2. Even when I target people who I think could help me, it might not be the case that they could. I would put them on the spot and they would also google stackexchange to try and help me. 3. Maybe I approach this meetup the wrong way? Maybe it’s not about solving problem but to ask people about other things or networking? I dont know but I feel like it’s easier to try and solve it myself or ask people who I already know can actually help me. For example, you the instructor or fellow classmates.

Which brings me to my final point. I think because my level of programming is very limited, it’s not too beneficial to interact with people in these meetups. I think what would be helpful is to have a meetup/project night with people in our class, the other session or people who are taking other programming classes in school. We kind of know our level and might encounter problems that others encounter. Some of us know more than others too. So the meetups were interesting but I’m not sure if I’ll go again.