SF Python Meetup has regular Project Nights. We welcome hackers and people working on their personal projects but it has been my aim to provide an opportunity for beginners in the Python community to take a class or just ask questions in a friendly, low-stress environment. I'm always recruiting mentors so if you're interested in helping out and haven't been before just hit me up on Twitter!

Last month we co-hosted with the Twisted Meetup group - Glyph and crew ran an open space and helped Pythonistas get going on Twisted. We didn't have very many introductory classes on tap so I improvised a Beginning Python class which I described as "Learn enough python to parse some baseball stats".

This was kind of fun - I made up the slides as we progressed and we learned to download a file with urllib, talked about strings and lists, learned basic iteration and moved on to the dict type by the end of class. Attached are my slides and the program students wrote to complete the assignment and figure out which team hit the most home runs!

Teaching beginners doesn't have to be complicated or fancy - it helps to just spend time answering questions about the basics. It's nice if we can accomplish a useful task along way and give students a sense of accomplishment. If you can help with this sort of thing come on out to our next project night next Wednesday and help welcome beginners to the Python community in the Bay Area!