Local engagement

[Richard Gaskin]

Mark Rauterkus wrote:

 > IMHO, another avenue for local LiveCode engagement are the *Camps.
 > Especially the WordCamps and PodCamps.
 >
 > Plus there are the CodeFests and Hack-a-thons.

Those are great - thanks for mentioning them.

I originally asked about user groups since that's where I spend much of 
my own social time, and with the "Download LC Community: trapped" thread 
being about the open source community I thought it would helpful to get 
a feel for how much time the readers here spend with groups focused on 
open source software.

But there's a lot to be said for Hackathons and the like, and with a 
good team they can be a great way to show off LC workflows.

 > With the PodCamps and WordCamps, the typical participant is not a
 > computer genius, but more of a creative person. Designers,
 > authors,opinionated bloggers, etc. I feel that those folks, plus the
 > educators, are closer to the sweet spot for LiveCode's wider adoption.
 >
 > I have not been going to many *.edu events. That too seems to be a
 > good place to plant seeds.

I wonder if the Toronto LC Group has had much cross-pollination with EDU 
events.

Martin Koob seems to run a fine group there, with Tom Glod presenting at 
their last meeting and before that they had none other than Fraser Gordon:
https://www.meetup.com/Greater-Toronto-Area-LiveCode-Users-Group/


 > I do attend a couple of our Western PA LUG meetings. But, I'm not a
 > regular. No luck or attempts at me giving a demo. But, I do have
 > conversations often.

Who runs that?  I wonder if we might make a subforum for them in the 
User Groups section of the LC Forums:
http://forums.livecode.com/viewforum.php?f=30


 > In our town, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, we tried to get a LiveCode user
 > group going, but we've got less than five who care enough to make the
 > time. Anyone else in town here?

Sometimes small groups are still quite useful.  With our SoCal group 
we've had smaller meetings in the past, and those who did show up still 
had a good time.

The Raspberry Pi part was so good I made a separate thread from that so 
it doesn't get lost....


Another area ripe for LC may be the many municipal open data initiatives 
spreading across the States and elsewhere.

A growing number of cities are publishing data they collect so app devs 
can turn that into solutions for the local community.

Jason Hibbets has been quite an effective leader in this area through 
his work with the City of Raleigh, NC.  His book is freely downloadable 
as PDF, available here:
http://theopensourcecity.com/

Many local cities here (Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Pasadena) 
have open data portals, and last weekend reps from all four cities 
gathered at the SoCal Linux Expo (SCaLE) for a panel on that:
<https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/15x/presentations/open-data-cities-panel>

Being an education-focused non-profit, everything at SCaLE is recorded 
and made freely available - the video of that session is here:
<https://youtu.be/94FQMWvhq8A?t=12966>

(In fact, the whole open data track is in that video, and the session 
following it on IoT may also be of interest to some here).

One of the outcomes there was identifying the need for a citizen 
committee in Pasadena to help coordinate between local devs and city 
resources. I'll be working with my friend Matti, who organized the 
panel, to help put that together.

Among other goals I'm hoping that we'll find opportunities to deliver 
efficient, cost-effective interfaces to this data with LiveCode.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  LiveCode Community Liaison
  richard at livecode.org