Pyladies Pune is 8 meetups old now, (after the rebooting). I missed last month's meetup, as Py was unwell. This month's meet up was special. It was the first time the PyLadies meetup took place in reserved-bit, the coolest place in Pune. Thank you reserved-bit for hosting us. The next thing was the fact that it was a session about microbit. A super huge thanks to ntoll for sending us the hardwares.
Microbits are one of our dearest possessions (me and Kushal. I am learning coding in this and I really wanted to share the experience, the fun with my fellow PyLadies.
I left home early leaving the instructor for the session alone with his daughter (and I was so happy about it). We are just two weeks away from PyCon Pune, and hence, decided our first agenda for the meetup would be to discuss our plan for PyCon. The girls came up with really nice ideas about the booth. We have also decided about what us PyLadeis wish to do during the devsprint.
Mummy v/s Daddy
The daddy-daughter duo arrived. Both of them were looking like they had just returned from the war front. Mommy to the rescue! Py was really excited to see her “bestest friend” Ira over there. With each passing meetup, our Pybabies are becoming increasingly comfortable about their mummies working. Barring a few exceptions, Py was at her best behaviour this time.
The Fun begins
Kushal started the session after his quick coffee break. He introduced the group to microbit, the tiny computer (a wave of "wow" blew over the room :). He asked us to download Mu editor from his local cache. We had decided each participant would get a chance to work with a microbit. And then came the twist in the tale. Kushal forgot to bring the microbits. (This happens when wife leaves home early.) After throwing him an angry glance, we requested Sayan to get it. Sayan readily agreed. Peace prevailed! Meanwhile, Kushal gave us a problem - to find out the groups of the current user in the Linux systems. Windows users were to share a group file.
The arrival of microbits
photo courtesy: Sayan Chowdhury
Finally the microbits arrived. Each participant got a microbit. We opened up the documentation for microbit. We got started with scrolling images with the typical "hello PyLadies" on the display board. Post lunch, we tried playing music, speech and other features. We plugged our earphones to the microbits with the alligator-chip cables. The last and the best part of the workshop was working with the radio module. We were sending various messages. It was such fun to see those on each other's device. Nisha and Siddhesh went out to actually check the range. It covers a large area.
photo courtesy: Kushal Das
Well after the session was formally over, people actually stayed back and continued working, trying things on their own (may be the little magic of being inside a hackerspace). We have decided to work on it during PyCon Pune devsprints. As Nisha said "It is the best PyLadies meetup we have ever had".