We are looking to set up a space at the university in which we can bring together researchers from across different disciplines to discuss the Python programming language and surrounding ecosystem. We are aware from current training sessions that there are many colleagues across the University interested in and working with Python in their day-to-day work; this space will be a place for us all to collaborate and create a community of best practise across all these people.

In the first instance, we have set up a Python User Group channel within the Computation and Data in Research (CaDiR) channel on Microsoft Teams, where conversations around Python can be aggregated. We would very much like this to be a peer-led group where we can ask and answer questions, share best practices, and generally improve the use of Python and its ecosystem across the university.

So we would love to hear from you if you use Python in any way – small or big – in any of your university work; what projects have you found it useful in? Are you using it in an unusual way that you haven’t seen done elsewhere? Do you just have something cool that you want to share with fellow pythonistas? We want to hear about it!

Other questions you might want to consider, and which may form part of the group discussions initially:

• What kind of content would you like to see promoted by a group like this?
• Do you have any resources that you think would be usefully shared across a wider audience?
• What training needs are needed but currently unmet within the university?

Over time we’d like the group to grow like the current R User Group or the Manchester Research Software Community, to include:

• organising presentations on interesting uses of Python within the university, and inviting external speakers to cover topics we find interesting
• Running ‘brown bag’ sessions for people to demo new work or showcase new libraries and approaches
• Your suggestion here!

Group Leads

Andrew Gait has worked on various Python-based code bases within the university, mainly relating to interfacing between users and underlying code often in a different language such as C++; in the past on the SpiNNaker project; and currently on an AI image acquisition application using PyQt and Pytorch, amongst other libraries, and an application attempting to use the rendering capabilities of Mitsuba3 as a plugin for CERN’s Geant4 codebase.

Nigel Green is a web developer with experience in multiple languages and technologies, currently working with websites in Django, APIs in FastAPI and reactive web apps using vue.js. He also uses python for system admin tasks and writing handy scripts to help with tasks like de-duping entries in our various CRM systems or fuzzy-searching databases. He dreams of a day when full-stack python can save him from having to write javascript on a regular basis...