Though I have been using Python for a few years, I had never managed to get to a PyGTA PyGTA (Greater Toronto Area Python User Group) meeting until last Tuesday night. Brian Sullivan of Courses by Wire was the featured speaker. He presented his company's Zope based e-learning application and talked about not just the technical details of the application but also about the business aspects of the e-learning vertical market. The user interface of his product seemed to be well designed and he told us that the application uses ZODB for the persistence layer. I asked a few questions about the stability of ZODB as I have been considering using it. Brian said that for his purposes, storing data about tens of thousands of users, it worked fine and that the only time he ever had a problem was when he exceeded the maximum file size allowed by an earlier version of Python.

I also solicited help in compiling psycopg. The fellow sitting next to me noticed I had missed one of the --include-with parameters so we managed to get it to compile. I will write that up separately.

The meeting was in the board room of Givex Corporation, which has a nice loft style office in the Theatre District. I would love to work in such an office but the commute would be a pain, not to mention that Toronto's stupid tax structure pushes small companies like mine into the suburbs where my office rent is about what I would pay for just the taxes alone in Toronto.

The board room was overflowing with 22 people. The regulars could not recall a recent meeting that was so well attended. After the meeting, some of the group went out to a nearby restaurant, Charlotte's Room, and by the time I got there, I noticed three of the fellows from the meeting standing outside. I guess it was quite smoky in there so they were discussing where to go next. I tagged along and had a pleasant evening chatting with three nice fellows, Peter, Dan, and John (I know, the first thing I thought of was that I was having a beer with the Apostles).

It seems like the Python community in Toronto is vibrant and enthusiastic. I only wish I could attend PyCon this year but unfortunately, it conflicts with a AmerOmis conference targeting Omnis developers that I am helping to organize. Oh well, perhaps next year.