In Dayton, we don't have a dedicated Python user group; instead, we have the Dynamic Languages User Group. I always struggle to explain why I enjoy this group so much, because a quick description doesn't sound that impressive. Each meeting is 5-10 people scattered across the entire dynamic language landscape: Python, Ruby, Perl, JavaScript, PHP... now and then somebody will throw in some LISP or whatnot. There's only occasionally a formal presentation.
Instead, there are people who are very open about sharing both what they know (which is impressive) and what they don't know (which is more important). I've never been in a group where people are more uninhibited about saying, "Wait -- I don't get it." As a result, everything we do gets enriched by some extremely good discussion.
When we don't have a formal presentation, we sometimes walk through a code project somebody's working on, or research a programming topic together (like dependency injection). Recently we've started publishing a simple programming problem and asking the members to bring a solution in their favorite language - reviewing the various solutions is a nice exercise in both language details and programming approaches.
Come see us sometime. We meet the second Wednesday of the month at 7:00 PM at the Dayton Chess Club.
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