pythonuser.group DECOMMISSIONED
A lightweight way to organize local Python user groups without depending on Meetup or social media.
What it is
A site for organizing local Python user groups without having to lean on Meetup or social media platforms.
Why I built it
The idea came up during the COVID pandemic. I organized 2 Python events in Katowice and noticed there was no easy way to set things up unless you went through social media or paid Meetup. Meetup is effectively gated for larger communities that already make money, which I covered in more detail here: I have analyzed Python user groups.
I wanted something simple that smaller, local communities could actually use without friction.
What it looked like
A group page (here, the Katowice PUG) with past and upcoming events, organizers, and contact links.
Each event got its own page with schedule, attendance, and discussion links.
Under the hood
- Meetup sync I was hoping I will find someone using Meetup Pro account and just sync here all the PUGs using Celery. Everything should be working, I believe, but I never tested it, because I never found someone with Meetup Pro…
- A real backoffice, not just
/admin. The Django admin is heavily customized: computed fields (groups joined, events attended, talks given), color-coded role badges, and one-click links between related objects viaformat_html. Most of the day-to-day moderation work happened there rather than in shell scripts or JS frontend - Locale-aware dates per group’s country. Event datetimes were rendered through Babel using each group’s country code, so a Berlin group saw “Montag, 15. Januar 2024, 19:30” while a Katowice group saw the Polish equivalent. Not just a string swap, the actual format pattern follows the locale.
Traction and performance
Despite being aimed at a niche, it picked up some traffic. I assume it’s not real. 30-day Cloudflare overview:
Lighthouse scores were solid (88 / 94 / 96 / 100):
