French Processing community day and how to get started

Community
#1

Hi Processing fellows!

I was searching something on the Processing website and came across the Processing community day 2020 and I think I missed the community Hangout, my bad ! :slight_smile:

I am living in France and currently studying in the VFX/3d animation field and I didn’t see any french PCD events, this is too bad!

Is there any french people on the forum that ever participated to french events?
I saw this thread but it seems that it’s not up to date : Processing Community Day in French
@phoebus @mowh @jb4x @kfrajer

Processing and the community contributed so much to my learning path that I want to give back to the community and teach others and potentially help for events.

I think that I’m not that experienced yet but how difficult is it to organize a Processing event?

If anyone have ideas, stories of thoughts let me know!

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Virtual CC Fest - Jan 2021 - Want to help organize it? Offer a session?
#2

As far as I know the oldest event in France was Processing Paris, organised once a year by Julien Gachadoat (alias v3ga) from 2010 to 2015.

With the creation of the “Processing Community Days” in 2017, (alongside a slight decline in interest for the software) the event moved to Nantes where it used to be held by Stereolux together with Mr. Gachadoat until 2019.

It is also worth mentioning that recent years (2018-2019) have seen the emergence of a new festival dedicated to creative coding as a whole (Javascript, OpenFrameworks, Processing, VVVV, …) called Grow Paris under the impulsion of Nicolas Barradeau (alias nicoptere).

These 2 people (Messrs. Gachadoat and Barradeau) are probably the best persons to contact regarding the organization of such event in your country.

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#3

HI,
I participate to the 2019 edition PCD in Nantes as speaker at Stereolux. It was managed mainly by BĂ©renger Recoules, and we did workshops for beginners for Processing & p5.js and on a other side workshops for ML with RunwayML & ml5js.

We could organised the event thanks to the Stereolux (great place for digital art), where some creative coding take place every wednesday evening. So we used the rooms which were already allowed to those sessions. So we had the chance to have a place where the event happened, and without asking to pay for partipating to our attendes.

I didn’t heard about anything else in France at this time, the thread about the organisation of the event in France for 2019 was quite dead when we took a look at it.
But some people do on their side some events, as v3ga (in Bordeaux mainly) & nicoptere (Paris) mentionned by @solub, but also (Lionel Radisson in Lyon.

So if you plan to organise something, please let me know !

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#4

Nice, nice!

Thank you for your answers :slight_smile:

@solub
I think I already saw Grow Paris, this year edition was probably cancelled with the pandemic…
Thank you for mentioning all the previous initiatives and events, I was just ignoring it :wink:

@Pr0tonX
I saw that you are a student like me, the thing is I don’t have any experience in creating an event that’s why I would like to join an existing project. What was your presentation about? Were you also teaching coding?

With the pandemic looks like events shifted online, this is maybe easier to organize because we don’t need to find a place.

#5

Yes, we firstly showed off the Processing project, open-source values and then we offer them to learn basics (you can check out the course we prepared for it). I wasn’t in charge of the ML workshops, which were managed by Bérenger Recoules, who is actually the digital workshop manager of my school.

So for the beginners workshop, our attendees were mostly enrolled in the both workshops (p5js & processing) so in the morning we spent more time on explaining how programming works, the logic of functions, variables, iterations and conditions.
Then we shift to program an interactive sketch to show them possibilities of generative drawing and interactions.

In the afternoon, we focused more on generative design with p5js and worked on creating some animals from basic shapes. We showed the main geometrical functions and let them do their own beast (it was actually more beast than real animals :)) and just help them by showing on the board how to do a specific request, or one by one.

You’re right, you looked on the bright side of things ! No place anymore, and I discovered recently a tool which is really amazing for meetings where you need to make sub groups, and then avoid issues you can meet in a big zoom meeting because of the shiness of participants, or the lack of flexibility when you need to subgroup. It’s called https://www.wonder.me/.

I think it could be a great tool for this kind of events.

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#6

Hi again,

Thanks for the explanation, it’s exactly the kind of event that I want to part of :wink:

Also wonder.me looks nice, didn’t know it. I wonder what the experience looks like because it’s not standard social interactions, feels more like a game in a digital space :star_struck:

#7

So, your idea was to try to organize an event in the coming months, or more to ask if there is currently something on rails, to be part of ?

Currently, there isn’t nothing scheduled, but I can talk with interested people from Nantes, and keep you in touch if something happens

#8

Yeah, I think I can’t handle organizing an event like this myself (for now :wink: ) that’s why I also wanted to know if there was french Processing events coming or planned in the future.

Nice idea! Let me know if you have contacts.

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#9

If you ever decide to take the plunge here is a short list of places (from smallest to largest // Paris only) that usually host similar events:

Now because of Covid19 and fluctuating regulations these might be closed to the public by the time of the next PCD. Considering the situation, an online event, in addition to be easier to set up (no complex logistics or cost management), might be the only option.

Either way please make sure to update this thread (or open a new one) with any information related to such event so that future / potentially interested readers can follow up.

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#10

Hi @solub,

Thanks for the links and I love the joke :grin: (one day I am going to post a thread called : “PCD 2024 in Petit Palais, Paris”, you’ll see…)

All those places can quickly be expansive to rent + the organization + food + logistic… Is it common to have sponsors for PCD or it’s sponsored by the city or some kind of organization?

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#11

I honestly don’t know. My understanding is that it’s up to the organizers to decide if they charge the participants an admission fee or look for sponsors. In either case, I have seen suggested that the money raised should primarily be allocated to the stipends fund (paying the guest speakers). But I think that is only in the case when money is involved i.e the event is not entirely based on volunteer work.
Again, this is all speculation and it would be best to ask qualified persons.

Especially in Paris, where renting prices are steep. Unless you find the equivalent of a place like Yahoo Lodge where PCD Tokyo was held last year (free co-working place with affordable meeting rooms I guess).

Maybe @micuat can provide us with his feedback and advises regarding this matter ?

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#12

thanks, for us we were lucky that yahoo lodge was open for free and they gave us access to extra rooms because PCD was interest for them too. Unfortunately yahoo lodge is closed for public due to covid, and for 2021 we are planning to go fully online. We did not have sponsors except yahoo lodge for providing the space in the past years, but currently we are contacting some people/companies if they can sponsor us so that we can pay artist fees to emerging artists / students while we keep the ticket price low or pay-what-you-can.

And there is not such a thing that PCD “should be” - for example if 3 people meet and share ideas, that can already “qualify” as PCD. More importantly you have code of conduct so that participants feel comfortable.

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#13

Thank you for the clarification and the quick reply !

#14

also I know that Montreal folks did PCD in 2019 and that was in both languages if I remember correctly. Maybe you can collaborate for the virtual PCD :slight_smile: https://pcd-montreal.github.io/

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#15

Hi @micuat,

Thanks for the experience feedback! And the people from the PCD in Montreal are nice contacts, I’ll try to send them an email :wink: