PCD @ Washington, DC 2026

Community
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Hi! I’m organizing a Processing Community Day 2026 event in Washington, DC or somewhere in the DC metropolitan area.

I’ll update this thread with more details as planning progresses.

I’ve given talks/demos of creative coding at workshops before, but never organized one myself, so collaborators and advice would be greatly appreciated!

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Thanks @apbryant for submitting your event!

Please add a Washington, DC pin to the PCD map. It will help people find this thread and make it easier to get people excited about PCD @ Washington, DC :smiley:

If you need any help, don’t hesitate to ask in the main thread.

Best,
Raphaël

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Hello @apbryant,

I’ve merged PR #100, and PCD @ Washington, DC is now live on the PCD map.

You are welcome to share this link with people in your community to invite co-organizers:

https://day.processing.org/event/pcd-washington-dc-2026-5910fa8/

Feel free to post on the main thread if you have any questions or feedback. I will be checking regularly. I’m here to help :smiling_face:

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Best,
Raphaël

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I live near Lancaster, PA. The proposed event in the D.C. area is the closest so far. I may not even be able to attend, but I’m curious.

My use of Processing is to create art. My wife is the real artist, but I created a program to produce images compositionally similar to one of her particularly dramatic paintings. Text files control the color palette and many other parameters in the image, but a lot remains random. In February and March we had a joint show with about four dozen of her paintings and three dozen of my Processing-generated prints. I sold two; she sold four or five..

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hey hi! excited someone is organizing PCD for the washington dc area! I have organized some creative coding workshops with my friend in the past and have helped throw an algorave. If I have the capacity might try to get html day going for DC this year (unless someone else takes that on like last year). please let me know if I can be of any help with organizing!

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Hello Chuck! Congratulations on your show and I’m glad to hear some of your prints sold. I also make prints. I use Processing or Quil, a library similar to Processing written for Clojure, to create them. Additionally, I use vsketch in Python, which has an API very similar to Processing’s, to make pen plots.

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Thanks for reaching out! I’m always excited to connect with creative coders who live in the DMV. I’d love to learn more about your past workshops and algorave, too.

Yes, I’m happy to have your help. I can also add you as a co-organizer if you’re interested. My main tasks now are to find a place to host the event and to finalize a date and time. Do you know of any locations that would be suitable for this event? I’ve reached out to Rhizome, an artist space in Takoma, but I’ve not yet received a response. As a fallback option I can reserve a meeting room in one of the Arlington County libraries (I’m an Arlington, VA resident).

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I’ve programmed in at least a dozen different languages, but had not even heard of Clojure. While looking that up I saw a reference to the modern “Big Three”: Python, JavaScript, and Java. I haven’t used any of those, either. As you might infer, I’m older than transistors. When I was in college, the EE Department bragged that its computer could multiply two ten-digit numbers in less than a second!

Has anyone else responded to your proposed forum?

Chuck

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Hi! I’d love to stay updated and possibly collaborate. I helped @swan1 with the algorave (which we also hosted at Rhizome!) and have made prints and zines with Processing and p5 in the past. DC’s MLK library could be a good downtown location with a makerspace. I just heard about this space https://patchworkdc.com/ that is opening soon, it looks like there are fees to reserve the space though.

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@swecaroline Thanks for the recommendations! I reached out to both the makerspace in the DC library and Patchwork (as well as followed up with Rhizome). As long as it isn’t very expensive, I’m happy to spend some money to reserve a space.

@Chuck It must have been incredible to see computers shrink in size and grow in power so much over the course of your life. Even when I think back to how computers were when I was a child (bulky desktops, dial-up internet, no smartphones) I’m astonished by the changes I’ve seen. And yes, some folks local to the DC area have also responded to me. I’m very much looking forward to meeting more creative coders in the area thanks to this event!

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We have a date and venue: Sunday, October 11 (the day before Indigenous Peoples’ Day) from 1-5 PM at Patchwork DC. I’m excited to have those details finalized, and move to the next stages of planning this.

Below are some things I’m looking for help with. Reach out if you’d like to lend a hand!

  1. Programming: I’m looking for activities to fill the time. If you or anyone in your networks have an activity they’d like to organize during the event, can you let me know? There are a couple of activities we can use if necessary. I have a p5js tutorial that transitions into a coding/show-and-tell session, and one of the leaders of Patchwork offered to do a workshop that involves using a loom to write messages in binary code, a technique which inspired the origins of programming way back when. So, there are some activities we can use to fill the time if we need to use them, but I’d love to first have other people in the creative coding community share their knowledge.
  2. Promotion: Is someone able to help get the word out about this event? I’m no graphic designer, so if someone could make a flyer for printing and sharing on the web and social media, this would be a huge help! Feel free to reply or send me a direct message with local groups that have people who would be interested in participating and we can share the event with them once the promotional materials are made. I’m aiming for 25 people to attend, and Patchwork has a maximum capacity of 45, so just keep those numbers in mind.

@here

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awesome!! sorry i havent been responsive my email did not alert me about any responses on the thread :sleepy_face:

rhizome is hard to get these days since they are so booked but patchwork dc seems super cool! I can put out a call in some online communities and

For promotion there are a ton of local communities sites (730dc, dmvdiy, 51stnews,etc) we can submit to in order to spread the word and I can have done some flyer creation in the past. I am not a graphic designer either but can navigate my way around design tools.

from my experience spread of word has been the best result because everyone is kind of scattered across the area.

as far as creative coding there are some people I can reach out to and I think @swecaroline may be interested as well in doing a little demo or workshop (don’t take me on that 100% tho)

I wouldn’t also mind doing a little workshop maybe focused on a p5 library like p5brush or p5strands! I can also look around and see what other people did for PCD in their respective cities for inspo.

p.s. am also hosting HTML day in DC on Aug 8th so I may also be able to attract some people that way since a wide range of people show up

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I have a couple of workshop ideas that I’d be interested in running:

  1. Processing/creative code print experiments - I have a p5 zine that I’ve used in tutorials, and have been experimenting with printing Processing sketches on tissue paper with a regular inkjet/laser printer. Looks like Patchwork has a printer so I won’t need to lug one around!
  2. “Painting” with Processing - translating my physical painting process into code - I don’t have any materials created for this one other than some of my own Processing sketches so it’s very much in the idea phase.

I’m leaning towards 1 so that participants can have something in print to take home with them, but what do you think? And about how long do you think each activity should last?

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@swecaroline Yeah 1 sounds like a great activity! It would fit well with the event. I think it should last 60-90 minutes, that way we can fit two activities in and still have time for breaks/intros/etc. Would you be able to do that?

@swan1 Thanks for sharing those community sites! I’ll also create an event on Eventbrite to track RSVPs. Do you want to create the flyer that we can share on those sites? Also, A p5.brush workshop sounds like fun! Is that something you’d want to do? Side note: I hadn’t heard of that library until now and my mind is blown about what it can do :exploding_head:. If you’d prefer to focus more on the workshop I can take on making the flyer so you wouldn’t need to work on both at once. Lastly, I should be able to make it to at least part of the HTML Day. I’ll stop by and say hello.

Finally @sableraph is there any way the Processing Foundation could send us some swag (stickers, pens, etc.) that we can give to participants during the event?

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I think I can do both! If you are able to stop by HTML day I can have a draft ready by then but if not I can send it here.

Also did ask around in some local communities if anyone had an activity ideas and someone mentioned wanting to show some of their work…what if we also had some time for an openHDMI?

There are some cool people in the area who do creative coding stuff that isnt necessarily with processing/p5js but that I am hoping will attend. I think it might be cool for them to talk about their work so that everyone can see what are other things possible in the realm of creative coding. Just a suggestion!

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I merged PR #160 and your changes are live at https://day.processing.org/event/pcd-washington-dc-2026-5910fa8/. Note: I edited the plus.code so the pin would match the new address more closely (I assumed you won’t be meeting in the middle of that roundabout :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:). Please double check that the new location of the pin is correct.

I don’t know whether we have some we can send, but at the very least we could share the files to produce your own locally. Let us get back to you on that. cc @camillewong

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@sableraph Thanks! Good call. I wouldn’t want anyone to be waiting for us in the roundabout :sweat_smile:.

@swan1 Yeah we should have time for an openHDMI! I’d love to have people come and show their work. Here’s an idea of how it could all fit:

  • 1:00 - 1:15 PM Introduction
  • 1:15 - 2:20 PM Activity 1
  • 2:20 - 2:30 PM Break
  • 2:30 - 3:35 PM Activity 2
  • 3:35 - 3:45 PM Break
  • 3:45 - 4:50 PM OpenHDMI
  • 4:50 - 5:00 PM Conclusion

And yeah I can come to HTML day. I look forward to meeting in person! Also, do you want to be listed as a co-organizer? I just want to make sure your efforts are duly recognized :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: .

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honestly, not super pressed about being listed as a co-organizer…you dealt with the hardest part truly (venue stuff)

ok I also have some other workshop ideas that I might share if you stop by HTML day. I will have the outline of the workshops ready to go and shareable so that you can let me know what you think!!