Quick conferences report: Presentations

My lovely Fiancée, Audrey Roy, was invited to be the opening keynote speaker at both PyCon Australia on Diversity in Python (video) and PyCon New Zealand on Python on the Web.

As for me, I managed to get talks into both of those conferences AND DjangoCon US. I co-presented on three of them, and I share all credit for success with my cohorts. The talks I gave at the conferences were (I'll post videos when they get up):

Confessions of Joe Developer (PyCon Australia, DjangoCon US)
The genesis of this talk was as a lightning talk at I gave at the Hollywood Hackathon. It is a talk about admitting that us mere mortals need to ask questions, take notes, and follow good practices in general. I gave it again at LA Django this summer, extending it to a full length talk complete with lots of technical content. At PyCon Australia I toned down the technical content because I was nervous, and while the response was positive, it  could have been much better. So for DjangoCon I ramped up the tech-talk and it worked much better. I've now given the talk 4 times, and I'm leaning towards retiring it.

 

Python Worst Practices (PyCon New Zealand)
This talk grew out of a SoCal Piggies lightning talk which I gave for the purpose of humor. Often we as Python developers are smug in the clarity of the language that we don't realize just how easily we can obfuscate code. In fact, I contend that Python is fully capable of a code obfuscation contest. This talk rejects a lot of crazy practices I've either done myself or had to debug from other people's work. For New Zealand I added a ton of content and tested things pretty diligently. The variable naming pages stumped some people I really respect and I was quite happy with that result.

 

Django Packages Thunderdome (co-presented with Audrey Roy, DjangoCon US)
Audrey did most of the work for this presentation. In this talk I helped review a horde of Django Packages across 7 different categories. It was nerve wracking because every part of our talk would get judged - but Audrey kept things really positive and made it clear we were providing constructive criticism. I think she got her message across to most people, and more importantly, it got a lot of people thinking about what ought to be normal community standards. I'll probably blog on those community thoughts and statements later, but I think Audrey (with help from me) accomplished what she aimed to do.

View more presentations from Audrey Roy

Advanced Django Form Usage (co-presented with Miguel Araujo)
Some time ago Miguel befriended me and helped resurrect the django-uni-form project. He graciously agreed to help me present on Django Forms and we decided to make the talk as sophisticated as possible. Previous Django form talks have been good, but focused on the fundamentals and we wanted to do something really different. This talk was hard because Miguel and I were on opposite sides of the planet, so we did a lot of github pull/pushes. In both doing research and presenting Miguel did an unbelievably good job and I hope he does more of this in the future. The response was extremely positive and I'm certain that our plan of getting our notes/work/transcript into Django core is well on it's way.

 

Ultimate Django Tutorial Workshop (DjangoCon US)
I got about 10 professional Django experts in a room, including Django core developers, and had them help me coach nearly 20 people through a modified version of the Django tutorial. Students seemed to learn tons, lots of socializing happened thanks to some happy accidents, and the experts got a chance to really see where the Django tutorial needs work. PyLadies organizer Esther Nam spent her sprint days working on something that ties the slides into the Django Tutorial - and for now I'm holding off on sharing my work until she says her work is done.

Summary
These were amazing opportunities to speak and will hopefully make a difference. I wouldn't have traded all of this for the world. It was a lot of work, and I doubt I'll ever go quite at this pace again. My plan is to do fewer talks and make them much better.

The Ultimate Django Tutorial Workshop

That is a big statement to make as a title of a class/workshop blog post. However, in this case I believe I'm fully justified because this is going to be awesome. Here's why:

1. The teachers are beyond incredible

In the course description it says I'm the teacher and I have lab assistants. In retrospect, what I should have said is, "Daniel Greenfeld is organizing a workshop taught by the people he respects and admires".

Think I'm kidding? Look at just some of the names of people I've got lined up to participate:

• Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Benevolent Dictator For Life of Django
• Russell Keith-Magee, President of the Django Software Foundation
• Audrey Roy
• Jacob Burch
• Katharine Jarmul
• Corey Bertram
• Sandy Strong
• Jonas Obrist
• Christine Cheung
• Shimon Rura

Follow those links to their bios or talks and you'll see that they are the people speaking at DjangoCon.  The general idea is to get the people already speaking at DjangoCon or those who are extremely experienced in it to teach the class.

2. The teacher to student ratio is going to be really small

This is not going to be a room with a few instructors and umpteen students in it. If the class size gets big, I'm going to bring in more teachers. I'll cajole, plead, and do whatever I must to get them in the room. I don't want anyone left behind!

I want a ratio of 5 students to each teacher.

3. Class implemented with a lot of lessons learned

I've taught a bunch. So have a number of the instructors I've lined up. We know which parts of the tutorial are important to focus on, and which parts should be visited by students later on their own. This means you learn the critically important parts that get you kick-started as a Django developer.

One thing we'll try to squeeze in is deployment to one of the new Django hosts such as Djangozoom.com, Gondor.io, and ep.io. In fact, Shimon Rura, one of the co-founders of Djangozoom, participating as an instructor.

4. We're all volunteers

All the proceeds earned by the instructors for this course will be going to the Pyladies Sponsorship program. That is important for two reasons:

1. Your attendance will help Pyladies sponsor more women to learn Python in the future.
2. The teachers are doing this because they want to do it. They want you to learn Django.

5. It won't end at 12:30 PM

Officially the tutorial ends at 12:30PM and we should be done. Sometimes though we stumble on things  and we don't finish with the rest of the class (like me in my last C programming class). But after a lunch break I'm planning on grabbing some space and working through the rest of the tutorial with anyone who didn't complete the class.

6. The tutorial opens DjangoCon

The tutorial starts on Monday, September 5, 2011 at 9:30 AM at the Hilton Portland and Executive Tower at 921 SW Sixth Avenue in Portland, Oregon, USA. If you do plan on attending DjangoCon and are new to the framework, what a great way to get started!

7. You don't have to attend DjangoCon itself to take the tutorial

Tickets for the event are being sold separately from the conference. So if you can't take off more than one day of school or work, this is a great way to capitalize on DjangoCon.

Convinced? Here is what you need to know and do to get signed up:

• Get a laptop running Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.5 or higher, or Ubuntu.
• If there is no Python installed, install Python 2.7.1. DO NOT INSTALL PYTHON 3!!!
• Make sure you have a grounding in Python. If you are new to Python you need to have finished at least half the chapters in learnpythonthehardway.org before you attend. If you come to this event with no prior Python experience you will be left behind.
• Buy a ticket!

Python and Django class/hackathon!

The Los Angeles Python community (LA Django and LA PyLadies) is meeting in Santa Monica on July 23rd to teach Django and hack on all things Python on Saturday, July 23rd. The day will start with a Django class based on the official Django tutorial, then turn into a general hackathon, and finish up with lighting talks.

Leading the event is noted Pythonista Katharine Jarmul. As Katharine is giving the talk on web scraping at DjangoCon US, I'm hoping we can get her to give a lightning talk on the subject.

Learning Django

Sandy Strong will lead the effort to  teach people the fundamentals of Django. Besides all things Django and devops, Sandy is presenting the testing talk at DjangoCon US. And if that isn't good enough for you, she won't be alone teaching - there will be a bunch of us developers experienced with Django there to to provide her with support.

Even if you already know Django, please come and hang out for the first half! You can either help out others or work on your own project.

Hacking Python and Django

The second half of the day will be about working on whatever you want. If you are new to Django and want to finish the tutorial, go right ahead. Or you can work on your own pet Django or Python project. In fact, I know that there will be work on the nascent Pyramid project intended to represent the entire Los Angeles Python community.

Lightning Talks

We'll finish with lightning talks. Several people who attended the day will get the chance to talk for 5 minutes or so about a project, tool, or cause they wanted to share. If they go too long we start applauding until they step down.

Social Hour

After another awesome day of Python in LA, everyone will cool down by hanging and chatting over drinks. If you're lucky, maybe you'll get to see me do a drunken one-handed cartwheel where I don't spill a drop of what I'm holding.

My role

I'll be there in my normal role of setting up tables and chairs, helping during the class portion, and hacking on some Packaginator stuff in preparation for the forthcoming August/September Packaginator sprints at PyCon AU, Kiwi Pycon, and DjangoCon US.

Sponsors

This is all possible thanks to the sponsorship of Mahalo, Cars.com, and the Python Software Foundation

Sign up!

Tickets are selling out really fast! Sign up now!

Hollywood Hackathon Report

A few weeks ago, specifically June 18, 2011, two Python groups, Pyladies LA (since they are now global) and the local Southern California Python Interest Group joined forces with Border Stylo to put on hopefully the first of what I have styled the 'Hollywood Hackathon'.

Anyway, let's get down to some serious business. The event was exciting, eye opening, and I hope it happens again.

So why was this event special?

• Out of the 55 local attendees, about 60% were female. Both genders had a wide range of skill levels and interests. 
• 30 more people participated from around the world.
• Numerous attendees, male and female, contributed to open source for the first time.
• The waiting list for tickets was long.
• The PSF and Python Sprints jumped at the chance to help out.
• Code got submitted to various open source projects built using stuff like Python, Django, Pyramid, Bottle, Learn Python the Hard Way, and more.
• The turnout was awesome. Imagine if there had been months of lead time and a dedicated conference site? Pyladies Con anyone?

What I did at the event

I did what I could to help set things up, presented at the end, and gave Python advice to those who needed it. Most of my Python advice was helping those stuck on setting up their system or trying to find a particular module to do a task.

The best thing about helping out people at an event like this is that people start figuring out things themselves. Yeah, you help them, but they do the thinking and they do the coding. All you do is provide that initial little bit of help and then they go off and make their world better. How cool is that?

Raise your hand! 

I'm guilty of this too, that I don't want to feel stupid by asking questions.

This is crazy!

If you ever come to an event like this, where a dozen people are giving their free time to walk around to mentor, then raise your hand. Otherwise it is by luck that someone will help you. Maybe we'll see you stuck on the same few lines of code or maybe we'll hear you curse exclaim in frustration. Or maybe mentors won't see you in trouble and you'll never get help.

So please, if you have any questions or problems, don't hesitate to raise your hand!

Closing bits

I have some advanced notice that the Pyladies organizers (regardless of opinion I am not a Pyladies organizer) is putting together a kit so you can open up a Pyladies club in your city. Yup, they are going global and I'll be helping spread that message in a future blog post.

If you wan to know more about what happened, Pyladies has an excellent writeup.

The Future of Python is women making up 50% or more of the community