PyCon

PyCon is one of my favorite events - the only big conference I’ve been to that feels like a small one.  This year it was in Cleveland, Ohio, not too far from where I live, so three other pythonistas and I piled into a car together and turned it into a road trip.  We had a blast and it made PyCon seem even more like a summer vacation.

I taught an advanced beginner Django tutorial before the regular conference started.  I also gave a lightning talk about the influence of science and technology on politics and led an open space on the same topic.  The open space in turn led to a mailing list/discussion&action group - hit me up if you want to join.

Favorite talks:

• Erin Braswell, Python Data Sonification for Science and Discovery

• Lilly Ryan, Don’t Look Back in Anger: Wildman Whitehouse and the Great Failure of 1858

• Hillel Wayne, Beyond Unit Tests: Taking Your Testing to the Next Level

• Qumisha Goss’s keynote on her work at the Detroit Public Library

• Catherine Devlin’s keynote on the changing meaning of open data

I did a lot of hallway tracking this year, so I’m sure I missed out on a bunch of great talks.  Thankfully, PyCon is legendary for their high quality video services and all of the talks have been online since before the conference even ended.  Can’t wait to make my way through the rest of them.