• Community Conference Reports

Community Conference Reports

Part of the effort to have better community relations, the Python Software Foundation attempts to have a present in international conferences. Our goal is to have the Director of Operations or a Board Director attend four international Python conferences throughout the year.

Below are reports from the PSF representatives that attended a Python Conference.

2016

PyCon Jamaica

Location: Kingston, Jamaica

Dates: November 17 - 18, 2016

PSF Representative present: Lorena Mesa

Report from Lorena Mesa

Attendance was 60+. Attendees were blend of professionals from the community and students. While the number of women at the conference wasn't too sizable, of the 7 speakers 2 were women (I being one of the speakers).

November 17th were tutorials, including a an Introduction to Python 3 which I taught that had 15 attendees many of whom were undergraduates at the University of the West Indies where the tutorials were held. From what I was told, the UWI computer science program doesn't teach Python but Pascal however there is a growing interest to teach Python at the university. Conference chair David Bain runs a Python web consultancy in Jamaica and has commented on the growing interest in Python amongst undergraduates at both technical programs in Kingston. Other topics include Intro to Plone and Intro to Big Data Analytics with Python and Apache.

At the closing of tutorials were lightning talks wherein I did an introduction to the PSF for tutorial attendees.

November 18th was the main conference day. There wasn't a designated job hall as the conference was a single track event in one room at the Hope Zoo in Kingston. I represented the PSF in the conference venue, setting up right by registration to answer questions about PSF. Many were curious about how they could reach out to leverage the PSF's resources to help build a broader community in Kingston. Not many knew of the PSF.

While I didn't hold a formal PSF meeting for the conference, as the schedule didn't permit time for it, several attendees were interested in learning more about the PSF after the fact. I've already been in email communication with a few.

As a first year conference I think the turnout, while somewhat modest, included some of the most passionate organizers I've met. The attendees include an interesting swath of professionals using Python in the public sector (e.g. web consultancies, mechanical engineers), students, and those in government advocating for Python's use. I think next year it could be worthwhile to try to promote a Python & education track at the conference as there appeared to be a strong interest in teaching Python at the local universities.

Python Brasil[12]

Location: Florianopolis, S.C. Brazil

Dates: October 13-18, 2016

PSF Representative present: Naomi Ceder

PSF Members: Luciano Ramalho, Bruno Rocha, Fernando Masanori

Report from Naomi Ceder

Attendance was just a touch over 500 for the main conference. Somewhere around 30-40% of the presenters were women, which seemed to get great support. I'd guess that the percentage of female attendees was about half that.

October 13-14 were tutorials, including a PyLadies tutorial for some 30 women of whom only 2 had ever done any coding, and Django Girls with 50 women. I arrived late in the afternoon of Oct 13, and attended the social events that evening and the DjangoGirls and social events the next day.

October 15-17 were the main conference days. We didn't set up booth space, but instead we planned a PSF introductory meeting. What I learned in talking to people is that very few had any idea of how membership in the PSF worked.

The morning of October 16 I gave a keynote on diversity. The talk went well and sparked a lot of discussion at the conference and a lot of interaction with me. I also gave a morning lightning talk very briefly outlining the PSF and advertising a special PSF introductory meeting later that afternoon.

The afternoon PSF meeting was attended by 50-70 people. I outlined the main functions of the PSF very briefly and explained the membership model and the grants process. One of the attendees set up his laptop as a sign-up station and I think we had 30 (or possibly more) people sign up as basic PSF members, and I encouraged at least 15 to self-certify as voting members. At this meeting I distributed the bulk of stickers I had, both the Python3 and PSF stickers as well as the little PSF Member stickers I got from MAL at EuroPython. Stickers were definitely an effective incentive.

Oct 18 was the sprint day - I had to leave the evening of the 17th, but from social media shares it looked like they had a good turn out, sprinting on the PyLadies web site, BeeWare, and other projects.

It was a well run conference, and one of the most pleasant and fun conferences I've been to.

Notes:

• Again it was stunning how few people knew about the PSF membership model, even people who were doing tons of community related work. On the other hand there was some real excitement at the prospect of becoming a member of the PSF, so I'd say that is definitely an underserved market.
• There is a staggering amount of Python community stuff going on in Brazil and I think we would do well to recognize it.
• The explanation and sign-up for PSF membership still needs quite a bit of work. It might also help to print business cards with the correct links, etc. I'll make some suggestions to the board.
• The conference hired a translator and wireless headsets so that everyone could understand the English keynotes. This was good idea, and the fact that I did my slides in Portuguese was also greatly appreciated. This makes me realize that we aren't very foreign language friendly. I'm not sure how much we can do, but it may make sense to review the wording of key parts of the to make sure they are as clear and simple as possible.
• One interesting trick was that for lunch they had 4 food trucks. There were some longish lines at the most popular one, but not worse than lunch queues at other conferences, so I think this was a cool idea for small to midsized conferences.
• The tiny PSF member stickers that MAL had done are very popular. We need to get those or something like those done again.

PyBay 2016

Location: Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA

Dates: August 19-21, 2016

PSF Representatives present: Betsy Waliszewski, Carol Willing

Report from Betsy Waliszewski

• There were just under 400 attendees and it looked like nearly everyone had checked in by the mid-day on Saturday.

• Friday, there were 2 pre-conference offsite tutorials (Wesley Chun and Raymond Hettinger) that were sold out. After that, everyone came back to the conference venue at the Mission Bay Conference Center for a reception, keynote by Jessica McKellar, lightening talks, and networking.

• Saturday and Sunday there were 4 tracks, a job fair & tools expo, reception & cash bar. The gold and platinum sponsors set up on Saturday morning, while the remaining exhibitors set up at 4:00 that afternoon. Hacker and open spaces were set up. I spent the day on Saturday helping out in the sponsor area and swag table. I brought stickers and the last of the Python desktop toys (400). Both were very popular. It was very busy all day and the sponsors got very good traffic.

• I was very impressed with the conference. The organizers are to be commended for creating a welcoming and professional atmosphere. The sponsors and attendees were well-taken care of, the food was good, and the talks well-received. For a first time event, it went off with very few issues. A couple of negative things I heard was that the women’s t-shirts were child-sized , and there were a few AV glitches. There were also some issues with the mobile app. Other than that, everything went very well. They had a nice printed program guide too.

• I understand from Grace that they were able to break even, which is a great. I’m sure if they do this again, they’ll start planning earlier than they did this year. It’s really amazing what they were able to accomplish in such a short time.

Report from Carol Willing

• I believe that they had 398 attendees. They mentioned at closing talks that 25% were women. I did meet a couple of folks that were there on a scholarship and they found the conference really worthwhile and the community very welcoming. They mentioned that next year that they would work on additional efforts on diversity. I think (and I may be off on the number) they were able to offer 10 scholarships and a number of volunteer-attend scholarships which one of my Cal Poly students did.
• Grace, Simeon, and all the volunteers were incredibly helpful. It was wonderful to have Betsy there to talk about the PSF and hand out the highly coveted PSF stickers. The venue was lovely and worked well for the size of the conference.

• I had a fabulous weekend. I attended Raymond’s workshop on Friday and Jessica’s keynote and the lightning talks. I liked the way they set up the schedule with breaks between the talks which people enjoyed since it gave folks a chance to meet each other and less pressure to rush from one room to the next. The hacker space was conveniently located between the sponsor/job fair and the outside patio where lunch was served. It was great to have the hacking so close to the sponsors since people would introduce folks to the sponsors and vice versa. Something to perhaps consider fostering more of at PyCon.

• Along those lines, a little thing that was very effective and entertaining was the little table signs in the hacker lounge. Just scratch paper and a little wire memory holder yet people enjoyed sharing topics and conversation.
• One surprise was how down to earth, helpful, and encouraging the conference felt. I didn’t expect that from the Bay Area based on other events that I have attended in the Bay Area. Grace and Simeon as well as the volunteers really worked hard to make everyone feel welcome and part of the community.

PyCon APAC 2016

Location: Seoul, South Korea

Dates: August 13-15, 2016

PSF Representatives present: Ewa Jodlowska, Younggun Kim, lvh, Don Sheu

Top tweets from the event: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kyol5e4xv8xqygr/%23PyConAPAC%20-%20Twitter%20Search.pdf?dl=0

Ewa's slides shown at the PSF booth: http://prezi.com/8kgq9e9o_1fk/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Report from Ewa Jodlowska

August 13, 2016

• Attended Wes’s talk (opening Keynote). During his talk, he mentioned how Scientific Python gets supported by NumFocus and the Apache Foundation but did not mention the PSF. Why is that? Perhaps we need to better publicize our working groups.

• Lvh worked at the booth
• Don Sheu arrived and staffed the booth
• Younggun staffed the booth when available, but since he was organizing, he did not have much spare time so in the end, I am very happy that we were there to staff the booth.
• Met with Django Girls Seoul organizers and passed on information for future grant requests. The original organizer of the group, Rachell, no longer lives in Korea so new organizers have been trained to take over. They are very excited and have lots of ideas on how to get more Koreans involved and engaged.

• Met with Dmitri from JetBrains. JetBrains is very interested in partnering with the PSF similar to how they have with the DSF. Discussed fundraiser (https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2016/jun/30/pycharm-and-django-fundraiser/), discussed http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/python-developers-survey-2016/. Discussed getting corporate stats to help drive better sponsorship. Discussed how companies and the PSF are interested in a common thread of sustainability. We discussed how Data Analysis/Scientific in Python is on the rise.

• Spoke to Maciej about moving PyPy over to the PSF from the FSC. I think once we figure this out for BeeWare, we can offer this the same model to PyPy. I think that kind of support is huge for the community and I would like to see the PSF assist with it. I would like to help with the accounting if needed in order to make it happen for our community projects.

August 14, 2016

• DG organizers returned and discussed other workshops they are interested in putting on. They are interested in putting on workshops with raspberry pis

• Armin’s talk Python having stageful modules & how Flask helps with state management. Flask is commonly used by developers in Korea so Armin's talk and presence at the conference was very well received. He was asked for pictures and autographs several times during his time at the PSF booth

• Maciej’s talk was great - funding open source. Open Source is saving companies billions. We need to make corps see this so we can use some of those saved funds to help support and maintain OS. His talk would be great for our Sponsorship WG to see unfortunately it was not recorded

• It would be better interaction onsite to have access to @thepsf twitter account.

• Met PyLadies local organizers

• Attending PyCon APAC organizers meeting. During this meetings, they discussed creating a guideline document that can help other countries put on an APAC. They discussed how to increase national diversity so all APAC countries are represented in the audience. They also discussed financial aid. Off line, they will discuss how to deal with APAC accounting. Since the conference moves to different countries, money tends to get moved around when possible, but they would like to better the organization. They are considering an approach similar to how EuroPython is done or to become a PSF working group and have the money be managed by us.

• Attended PyCon APAC dinner that the conference put on for volunteers, speakers, and sponsors. Met with two students who were conference volunteers. They have recently learned about Python and developing in general but are very driven and energetic about the prospects. I spoke to them about attending PyCon US when they have a chance and also informed them of our financial aid program. I also met with another PyCon US sponsor, Roy from CrossCompute. We discussed international PyCons and his experiences attending them.

August 15, 2016

• Sprints and tutorials happening at a local company.

• The conference had more attendees show up for this day than they had expected. Organizations had to book additional space last minute. Good problem to have in my opinion. After lunch I chatted with Manabu Terada, the PyCon JP organizer. We talked about doing a similar setup of the PSF booth in PyCon JP 2017 as we did in PyCon APAC 2016.

Europython 2016

Location: Bilbao, Spain

Dates: July 16-24, 2016

PSF Representatives present: Naomi Ceder, Lorena Mesa, Ruben Orduz

Report from Naomi Ceder

• gave keynote on Python Community and PSF (video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCCiA-IlVco).

• ran PSF member meeting (with Lorena's help) (video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuMf6lnEumo).

• handed out PSF member stickers to new PSF basic members (Thanks to Marc-Andre Lemburg for the stickers)
• met with new organizer of London Python Meetup, Tariq Rashid, and discussed how PSF works with local orgs.
• discussed how to start a Python community with someone from Bosnia.
• referred someone from Colombia to Facundo B. to discuss forming community in Colombia.
• Ruben manned a PSF table in the main area during the main conference, handing out stickers, brochures, and talking to people.