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PyCon US 2024 Recap
- cr125rider 2y agoThese seem like great posts to reflect on a conference experience. It has me thinking I should do something like this… Also incredible how many people you know in the Python (and larger!) community. Thanks for posting.
- KatiMichel 2y agoThank you. I try to write these for major conferences that I attend. It is a good way to absorb what I learned and remember what I did. I see myself building on these experiences over time.
- coachEnvy 2y agoAwesome recap! Thank you
- KatiMichel 2y agoThank you for reading and commenting!
- emddudley 2y agoI'm amazed at how many people she met. It was my first PyCon and I was happy with trying to chat with like 5 people. The conference was huge and very physically and socially exhausting.
- smitty1e 2y agoMy first, too. I went ahead and joined the PSF on the strength of the experience.
- KatiMichel 2y agoIt was a huge number of people, but I already know a lot of people from being a conference regular for quite a few years.
- scubbo 2y agoSame. I love the idea of being involved in the software community, but find it intimidatingly difficult to know how to "break in". Plenty of the names dropped here are people I admire and follow on social media, but I would think myself terribly rude to introduce myself to them as I'm just an irrelevant developer.
- KatiMichel 2y agoYou shouldn't feel that way at all. I don't think I've ever had a bad experience meeting people at a conference. It has actually been the opposite. Many people are there to make connections (and have their own doubts as well). You might be surprised at how receptive they will be. Also, many conferences actively promote inclusion. See the "Pac Man Rule" attributed to Eric Holscher which was referenced at PyCon US. https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2017/aug/2/pacman-rule-conferences/ https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2017/aug/2/pacman-rule-con...
- scubbo 2y agoThat's a lovely idea - thank you for sharing!
- reuven 2y agoI have something of a following (newsletters, social media), gave two talks at PyCon, and even had a booth advertising my training services. So at the risk of sounding like a total egomaniac just for responding, let me say a few things: 1. I absolutely, positively love meeting new people at PyCon, regardless of their background, level, etc. I learn new things from just about everyone I meet, and that's a huge part of the fun for me. I'm frustrated that I don't get a chance to just meet and chat with more people during the conference, and actively try to eat meals with people I don't yet know so that I can get to know them. 2. Part of the greatness of the Python community is that we realize other people, regardless of their fame, are just that -- people. They were unknown at some point, and people were nice to them. So they'll probably be nice to you, too. 3. Every community has jerks, Python included. If someone famous isn't nice to you, then just ignore them from that point on, and concentrate on the numerous nice people. It's not worth getting riled up or upset about it.
- lopuhin 2y agoReally nice to see no-GIL Python become closer and closer to reality.
- viega 2y agoThere's been a no-GIL Python for about a decade, and it's still OSS on BitBucket somewhere with a PSF license (I used it for quite a while), but at the time, the community didn't want to wrestle with some of the issues, like, do you want to forego atomicity for list appends, or do you want to slow them down (Skython took the former route)? https://lwn.net/Articles/640177/ https://lwn.net/Articles/640177/
- d0mine 2y agoJython, IronPython are no-GIL Python. Their fate shows that GIL is not as important as it might appear at the first glance. Python is becoming more complicated everyday e.g., with things like PEP-695 Python is starting to resemble C++ (not a good thing). https://discuss.python.org/t/please-consider-delaying-or-even-rejecting-pep-695/26408 https://discuss.python.org/t/please-consider-delaying-or-eve...
- _ugfj 2y agoThis does not mention PyCon US 2024 was one of the extremely, extremely few conferences which did the right thing and had a mask mandate. > We are nice people and many of us and our fellow community members can’t attend without health and safety guidelines in place. We want PyCon US to be an event that everyone feels safe attending. PyCon US is exceptional in that we have people attending from all over the world—last year we had people attending from 75 different countries! We love that people bring their unique perspectives… but they also bring their local germs and Covid strains. We’re masking to keep our immuno-compromised friends safe at PyCon US and to ensure that those of us who share their homes with immuno-compromised people can also consider joining us without quarantining when they return home. I salute you. I wish more conferences did this. I am quite bitter about how after all the inclusion and diversity talk over the years most open source conferences do not do this. Even Fosdem didn't have one despite 1. volunteer driven so free from financial pressure from anti vaxxer owned companies (not all communities were so lucky) 2. famous for being crowded 3. is not in the US -- where this is most politicized Edit: please read https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/unmitigated-covid-is-overwhelming https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/unmitigated-covid-is-overwhel... if you think we are past the pandemic.
- twixfel 2y agoTo each their own but I'm pretty glad masks are on their way out. I wore one when I had to during the pandemic and I'm quite happy that I didn't have to wear one to any of the conferences I've been to since the pandemic ended.
- chx 2y agoThanks for excluding me from the conferences you attend. I am astounded that four years in we still need to explain that a) masks are effective in stopping community transmission b) masks worn by the source are more effective or, in other words, your mask protects me while my mask protects you. How is this new? No, your stance is absolutely selfish -- not uncommon of course, but it is selfish.
- elteto 2y ago
- wodenokoto 2y agoAnyone know when videos are released? Right now their YouTube channel has a playlist named pycon2024 with over 100 videos hidden
- nmstoker 2y agoI'm guessing sometime between now and next few weeks. With things like this there's usually a few last recordings with some audio to clean up etc etc. A substantial number from PyCon US 2023 went out on 02-Jun-2023 (ie exactly a year ago today).
- graton 2y agoI was wondering the same thing. In fact when I saw this post (the top-level) about PyCon 2024 I went and re-checked to see if they had published any videos. Like you I see "144 unavailable videos are hidden" and only 9 videos available to watch. I'm looking forward to watching some of the content when they do publish :)
- whinvik 2y agoWould love to see some of the talks. What is Pycon's policy on releasing talks to Youtube?
- reuven 2y agoAll talks are put on YouTube (unless the speaker specifically opted out of recording), but it usually takes 2-3 months for them to be put up.
- kennethreitz 2y agoI didn’t get to attend, but I enjoyed living vicariously through this post :-)
- KatiMichel 2y agoAwesome! I met you at my first conference (DjangoCon US 2017). Can't wait to see you again sometime. :)
- kennethreitz 2y agoI remember vividly!
- gbnvc 2y ago[flagged]
- japhyr 2y agoWhy are you posting the same thing twice from two different accounts?
- LVB 2y agoBizarre, eh? Same thing above, too. Maybe some glitchy app. idk
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- gbnvc 2y ago[flagged]
- Chris2048 2y ago> Most of my comments are removed for being left wing Just to clarify, do you mean downvoted, or removed (by mods) b/c the latter implies SV tech-forum mods are not left wing?
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- yyggvbb 2y agoI felt pretty disappointed going to the conference. Though it’s a pivotal and awesome time to be a Python dev and historic to remove the GIL. I found the talks to be very low information and sometimes not really relevant to the title and description of the talk. For example the “Blender integration” talk was 40 minutes with 8 minutes of blender discussion. The talk on Mocking was extremely basic and spent most of the time describing the concept of unit testing. Talks during the end of the day tended to be better than the morning ones. They need more web development experts of this committee, most of the web dev talks were rehashing online tutorials or felt that way.
- gg1993 2y agoWhat did you get out of it, if anything?
- gbnvc 2y agoThe two talks about the Gil removal were great. Also pyscript is great though they had 3 talks for some reason and only one really explained it. I did not watch the keynotes, but I heard they were bad and not technical. The general friendliness was good, masks didn’t feel annoying to me as it was okay outside and when eating and it was easy to just go outside.
- yyggvbb 2y agoThe two talks about the Gil removal were great. Also pyscript is great though they had 3 talks for some reason and only one really explained it. I did not watch the keynotes, but I heard they were bad and not technical. The general friendliness was good, masks didn’t feel annoying to me as it was okay outside and when eating and it was easy to just go outside.
- leetrout 2y agoWe might just be at peak webdev. Everything will seem new to someone and old to someone else. There were so many bad talks at All Things Open in 2022 I didnt go last year. I will try it again this year, though. The worst offenders are always 25 min talks with 10-15 min "why I am great" self-intros. I am in the minority, perhaps, but I dont really care what you have done / where you work if you have something interesting to say. But we all default to appeals to authority.
- reuven 2y agoKit! Your post is great! And I enjoyed getting to know you at the PyLadies auction, too. PyCon is overwhelming and delightful in every way -- and it just gets more so every time I attend. That said, you managed to see a ton of amazing stuff and people, which is quite impressive. I hope to see you back in Pittsburgh next year!
- KatiMichel 2y agoI am so excited that I had the chance to meet you! I am planning to be at Pittsburgh next year as well. Looking forward to it!
- SethMLarson 2y agoWas great getting to meet you in person Kati! :) This is an awesome recap of PyCon US, so much happened!!
- KatiMichel 2y agoIt was great to meet you too! Thank you for the kind words. :)
- pythonbase 2y agoGreat Recap. Hopefully, I will attend the next US PyCon in person.
- KatiMichel 2y agoThank you. I hope so too!
- rishab_kokate 2y agoHi, this was such a delightful post to read. Im currently a comp sci college student and I had no clue there was even an event called pycon lol. But reading your blog makes me think it was so much fun. Quick question, is there a criteria to attend the event such as part of a specific company or organization? Or is it for anyone who uses python?
- mattip 2y agoAnyone can attend.
- nomdep 2y agoAnyone can attend, but not everyone can afford to (is not free, you have to buy a ticket plus all the travel expenses). That’s why many who attend do it by convincing their company to pay for the the trip and the ticket
- simonw 2y agoThere's a generous travel grant program to help people attend who might not be able to afford to otherwise. https://pycon.blogspot.com/2024/03/TravelGrantsReport2024.html?m=1 https://pycon.blogspot.com/2024/03/TravelGrantsReport2024.ht...
- KatiMichel 2y agoGlad you enjoyed it! Anyone can attend PyCon US. There are people from all walks of life and skill levels. If cost is an issue, PyCon US has a generous financial aid program. A caveat: some prospective attendees in other countries have difficulty getting visas.
- nickhalfasleep 2y agoPython really sets the bar high for excellent conventions.
- KatiMichel 2y agoI think so too!
- coldtea 2y ago>The Faster CPython Team has made Python 3.11 20-60% faster depending on what you are doing Remember how this was kickstarted after a plan and a promise by a core dev for a 5x speedup in a few years if he was sponsored to work on that?
- Twirrim 2y agoWhen have you ever known a developer to ever accurately estimate how long something will take?
- letmeinhere 2y agoObviously wildly optimistic, but 20% improvement in this annual release alone is plenty to celebrate.
- zitterbewegung 2y agoSo some actually did a talk about knitting and obviously knitting has looping (repetition) and possibly conditional evaluation. They have a way to make an "open space" or use some meeting rooms for whatever you want. I made one for "advanced knitting theory" and I was having trouble understanding if you could do conditional branching that would break a loop because the stopping of knitting is used to end the knitting. More about knitting notation can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting_abbreviations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting_abbreviations
- th 2y agoThis is such a thorough post. Thanks Kati! I think this post will be great for PyCon newcomers. Getting the chance to experience a play-by-play of a past PyCon before attending your first PyCon might be even more useful than reading the various "how to have a great first PyCon" posts that many of us have written. It was great seeing you at PyCon! :)
- KatiMichel 2y agoThank you and always a pleasure to see you! :)
- imacrayon 2y agoI’m impressed with how thorough this is! It’s cool insight into the dev conference experience.
- KatiMichel 2y agoThank you! Don't know if you remember me, but I remember you from the Wichita DevICT! I still pop in from time to time. Hope you are well. :)
- imacrayon 2y agoOh, absolutely :) I try to keep up on Slack, but I need to get back to going to the in-person events again. It’d be cool to reconnect there sometime!
- osdotsystem 2y agoReally wanted to see the incline, but, did not get around to do it!
- KatiMichel 2y agoI definitely recommend it. It was a short journey, but a very unique experience.