PyCon 2019

My strategy for PyCon this year was to focus first on getting Tee Shirts from the vendors of the Expo hall, then to visit as many Open Spaces as I could. I was focusing on in-person meetings and conversations to try and meet and converse with as many folks as I could. To summarize my time: It was a whirlwind of talking and learning; I had an awesome time!

Here are some quick notes I took on several of the more interesting open spaces I attended:

Alaska and Python - Super fun talk with 3 people that live in and around Alaska. It was interesting to talk about how people (humans) can get used to certain temperature ranges. There was a story of an EMT needing to rescue an individual suffering from heat stroke in 75 degree weather during the Alaskan summer. There was another story of trying to incorporate Python into an oil company’s administrative work flow to increase company effectiveness.
VS Code - Microsoft released a Github repo of a number of examples to run a docker container of some target environment, and using a local instance of VS Code to run the docker instance and have step debugger running on the docker container.
Improv - Someone hosted an Improve Open Space. I played several Improv games: Zip, Zag, Zog; greeting each other with a custom gesture; and passing around imaginary colored balls to see if we counted the same number of balls at the end that we did at the beginning. The goal of all of the Improve was to understand whether improv comedy can help improve our communication skills among our team.
Python in Finance, many useful tools discussed and techniques for identifying properties to invest. Several people there use python to drive their purchasing habits. I consider the below list on my “TODO” for the coming months to perhaps drive more of my own investing decisions:
Wagtail - A CMS built on top of Django. Interesting idea, could be a useful alternative for quick projects besides Anvil.
Network Automation: Review: Netmiko and Paramiko - This open space was largely over my head with discussions of many specific networking technologies unfamiliar to me. One guy seemed to be from AT&T and asked about two different open source networking initiatives that no one else in the room had heard of.
Thinking like a hacker open space - Lots of good discussion here about writing secure code, and maintaining good practices when developing software. A few tools that were mentioned for testing software for security breaches were: OWASP Zap; Burp Suite; and Kali Linux. Some security podcasts mentioned were:
- Hacking humans
- Risky business
- Cyber wire
- Smashing security
- Cyber security brief
Pyweek - a longer version of a Game Jam, using Python.