PyLadies

Celebrating 15 Years

2026-05-12T18:50:00Z

Celebrating 15 years of PyLadies: Building for the next Chapter

This year, PyLadies turns 15.

For 15 years, PyLadies has been a place for people to learn Python, find community, build confidence, organize locally, speak publicly, mentor others, and become leaders in the Python ecosystem. That legacy exists because of tireless volunteer work from chapter organizers, event organizers, speakers, mentors, sponsors, and community members around the world.

A 15-year milestone is a reason to celebrate. It is also a good time to ensure that PyLadies has stable footing to continue for the next 15 years.

The organization we are stewarding today is larger and more complex than the one that began in 2011. PyLadies now spans many countries, chapters, events, funding needs, infrastructure needs, and relationships, including our fiscal sponsorship relationship with the Python Software Foundation. With that growth comes a responsibility to be clear about how decisions are made, how funds are handled, how community input is gathered, and how we protect the long-term sustainability of PyLadies.

Over the past several months, the PyLadies Global Council has been working on a governance charter as part of that effort. This post shares an update on the charter, our financial position, and the work ahead.

The charter work is one part of that larger stewardship effort. As PyLadies enters its next chapter, we want our governance to be clear enough to support trust, and flexible enough to support growth.

Charter update

In last year’s transparency post, we shared that one of the Global Council’s major priorities was developing a governance charter for PyLadies. Since then, we have prepared a draft charter and shared it with the PSF Board and a small group of PyLadies advisors for early review before opening it to broader community feedback.

Our original goal was for the charter to serve as a high-level governance framework: a document that defines the Global Council’s role, the basic structure of PyLadies governance, and the relationship between PyLadies and the PSF. We expected some operational details, such as election procedures, workgroup processes, and financial workflows, to live in separate policies that could be updated more easily over time.

The PSF’s feedback helped clarify that some topics need more detail in the charter itself, especially where there are financial, legal, or community trust implications. In particular, the PSF recommended adding more specificity around:

The practical boundaries of the fiscal sponsorship relationship;
membership eligibility and voting rights;
election mechanics;
Code of Conduct responsibilities and escalation paths;
the relationship between PyLadies, the PSF, chapters, and events such as PyLadiesCon;
contingency plans for situations where governance or financial responsibilities need to be clearly defined.

We agree with this feedback. Our next step is to make targeted revisions to the charter that provide stronger guarantees and clearer accountability, without turning the charter into a full operations manual.

Because of this additional review and revision cycle, our original election timeline may shift. We believe that is the right tradeoff. It is more important to get the governance foundation right than to rush into elections under a framework that still has unresolved questions.

What happens next

The Global Council is working with the PSF to align on what belongs in the charter itself versus what can live in separate policies. Once we have incorporated that feedback, we plan to publish the revised draft for broader community review.

Alongside the charter, we expect to develop or update policies covering areas such as:

elections and eligibility;
transparency and communications;
financial approvals and event budgets;
workgroups and committees;
chapter good standing;
infrastructure management;
Code of Conduct escalation;
conflicts of interest.

Our goal is for the charter to provide a stable foundation, while policies give us enough flexibility to adapt as PyLadies grows.

Financial overview

PyLadies operates as a fiscally sponsored project of the Python Software Foundation. This means PyLadies does not have its own separate legal entity or bank account. PyLadies funds are held by the PSF, and the PSF provides accounting, tax, legal, invoicing, and compliance infrastructure.

A note on accuracy: These numbers reflect our best accounting as of publication. Some invoices may still be outstanding, and figures have been rounded for readability.

In 2025, PyLadies had a strong financial year overall:

2025 financial summary	Amount
Total revenue	~$136,600
Total expenses	~$97,900
Net gain	~$38,700
Opening balance for 2026	~$132,700

Where the Money Comes From

PyLadies is funded through three main channels: corporate sponsorships secured for our events, proceeds from the annual PyLadies Auction at PyCon US, and direct donations from the community. In 2025, sponsorships were the single largest source of income, driven by strong support for PyLadiesCon.

Revenue Source	Amount	Share
PyLadiesCon sponsorships	~$55,600	41%
Auction proceeds	~$47,600	35%
Auction & Luncheon sponsorships	~$16,100	12%
Community donations	~$9,800	7%
In-kind auction items*	~$7,500	5%
Total	~$136,600	100%

*In-kind auction items represent donated goods recorded at fair market value. This is offset by an equal expense entry and has no net effect on the balance.

Where the Money Goes

The majority of PyLadies spending directly serves our community: funding event programming, financial aid for attendees who could not otherwise participate, and physical swag and materials.

Our two largest expenses in 2025 were travel grants and financial aid ($35,000) and catering for the PyLadies Auction dinner ($30,744). The PyLadies Luncheon catering ($8,555) was also a significant event cost.

Expense Category	Amount	Share
Travel grants & financial aid (PyCon US)	~$35,000	36%
Catering: PyLadies Auction	~$30,700	31%
Catering: PyLadies Luncheon	~$8,600	9%
In-kind auction items*	~$7,500	8%
PSF administrative fee	~$7,000	7%
Swag & merchandise	~$3,200	3%
Community grants & awards	~$4,000	4%
Legal fees	~$1,900	2%
Total	~$97,900	100%

Travel grants & financial aid. In 2025, $35,000 was released to PyCon US 2025 to fund travel grants and financial aid. In previous years we have been able to give even more, $50,000 in 2023, and $73,000 in 2024. We would love to grow this number again, both for PyCon US and for regional PyCons around the world.

PyLadiesCon. PyLadiesCon is our own community-run virtual conference. In 2025 it raised ~$53,000 in sponsorships and donations, and incurred ~$3,900 in direct operating costs (design services, speaker equipment grants, conference software, stickers, and fees).

Swag & merchandise. The ~$3,200 in swag costs covered t-shirts, stickers, and other PyCon-related items distributed and available for suggested donation to attendees and community members at PyLadies events.

Community grants & awards. Beyond PyCon US travel grants, PyLadies directly funded community initiatives in 2024 and 2025. We would love to fund more requests like these, and at higher amounts, in future years. Here is a summary:

2025: PyCon Namibia grant for Global Council member to attend ($1,400); PythonHo Regional Conference in Ghana ($500); PyLadies BR Conference in Brazil ($500); Nairobi PyLadies community event ($250); speaker equipment grants to four PyLadiesCon speakers ($200 each); award plaques for Outstanding PyLady Award 2025 ($282).

2024: PyCon US 2024 travel grants ($71,800) which includes two 2024 Outstanding PyLady Award recipients; speaker equipment grants to four PyLadiesCon speakers; 2024 Outstanding PyLady Award financial grant ($1,000); PyLadies contribution to a pre-PyCon Chile PyLadies event hosted by Asociacion Python Software Chile ($100).

Many of our PyLadiesCon sponsors are also PyCon US sponsors who generously extended their support for PyLadies programming and activities. Without them and our strong base of community donations, we would be unable to do this work.

We are grateful to everyone who sponsored, donated, organized, volunteered, and participated. These funds directly support PyLadies programming, access to events, community building, and the operational infrastructure that keeps the organization running.

At the same time, the program-by-program view shows that not all funds are interchangeable. Some funds are raised for specific purposes or events. Others are unrestricted. Some programs may show a surplus while others show a deficit. In 2025 alone, over $46,000 in grants and operational expenses were charged to the General fund against over $8,000 in incoming donations. The surpluses from the Auction and other programs currently offset this, keeping the overall balance healthy at ~$130,000, but it is something we are actively working to bring back into balance.

This is one reason financial oversight matters: having money “somewhere in PyLadies” does not mean every request, event, chapter, or initiative can spend freely from the same pool.

Why approvals and financial process matter

We want PyLadies to support chapters, events, volunteers, and community initiatives. We also have a responsibility to protect PyLadies and the PSF.

Because PyLadies is fiscally sponsored by the PSF, financial decisions are not just internal community decisions. They can involve nonprofit compliance, donor restrictions, contracts, tax rules, trademark policies, international sanctions requirements, and the PSF’s legal and fiduciary responsibilities.

That means some activities need review or approval before they happen, including things like:

raising funds under the PyLadies name;
selling merchandise using the PyLadies logo;
signing contracts or committing to vendors;
spending funds for PyLadiesCon or other events;
accepting sponsorships or donations;
starting new chapters in jurisdictions that may raise compliance questions;
using PyLadies or PSF infrastructure for chapter-level fundraising.

These processes are not meant to block community work. They exist so that PyLadies can continue operating responsibly, legally, and sustainably.

For example, when an event plans expenses before sponsorship funds are fully secured and received, PyLadies and the PSF may still be responsible for those costs. When a chapter raises money using the PyLadies name, those funds may have implications for the PSF’s 501©(3) status and accounting obligations. When PyLadies logos are used on merchandise, trademark policy compliance may apply.

These details can feel bureaucratic, but they are part of what allows PyLadies to exist as a global organization with fiscal sponsorship, tax-exempt donation pathways, and community trust.

Transparency and capacity

We also want to acknowledge where we can do better.

The Global Council has published monthly meeting notes on GitHub since its inception, and we have shared updates through the website and other official channels. Still, we know that meeting notes are not the same as proactive communication. Not everyone knows where to look, and not every decision is easy to understand without context.

We want to improve this by publishing clearer updates, making policies easier to find, and giving the community more visibility into governance and financial decisions.

At the same time, it is important to be honest about capacity. The Global Council is volunteer-run. Council members are not paid, and much of the ongoing work is carried by a small number of people. Governance work, financial review, chapter support, event coordination, policy writing, and PSF coordination all take time.

Part of the purpose of the charter is to make this work more sustainable: to clarify responsibilities, create better processes, and make it easier for more people to contribute without relying on informal knowledge or individual burnout.

How the community can engage

As we continue this work, we ask the community to engage with care and good faith.

Questions are welcome. Feedback is welcome. Accountability matters. At the same time, PyLadies governance has to balance many responsibilities that may not be visible from the outside, including legal compliance, fiscal sponsorship requirements, donor intent, financial risk, chapter needs, event needs, and long-term sustainability.

We are committed to building a structure that supports PyLadies not just for the next event or budget cycle, but for the next decade and beyond.

In the coming months, we plan to:

revise the charter based on PSF and advisor feedback;
publish the updated draft for community review;
share clearer information about financial processes and approvals;
continue publishing Council meeting notes;
develop supporting policies for elections, transparency, finances, and workgroups;
grow the travel grant program and expand support to regional PyCons worldwide;
develop a chapter starter support program - including an annual allocation for supplies like stickers and banners - and create a path for chapters to fundraise and manage their own funds;
invite community participation in ways that are structured, sustainable, and accountable.

Thank you to everyone who has helped PyLadies grow, organize, fundraise, mentor, teach, sponsor, and build community around the world. This work exists because of you, and our goal is to make sure PyLadies has the governance, transparency, and financial stewardship it needs to keep going.

Fifteen years of PyLadies is an extraordinary community achievement. The best way we can honor that history is by making sure PyLadies has the structure, transparency, and financial stewardship it needs to thrive for the next 15 years.

Celebrating the Recipients of the Outstanding PyLady Awards 2025!

2025-11-26T18:50:00Z

We are proud to announce the recipients of the Outstanding PyLady Awards 2025 !!

As I’m sure many of us know and have experienced ourselves - the PyLadies community is made up of many remarkable members and volunteers that make significant contributions to bettering the Python community. The Outstanding PyLady award is meant to elevate diverse Pythonistas doing amazing things, to highlight their achievements, and to thank them for all the work they’ve contributed.

Each year, the PyLadies Global Council selects a handful of folks from nominations from the Python community at large. Award winners are recognized at PyCon US and receive their choice of either free registration & travel assistance to PyCon, or a similarly sized cash award. They also get a cute little pin to wear on their lanyards for all PyCons to come, if they wish.

This is the second year of the Outstanding PyLady awards, and we received over 50 nominations.

Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to award all the nominees - although all of them are very clearly deserving. This year, the PyLadies Global Council selected 4 members to receive this award, and we are so very excited to celebrate them:

Anwesha Das

Anwesha Das (X, LinkedIn, Mastodon) is influential across multiple countries - first with PyLadies Pune in India 🇮🇳 and with inspiring 8 other chapters across the country. She brought PyLadies to PyCon India by organizing many of the activities we have at PyCon US, including a PyLadies booth and the PyLadies lunch. Her nominators label her as a strong role model of resilience and persistence paired with empathy and grit. Anwesha’s transformative leadership, cross-cultural impact, and commitment to empowering underrepresented groups make her a very deserving candidate for this award.

Katie McLaughlin

Katie McLaughlin (Mastodon , LinkedIn) from Australia 🇦🇺 has been a vital part of the Python and Django communities for many years. They have served both on the Django Software Foundation and the Python Software Foundation boards. They were our keynote speaker for the second iteration of PyLadiesCon. Katie has drawn attention to the importance of recognizing all forms of open source contributions, not just code, and is themselves a regular contributor to sprints, with code, with documentation, and with helping onboard new contributors.

Karolina Surma

Karolina Surma (Mastodon, LinkedIn) is one of two people in Brno, Czech Republic 🇨🇿 who has kept the local PyLadies chapter alive and thriving for years. She organises chapter events like programming courses and workshops, creating new and fresh teaching materials, and even leading the lectures herself. Her nominators say that the local community would not be where it is now without her continual, long-term contributions. And that she is one of the most inspiring, positive, “walking-the-talk” persons they know.

Cecília Tivir

While from Mozambique 🇲🇿 and living in Senegal 🇸🇳, Cecília Tivir (LinkedIn) “basically created the Python Community in Mozambique 🇲🇿 ”, first bringing DjangoGirls to her area, then the Python community itself, and of course she couldn’t stop there - she started PyLadies Maputo in 2023. From afar, Cecília keeps actively involved in the Mozambique Python and PyLadies community to help it grow and thrive.

Nominate Someone! or Yourself!

To read more information about the award, have a look over at our award docs. If you would like to nominate someone or yourself for an Outstanding PyLady Award, head over to the nomination form. Nominations are accepted year-round, and award winners will be recognised at the nearest upcoming PyCon US.

A New Era of Transparency

2025-08-17T18:50:00Z

The PyLadies Global Council was formed in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to serve as a global voice for PyLadies chapters and members around the world. Over the past few years, we’ve worked hard to support our community through funding, programming, and representation within the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and the Python community.

Along the way, we’ve also learned a lot about what it takes to govern a growing, global volunteer organization. This post is about being transparent with our community: sharing both the progress we’ve made and the challenges we’ve faced, as well as how we’re moving forward.

What We’ve Accomplished

Even with a small and busy council, we’ve been able to:

Chapter Support: We’ve established clear requirements for PyLadies chapters to maintain active status and continue receiving PSF support for meetup fees (requiring two events per year)
Administrative Infrastructure: We’ve organized shared resources including password management, hosting services, social media accounts, and GitHub access
Community Funding: We’ve allocated budgets for PyCon travel grants, reviewed applications, and supported PyLadies attendance at major conferences
Event Planning: We’ve coordinated PyCon-related activities including auctions, lunches, merchandise, and sticker distribution
Process Development: We’ve drafted frameworks for microfunding proposals and conference funding requests
Recognition Programs: We’ve continued the annual Outstanding PyLady award selection process
Technical Improvements: We’ve begun planning website refreshes and reviewing proposals for better chapter membership management tools
Financial Oversight: We work closely with the PSF on budget planning, cash flow management, and trademark questions

We’re proud of this progress, and equally aware that governance processes and community input have not always been clear or consistent.

Listening to the Community

As part of our commitment to transparency, the Council has been publishing monthly meeting notes on GitHub since our formation with over 50 meetings, which is now being cross-posted to the PyLadies Slack.

But we hear the concern that increased transparency would be better for the community, about how PyLadies Global Council operates, communicates, and makes decisions. We want to acknowledge this feedback openly: it is clear we need stronger structures, clearer processes, and more opportunities for community participation.

Building a Governance Model

To address these concerns, we’ve started outlining a governance model back in July 2025 that will guide how the PyLadies Global Council - and PyLadies more broadly - works.

Our governance planning covers several key areas:

Foundational Elements

Mission and purpose definition
Council structure and relationship to local chapters
Term limits and rotation policies
Communication protocols and meeting requirements

Decision-Making Framework

Clear voting procedures and consensus-building processes
Defined responsibilities for different roles and groups
Guidelines for Global Council, local chapters, PSF liaisons, and working groups

Community Engagement

Election processes and community participation
Feedback mechanisms and conflict resolution procedures
Financial decision-making transparency
Amendment processes for future governance changes

We’ve divided up this work among council members and are currently drafting comprehensive documentation. Once it’s in place we’ll:

Review internally as a Council;
Invite a small group of community members to comment;
Open a “Request for Comments” to the wider PyLadies community;
Ratify the model based on this feedback.

This process is underway now, and we commit to sharing updates along the way. We don’t need a particularly thorough model right now; we need something to jump start us for our next elections.

Upcoming Elections

Elections are a top priority following the establishment of our governance framework. We’re targeting Q1 for our next election cycle and are working through several important considerations:

Community Awareness: Ensuring all PyLadies members know about upcoming elections and how to participate
Nomination Process: Providing adequate time for self-nominations and candidate visibility
Voter Verification: Developing fair and accessible methods to verify PyLadies community membership

The technical challenge of membership verification is significant, and we’re exploring practical solutions that balance security with accessibility. For our upcoming elections, we may implement a trust-based, self-verification system while working on longer-term technical solutions.

Community Collaboration

We recognize that effective governance requires active community participation. We set up a GitHub Discussion board as a space for community-wide conversations. While the board hasn’t been used as much as we’d hoped, we would like to encourage chapters and individual members to begin using it as a way to ask questions, share ideas, and connect with the Council.

We also want to acknowledge that community members have brought forward proposals for technical solutions to our chapter and membership management challenges. While not all proposals align with our current technical requirements or budget constraints, we appreciate the community’s initiative in identifying problems and suggesting solutions. We’re committed to working collaboratively on these challenges while maintaining responsible stewardship of PyLadies resources. We will ensure that the next Global Council will make this need a top priority.

Challenges and Reality

Leading a volunteer organization comes with inherent challenges. Council members balance PyLadies responsibilities with full-time work, family commitments, and personal circumstances including health challenges and major life events. This reality affects our capacity and timeline for governance improvements.

We’re working to distribute responsibilities more evenly among council members and explore ways to sustainably manage the organization’s growing needs. This includes potentially expanding working groups and committees to involve more community members in PyLadies leadership.

Looking Ahead

We are committed to:

Transparency: sharing Council decisions and processes openly.
Accountability: ensuring responsibilities are clear, and decisions represent the community.
Sustainability: creating processes that do not rely on a single individual’s time or energy.
Community Voice: making sure PyLadies members around the world are represented in how our organization grows.

This is ongoing work, and we know it will take time, feedback, and patience. We ask for your continued engagement, questions, and ideas as we move forward together.

How You Can Help

Share your thoughts when the governance draft is opened for comments.
Encourage your local chapter to stay engaged with the Council.
Consider running for Council in the upcoming elections.
Volunteer for working groups as they are formed.

Nominate a PyLady for the Outstanding PyLadies Award!

2024-11-21T18:50:00Z

Reminder: nominate a PyLady by the end of the year for the Oustanding PyLady Award!

Attention all PyLadies and PyLadies Supporters!

The December 31st, 2024 (AOE) deadline is fast approaching for Outstanding PyLady Award nominations!

Outstanding PyLady Award recipient lanyard pin. Photo taken by @psobot.

The PyLadies community is made up of many remarkable members and volunteers that make significant contributions to bettering the Python community. The Outstanding PyLady award is meant to elevate diverse Pythonistas doing amazing things, highlighting their achievements, and thanking them for all the work they’ve contributed.

Nominations are accepted year-round, but December 31st is the cut-off date for recognition at PyCon US 2025. Recognition will take the form of an award certificate, plus one of the following:

Free registration and travel assistance (if needed) to PyCon US 2025 ¹, or
A cash award of $1000 USD ².

Self nominations and multiple nominations are accepted (and encouraged!), as are nominations from outside the PyLadies community; just fill out this form per nominee. Winners will be notified by the Global Council.

Let us know about all the wonderful work that’s been done this year and get those nominations in!

To learn more about the process or see who’s previously received the award, checkout the PyLadies kit.

¹ An award winner may choose a future PyCon US if they can not attend the next upcoming conference.
² Non-US based recipients will be subject to the Federal US tax withholding of 30% unless all requirements are met, according to the Python Software Foundation’s Vendor Policies. Contact accounting(at)python.org with any questions.

Inaugural Winners of the Outstanding PyLady Award

2024-05-28T18:50:00Z

Announcing the first recipients of the Outstanding PyLady Awards (🎉 OPA 🎉)!

Abigail Mesrenyame Dogbe (left-most), Maaya Ishida (second from right), and Jessica Greene (right-most) posing with their blue gem awards with Lynn Root (second from left) at the closing ceremony of PyCon 2024. Photo taken by @psobot.

Many remarkable members and volunteers make up the PyLadies community and make significant contributions to bettering the Python community.

To celebrate that, Cheuk Ting Ho saw many folks doing amazing things for the community and proposed establishing the Outstanding PyLady Award to the PyLadies Global Council. This new Outstanding PyLady Award recognizes diverse Pythonistas doing extraordinary community-elevating things, highlights their achievements, and thanks them for all the work they’ve contributed.

Moving forward, every year the PyLadies Global Council will be selecting a handful of folks from nominations from the Python community at large (anyone in the Python community is encouraged to nominate!). Award winners are recognized at PyCon US, and receive their choice of either free registration & travel assistance to PyCon US, or a cash award of $1,000. Its intention is to demonstrate that their service and contributions to the PyLadies community does lead to recognition and reward. They also get a cute little pin to wear on their lanyards for all PyCons to come, if they wish.

Outstanding PyLady Award recipient lanyard pin. Photo taken by @psobot.

This is the first year of the Outstanding PyLady awards, and we got a whopping 84 submissions for nominations. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to award all nominees, although all of them clearly deserve it.

The PyLadies Global Council has selected 3 women to receive the inaugural award, and we are all so very excited to celebrate them. In alphabetical order by last name:

Abigail Mesrenyame Dogbe

Abigail (X, LinkedIn) hails from the 🇬🇭 Ghana 🇬🇭 chapter of PyLadies (X, Instagram, GitHub), which she helped found in 2017. She and the Ghana chapter has in one way or another inspired at least 8 other chapters around the world to start up, including Liberia, Ethiopia, Zambia, Kenya, Finland, Cameroon, and two in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In her copious amounts of spare time, besides organizing PyLadies events, she co-organizes PyCon Africa, has keynoted for the first PyLadies Conference and others like DjangoCon US 2023, and has founded and is running an entire organization, Mesrenyame & Friends, whose sole purpose is to inspire & support young girls in STEM. All in a day’s work, right? 👩🏿‍💻

Read more about Abigail in PyDev of the Week.

Jessica Greene

Jessica Greene (X, LinkedIn, Mastodon) comes to us from 🇩🇪 Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪 - a PyLadies chapter (X, Instagram, Meetup) that has some awesome stickers of their own. She has been the organizer for the Berlin chapter for over 6 years. You might have caught her from this year’s PyCon US’s Diversity & Inclusion panel talk - she’s a part of the PSF’s Code of Conduct Committee, which is a lot of unnoticed and important work. It’s been said that Jessica has a penchant for automating the administrative tasks for her and her chapter organizers. But naturally, who wouldn’t! And when she’s not organizing PyLadies events, or participating in committees, or writing Python code, she helps put on the Python Pizza Hamburg, a micro conference that combines Python talks and eating pizza (🍕 sign me up! 🍕).

Check out Jessica’s many insightful blog posts!

Maaya Ishida

Maaya Ishida (X, LinkedIn, Facebook) joins us from our 🇯🇵 Tokyo PyLadies chapter 🇯🇵 (connpass, Facebook, X, GitHub), which she has been involved with for 10 years. Of course, that is not all that she’s done; no PyLadies organizer can sit still. Maaya organizes the PyLadies Caravan 🚐, which is a series of events over the last 5 years, with the purpose of connecting with other PyLadies around the entire country of Japan. And she, too, was one of the inaugural speakers of the first PyLadies Conference, and a keynoter at PyCon HongKong last year. Of course she can’t get enough, because she also volunteers for the PyCon JP Association (english site).

Be sure to check out Maaya’s impressive blog.

Abigail Mesrenyame Dogbe (left), Jessica Greene (center), and Maaya Ishida (right) at the PyLadies auction at PyCon US 2024. Photo taken by @loooorenanicole.

Nominate Someone! or Yourself!

PyLadies at PyCon US 2024

2024-03-06T18:50:00Z

We are proud to share that there will be strong representation from PyLadies and our community members at PyCon US 2024. Don’t miss the talks and tutorials presented by PyLadies, and be sure to attend and check out the events and summits organized by PyLadies members worldwide.

We can’t wait to see you all in Pittsburgh! Congratulations PyLadies!

Tutorials

Wednesday 05/15

9am - 12:30pm

PyO3 101 - Writing Python modules in Rust by Cheuk Ting Ho - Room 319

1:30pm - 5pm

Thursday 05/16

9am - 12:30pm

Monitoring carbon emissions: making the impact of your python code visible by Jessica Greene and Chioma Onyekpere - Room 318
From RAGs to riches: Build an AI document inquiry web-app by Pavithra Eswaramoorthy, Andrew Huang, and Dharhas Pothina - Room 321

Talks and Charlas

Friday 05/17

12:30pm - 1pm

The Design of Everyday APIs by Lynn Root - Room 301-305
Personalizando LLMs: Guía para “Fine-Tuning” local de modelos Open Source en Español by Maria Jose Molina Contreras - Room 310/311

3:30pm - 4pm

Porque SQL está en todas partes. by Naty Clementi and Phillip Cloud - Room 310/311

4:30pm - 5pm

How to amplify diversity inside a Python community? by Juliana (Jules) Barros Lima - Hall C

5:15pm - 5:45pm

11am - 4pm

Maintainers Summit by Inessa Pawson, Leah Wasser, Kara Sowles, and Chris Rose - Room TBD

Saturday 05/18

10:30am - 11am

Observabilidad en Python para principiantes by Ana Paula Gonzaga - Room 310/311
Friends don’t let friends package alone by Leah Wasser - Hall C

12pm - 12:30pm

Usando Python en una oficina tradicional by Steph Orellana Bello - Room 310/311

2:30pm - 3:00pm

Construyendo Puentes en Diversidad, Equidad e Inclusión en Open Source by Lucy Jiménez - Room 310/311

Posters

Sunday 05/19 - 10 am - 1pm in Expo Hall A

The creative art of algorithmic embroidery by Marie Roald and Yngve Mardal Moe

Find descriptions in the posters list

Events

PyLadies booth at Expo Hall: Stop by to chat with fellow PyLadies, get some stickers and buy a t-shirt to support PyLadies.
PyLadies Luncheon: Free lunch with fellow PyLadies, keep and eye out for date announcement and sign up link.
PyLadies Auction (05/18): Register and join us for an evening of fun and refreshments while supporting the PyLadies community at the twelfth PyLadies charity auction.
Outstanding PyLadies Award Presentation. PyLadies Global Council will present the Outstanding PyLadies Award on the main stage. Details will be announced soon!

Support PyLadies

Let’s show our support to PyLadies by cheering and attending their talks at the conference! You can also further support our community by donating an auction item to the PyLadies Auction (contact the auction coordinator), or by sponsoring us.

Announcing: The Outstanding PyLady Award

2024-01-22T18:50:00Z

Introducing: the Outstanding PyLady Award!

TL;DR: Know of a PyLady that should be recognized for all their work for Python and the community? Nominate them (or yourself)!

The PyLadies community is made up of many remarkable members and volunteers that make significant contributions to bettering the Python community. The Global Council’s Outstanding PyLady award is meant to elevate diverse Pythonistas doing amazing things, to highlight their achievements, and to thank them for all the work they’ve contributed.

The award is open to women and non-binary PyLadies. Any Python community member may nominate a PyLady at any time (including self-nominations! go on – brag about yourself!). Nominations are accepted via this Google form.

Nominations are accepted year-round, and award winners will be recognized at the nearest upcoming PyCon US. For recognition at PyCon US 2024, nominations must be in by February 4th 2024 AOE.

For more information about the process, please have a look at our documentation.

The Global Council wants to give a huge thank you to Cheuk Ting Ho for proposing the idea of recognizing & rewarding individual PyLadies who give a lot of time and effort to make Python and its community better!

🎬 Share Your PyLadies Chapter at PyLadiesCon!

2023-11-03T18:50:00Z

Hello amazing PyLadies!

We have an exciting opportunity for your PyLadies Chapter to shine at the upcoming PyLadiesCon! We invite you to create and share a 90-second video (1 minute 30 sec) introducing your wonderful community. Here’s a guide to help craft your video:

Participants: One member from your community can present.

Introduction: Please introduce the organizers with their names and roles in the community.

Scripting: Consider preparing a script to succinctly convey the essence of your chapter’s story and activities.

Presentation Material: Feel free to use our specially designed PyLadiesCon template for your video Slides Template. If you have pre-existing materials, simply add the PyLadiesCon event logo.

Submission: Submit your recorded video in advance; it will be showcased during the event.

🚀 Here’s a quick rundown of what to include:

A brief introduction of your chapter and its mission.
Highlights of your community’s achievements and activities.

🌟 For inspiration and a better idea of what we’re looking for, check out this example video.

If you need help creating your video, let us know, and we’ll set up a time to work on it together.

Please send your video to pyladiescon@pyladies.com and any related materials by November 15th. We can’t wait to see what you’ve prepared!

PyLadiesCon - CFP Closed. A summary, and a Retrospective.

2023-10-03T18:50:00Z

The CFP for the first PyLadiesCon has closed on September 17, 2023. On behalf of PyLadies organizers team, we’re grateful for the support from the community in helping us spread the news about our CFP, and also for everyone who submitted their proposals.

In total we received 164 proposals. Considering this is our first conference, we do think this is a good number of proposals to choose from, and we know that we won’t have trouble building a good conference program. Again, we’re grateful for everyone who submitted a talk which will help us put together a great conference.

PyLadies is a global community, and as such, we strive to be inclusive, and accommodating to our diverse community. Therefore, we made it our goal to have a multi-lingual conference program, where speakers can present in different languages. Additionally, we also plan to host our talks in different timezones according to the regions: Americas, APAC, and EMEA.

Proposal Breakdown

By Language:

English: 111
Español: 31
Português: 22
Français: 0
漢語: 0
简体中文: 0

By Region:

Americas: 92
EMEA: 59
APAC: 13

We’d like to now take a moment to acknowledge, that despite our efforts, we did not receive any submissions in Français, 漢語, or 简体中文, indicating there is a gap in our community. This is indeed a disappointing news to us, and we are trying to understand the situation, and learn from this experience.

Why these languages?

As mentioned earlier, PyLadies is a global community with worldwide chapters. Even though PyLadies initially was founded in North America, and that English has been the main language among the early founders, PyLadies community has grown significantly over the years, including to areas where English is not the main language. There are now chapters in more than 60 countries. In Brazil alone, where the main language is Portuguese, there are more than 30 chapters.

When we began organizing the Global PyLadies conference, we recognize the importance of making our content accessible to as many members as possible. We believe that it will be a disservice to our global community if we had limited our conference to English-speaking members. Therefore, we decided that to include various languages into our program. And we chose the above languages because they are major spoken languages of the world.

Moreover, the languages mentioned above are spoken in more than one country. For example, French is the official language in 28 countries in the world, and Spanish is the official language in 20 countries. Therefore, by focusing on “languages” instead of “countries”, we believed that we will be able to welcome people from as many parts of the world as possible. To further clarify this point, when we mentioned in our CFP that we welcome proposals in Français, we did not mean that we want to hear from speakers in France, but rather from anyone in the world who would be more comfortable presenting in that language.

Our initial efforts in promoting our CFP

When we launched our CFP on August 4th, we announced it in various venues: as a blog post on PyLadies official website (in English), on our Twitter/X account, Mastodon, and LinkedIn.
We also announced it on our internal Slack channel under both the #announcements (10,560 members) and #organizers (266 members) channels. We encouraged our PyLadies chapter organizers to share the CFP with their members.
We emphasized the fact that we would love to see representation from PyLadies all over the world.
Our team of volunteer organizers consists of people who are fluent in the different languages (Español, Français, Português, 漢語, 简体中文 ). They took the time to translate our CFP on the Pretalx platform from English into the various languages.

When did we became aware of a problem?

One month after we launched the CFP, on September 3rd, our team has started noticing that we did not receive any proposals in Français, 漢語, or 简体中文 yet. With the proposals due to close in a week’s time, our team started taking additional steps to do a more targeted outreach to the French, Mandarin, and Cantonese-speaking communities.

Our further steps in the CFP Outreach

We decided to extend the CFP for an additional week to allow more time for people to submit their talk
We created CFP Outreach Kit and translated it into the various languages: Português, Français, Español, 简体中文, and 漢語
We shared the CFP Outreach Kit through our social media accounts and Slack channels.
We emailed the CFP Outreach Kit to all of our registered chapters (to their {chaptername}@pyladies.com email address)
Members of our organizing team personally reached out to their network in the targeted communities, asking them to help spread the news and share our CFP
We hosted two online CFP Workshops to help new speakers.
After the CFP closed, we created several access codes on Pretalx and shared the codes with several potential speakers in the targeted communities, giving them additional time to submit a proposal. This resulted in one proposal submitted in 简体中文 (Simplified Chinese).

Despite all of our efforts above, by the time the CFP closed on September 17, we still did not receive any proposals in Français, 漢語, 简体中文. On our next team meeting, we discussed this issue and we decided to acknowledge this issue.

What went wrong?

We identified several issues related to our CFP and our outreach.

Even though we translated the CFP on Pretalx to Traditional Chinese (漢語) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文), we only realized a few days before the CFP closing day that we did not configure Pretalx correctly. On Pretalx, potential speaker could not choose the “Traditional Chinese” or “Simplified Chinese” language selection, therefore potential speaker could not submit their proposals until the last minute. When our team were notified of this issue, we immediately made the necessary change on Pretalx. However, we realized that our fix might come too late. We have learned from this experience, and will be doing a more thorough review of the CFP and our content across the different languages next time.
Our initial CFP announcement was not translated. Going forward, we will take extra effort to translate our content to the various targeted languages.
We discovered two bugs with the Pretalx CFP platform, in which the Traditional Chinese (漢語) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文) locales were not showing up correctly. We wrote support tickets to Pretalx, and they were able to fix the problems within 24 hours of our report. We’re really thankful for their support! However, we become aware of these bugs a bit too late during the CFP process. Again, going forward we will be reviewing the various languages more thoroughly before launching the CFP.
Even though PyLadies is a global community, many local chapters have been run independently, and we are not well connected with the various local chapter organizers. We tried to reach our organizers through our Slack channel, and by sending email to their official Pyladies.com email address. However, not all of our chapter organizers joined the official PyLadies Slack. Additionally, not all of our chapter organizers have been actively checking their PyLadies email address. Therefore, PyLadies as a global community need to establish a better way to communicate and engage with the local chapter organizers.
We also need a better way to communicate with our worldwide members, aside from social media or Slack. We also currently rely heavily on our local organizers to spread the news to their members. At the moment, PyLadies do not have a global members mailing list or newsletter, making it challenging to reach the members directly.
Even though Français and 中文 are considered major languages of the world, and the official languages of the UN, it is possible that we do not actually have as many active members who can speak those languages. One way in which we can improve this, is to do a more thorough survey of our members of which languages they speak, so that going forward we can make our decision based on real data.
We recognize the possibility that the members from the targeted communities simply chose not to submit any talk to our conference. Perhaps, we did not gain the trust from the targeted PyLadies communities. We are learning and trying understand why this is happening. We would welcome input from our community on how we can improve and gain the trust.

What’s Next for PyLadiesCon

Our reviewers are still reviewing talk proposals. We plan to select the speakers in mid October.

We have invited our Keynote Speakers. There will be 5 keynote speakers, and each of them will be presenting in different languages: English, Español, Français, Português, and 中文 (Mandarin).

We have begun discussing the logistics of translating or subtitling the conference talks and presentations into the above languages. We are exploring various options to have the talks translated/subtitled professionally. However this would depend on the cost and our sponsorship. You can help and support us by sponsoring the conference. Please check out our sponsorship prospectus or write to sponsors@pyladies.com.

Parting Thoughts

We recognize that there are a lot of room for improvement, and that we could have done better in reaching out to our global community members. By acknowledging and understanding the issues within our community, we can begin taking the necessary steps to further improve.

We ask for your understanding and we welcome any suggestions and feedback you may have on how we can improve this going forward.

If you would like to get in touch with the conference organizers, please write to: pyladiescon@pyladies.com.

PyLadiesCon - Sponsorship Launch

2023-10-02T18:50:00Z

Join us! Become a sponsor of the first ever Global PyLadies conference!

All summer we have been busy planning the first ever global PyLadies Conference, and now we’d like to invite you to be a part of our inaugural event.

As you know, PyLadies is active around the world, with over 200 chapters on every continent (well, almost - sorry, Antarctica!) helping to provide women with mentorship, training, and conference grants. Those initiatives help build the diversity of our Python communities everywhere by building a bridge to Python development and open source contributions.

Help make the first ever global PyLadies conference a reality

Our conference is fully online, and run entirely by volunteers. We are intentionally making it free, online, inclusive, and accessible, so that as many of our members as possible can benefit from it in order to further advance their careers. Your sponsorship of the first PyLadies Conference will make it possible to offer that experience to women everywhere. And by being a sponsor you and your company will gain exposure to PyLadies and Pythonistas around as partners in our mission to include more women in Python and open source.

If you’re interested in supporting our work,you can check out the options in our sponsor prospectus now available at https://conference.pyladies.com/sponsors, or you can get in touch with our sponsorship team at sponsors@pyladies.com.

PyLadies is a direct project of the Python Software Foundation (“the PSF”). In addition to tax deductibility as a marketing expense for our sponsors, any applicable benefits of the PSF’s 501©3 designation from the IRS also may apply. Determination letter from the IRS designating the PSF as a charitable organization available from the PSF website.

PyLadiesCon - CFP 外展套件

2023-09-15T18:50:00Z

PyLadiesCon CFP Outreach Kit (English)

亲爱的 PyLadies 组织者、会员和支持者

我们需要您的帮助来传播 PyLadiesCon 的消息。作为我们的组织者、成员和支持者之一，您可以帮助接触那些可能成为会议优秀演讲者以及可能没有听说过会议的人。您的联系和介绍将使我们的会议变得更加精彩。

我们鼓励您邀请潜在的演讲者向 PyLadies 会议提交演讲，这可以是：在您的活动或您参加的活动（即另一次会议）中发表演讲的人有兴趣发表演讲的人没有做过演讲但你知道他们做了值得分享的有趣工作/项目的人

您可以通过多种方式帮助我们

1. 通过向个人发送电子邮件或私人消息来联系他们

使用您自己的措辞或随意使用以下其中一项:

您好，{name}，我们正在寻找第一届 PyLadiesCon 的演讲者。你的演讲{example talk}非常有趣。您可以在这里提交您的演讲吗？https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

嗨，{name}，您有兴趣在 PyLadiesCon 上发表演讲吗？请在此提交提案https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

您好，{name}，PyLadiesCon 正在寻找演讲者，我认为您会非常适合。在这里查看：https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

您好{name}，我看到了您关于{something}的博客文章/项目。我认为这对于 PyLadiesCon 来说是一个很好的演讲想法。您可以将其作为演讲提交吗？https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

2. 在社交媒体（Twitter/X、LinkedIn、Mastodon、Instagram、Facebook 等）上分享有关 PyLadiesCon CFP 的新闻

转发以下帖子:

3. 将潜在的演讲者与我们的会议组织者之一联系起来

如果您有我们应邀请的演讲者的联系信息，请通过电子邮件与我们分享: pyladiescon@pyladies.com

我们的成员和计划委员会将很乐意帮助回答有关 PyLadies、会议和演讲提案本身的问题。请要求他们写信至pyladiescon@pyladies.com 如有任何疑问。

任何时候，如果您对会议和征集投稿有任何疑问，请随时与会议组织者联系。您可以通过 Slack 或通过电子邮件联系我们：pyladiescon@pyladies.com。

附加信息

PyLadiesCon - CFP 外展套件

2023-09-15T18:50:00Z

PyLadiesCon CFP Outreach Kit (English)

親愛的 PyLadies 組織者、會員和支持者

我們需要您的幫助來傳播 PyLadiesCon 的消息。作為我們的組織者、成員和支持者之一，您可以幫助接觸那些可能成為會議優秀演講者以及可能沒有聽說過會議的人。您的聯繫和介紹將使我們的會議變得更加精彩。

我們鼓勵您邀請潛在的演講者向 PyLadies 會議提交演講，這可以是：在您的活動或您參加的活動（即另一次會議）中發表演講的人有興趣發表演講的人沒有做過演講但你知道他們做了值得分享的有趣工作/項目的人

您可以通過多種方式幫助我們

1. 通過向個人發送電子郵件或私人消息來聯繫他們。

使用您自己的措辭或隨意使用以下其中一項:

您好，{name}，我們正在尋找第一屆 PyLadiesCon 的演講者。你的演講{example talk}非常有趣。您可以在這裡提交您的演講嗎？https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

嗨，{name}，您有興趣在 PyLadiesCon 上發表演講嗎？請在此提交提案https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

您好，{name}，PyLadiesCon 正在尋找演講者，我認為您會非常適合。在這裡查看：https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

您好{name}，我看到了您關於{something}的博客文章/項目。我認為這對於 PyLadiesCon 來說是一個很好的演講想法。您可以將其作為演講提交嗎？https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

2. 在社交媒體（Twitter/X、LinkedIn、Mastodon、Instagram、Facebook 等）上分享有關 PyLadiesCon CFP 的新聞

轉發以下帖子:

3. 將潛在的演講者與我們的會議組織者之一聯繫起來

如果您有我們應邀請的演講者的聯繫信息，請通過電子郵件與我們分享: pyladiescon@pyladies.com

我們的成員和計劃委員會將很樂意幫助回答有關 PyLadies、會議和演講提案本身的問題。請要求他們寫信至pyladiescon@pyladies.com 如有任何疑問。

任何時候，如果您對會議和徵集投稿有任何疑問，請隨時與會議組織者聯繫。您可以通過 Slack 或通過電子郵件聯繫我們：pyladiescon@pyladies.com。

附加信息

相關分享鏈接:

網站 https://conference.pyladies.com
演講徵稿 https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp
博客 https://pyladies.com/blog/Announcement-CFP-Launch/cfp-launch-announcement/

我們的社交媒體賬號是:

在社交媒體上發帖時，請使用主題標籤:

#PyLadies
#PyLadiesCon
#ThePSF

Announcement: CFP Extended

2023-09-10T18:50:00Z

ANNOUNCEMENT: CFP Extended

📢 PyLadiesCon Call for Papers Extended - Share Your Insights!

Dear PyLadies community members,

As we embark on the journey of PyLadiesCon, we’re excited to announce an extended Call for Papers (CFP) period to ensure we capture all the incredible insights you offer.

📢 What is PyLadiesCon?

PyLadiesCon is an extraordinary event promoting diversity, learning, and empowerment within the Python community. It celebrates women in Python, fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment for all attendees. The conference will take place virtually on Dec 1-3, 2023. It will be free to attend, with an option to donate to PyLadies.

🌟 Share Your Knowledge: Call for Papers Extended

We cordially invite speakers from all walks of life to share their insights, expertise, and stories with our vibrant community. Whether you’re a seasoned Python developer, an industry expert, or a first-time speaker, we encourage you to submit your proposals! The due date of the Call for Proposals is now September 17th, 2023

🌎 Diverse Languages, Diverse Voices

Given our global reach, you’re welcome to present in any of the following languages: English, Español, Português, Français, and 中文. Please specify the presentation language in your proposal.

🔗 Submit Your Proposal:

To submit your proposal, please visit our submission page.

The topics span from technical talks to best practices, case studies, and beyond. Every story and perspective enriches the conference experience for everyone.

🗓️ Updated Important Dates:

CFP Launch: August 4th

Original Proposal Due date: September 10th

Extended CFP Due date: September 17th

Speaker Notifications: October 10th

🚀 Be Part of the Journey

Join us in shaping this remarkable event that empowers and inspires women in the Python community and beyond. Your voice matters, and your presence will contribute to the success of PyLadiesCon.

📧 Contact Us:

If you have any questions or need further information about the Call for Papers, please don’t hesitate to contact us at pyladiescon@pyladies.com.

Thank you for your unwavering support and dedication to the PyLadies community. Together, let’s make PyLadiesCon an extraordinary celebration of women in Python!

PyLadiesCon - Thank You CfP Workshop Mentors

2023-09-08T18:50:00Z

Over the last few weeks, we have organised 2 CfP workshops for new speakers. Thank you to all of you who signed up and attended. I hope to see your amazing proposal and talks at the PyLadies Conference.

Big thank you to all the mentors who help in our workshops. Our mentors are:

Alessia Marcolini (LinkedIn)
Alena Osipova (LinkedIn, Twitter, Mastodon)
Sophia Yang (LinkedIn)
Karolina Ladino Puerto (LinkedIn)
Jodie Burchell (LinkedIn, Website, Twitter, Mastodon)

They have shared their valuable experience as speakers and organisers. Let’s give them a big round of applause 👏👏👏👏👏

PyLadiesCon - CFP Outreach Kit (Português)

2023-09-05T18:50:00Z

PyLadiesCon CFP Outreach Kit (Português)

Querida PyLady,

Precisamos da sua ajuda para divulgar as novidades da PyLadiesCon. Você, como uma das integrantes da comunidade PyLadies, pode contribuir para alcançar pessoas que poderiam ser excelentes palestrantes para a conferência e que, talvez, nunca tenham ouvido falar dela. Sua conexão e apresentação são fundamentais para tornar esse um evento excelente.

Nós te pedimos que incentive pessoas a enviar uma proposta de palestra para a Conferência PyLadies. Essas pessoas podem ser:

Alguém que palestrou em um evento no qual você participou ou organizou.
Alguém que já demonstrou interesse em dar uma palestra.
Alguém que nunca palestrou, mas você sabe que faz um trabalho/projeto que vale a pena divulgar.

Você pode nos ajudar de diversas maneiras. Listamos abaixo algumas, mas fique a vontade para contribuir de outras formas:

1. Entrar em contato com pessoas através de e-mail ou mensagem privada.

A melhor forma de se conectar com pessoas é utilizando suas próprias palavras, mas sinta-se à vontade para usar uma dessas frases:

Olá {nome}, estamos procurando uma palestrante para a primeira PyLadiesCon. Assisti à sua palestra sobre {assunto} e achei muito interessante. Te incentivo que submeta para a coneferência: https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Olá {nome}, você teria interesse em dar uma palestra na PyLadiesCon? Por favor, envie uma proposta aqui: https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Olá, {nome}, a PyLadiesCon está procurando palestrantes e acho que você seria ótima para isso. Dá uma olhada na chamada para palestras aqui: https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Olá, {nome}, vi sua postagem/projeto no blog sobre {assunto}. Acho que daria uma boa palestra para a PyLadiesCon. Você pode enviar a proposta de palestra? Mais informações ¿Puedes enviarla como charla? https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

2. Compartilhar notícias sobre PyLadiesCon CFP nas redes sociais (Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, etc)

3. Conectar palestrantes em potencial com uma das organizadoras da conferência.

Compartilhar conosco contato da palestrante que deveríamos convidar através do e-mail : pyladiescon@pyladies.com

Caso alguma palestrante em potencial tenha dúvidas, teremos o maior prazer em respondê-las e ajudá-la sobre qualquer assunto: PyLadies, a conferência e/ou a própria proposta de palestra. Por favor, peça que ela escreva para pyladiescon@pyladies.com.

A qualquer momento, se você tiver alguma dúvida sobre a conferência e o CFP (chamada para palestra), não hesite em entrar em contacto com uma das organizadoras da conferência. Estamos disponíveis no Slack da PyLadies Global, ou através do email: pyladiescon@pyladies.com.

Informação adicional

Página do evento:

Nossas redes sociais:

Ao postar nas redes sociais, usa as hashtags:

#PyLadies
#PyLadiesCon
#ThePSF

Sua colaboração é fundamental para o sucesso da PyLadiesCon! Juntas contribuímos para uma comunidade viva e pulsante. Obrigada por fazer parte das PyLadies 🐍

PyLadiesCon - CFP Outreach Kit (Français)

2023-09-05T18:50:00Z

PyLadiesCon CFP Outreach Kit (Français)

Chers organisateurs PyLadies,

Nous avons besoin de votre aide pour diffuser la nouvelle de PyLadiesCon. Vous, en tant qu'organisateurs, membres et partisans, pouvez contribuer à contacter des personnes qui pourraient être d'excellents intervenants pour la conférence, et qui pourraient ne pas avoir entendu parler de l'événement. Votre connexion et votre présentation contribueront à faire de notre conférence un événement exceptionnel.

Nous vous encourageons à inviter des conférenciers potentiels à soumettre une proposition de présentation à la PyLadies Conference. Il peut s'agir de:

Quelqu'un qui a donné des conférences lors de votre événement ou lors d'un autre événement auquel vous avez assisté (par exemple, une autre conférence).
Quelqu'un qui a montré de l'intérêt pour donner une conférence.
Quelqu'un qui n'a pas encore donné de conférence, mais que vous savez avoir réalisé un travail ou un projet intéressant qui vaut la peine d'être partagé

Vous pouvez nous aider de différentes manières:

1. Contactez des individus en leur envoyant un courriel ou un message privé.

Utilisez vos propres mots ou n'hésitez pas à utiliser l'un des modèles suivants:

Salut {nom}, nous recherchons un intervenant pour la première PyLadiesCon. Votre présentation {exemple de présentation} était vraiment intéressante. Pouvez-vous soumettre votre présentation ici ? https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Salut {nom}, seriez-vous intéressé(e) à donner une présentation à la PyLadiesCon ? Veuillez soumettre une proposition ici: https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Salut {nom}, PyLadiesCon recherche des conférenciers, et je pense que vous seriez formidable pour cela. Jetez un coup d'œil ici: https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Salut {nom}, j'ai vu votre article de blog/projet sur {quelque chose}. Je pense que ce serait une bonne idée de présentation pour la PyLadiesCon. Pouvez-vous le soumettre comme présentation? https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

2. Partagez des nouvelles sur le CFP de PyLadiesCon sur les réseaux sociaux (Twitter, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, etc.).

Retweetez les publications suivantes:

Article de blog : https://pyladies.com/blog/Announcement-CFP-Launch/cfp-launch-announcement/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pyladiescon/status/1689681818591666177
Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@pyladiescon/110866389133560784
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7095449927098478592?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

3. Mettez en relation les conférenciers potentiels avec l'un de nos organisateurs de la conférence.

Si vous avez les coordonnées d'un conférencier que nous devrions inviter, partagez-les avec nous par courriel: pyladiescon@pyladies.com

Nos membres et notre comité de programme seront ravis de répondre à toutes vos questions sur PyLadies, la conférence et la proposition de présentation elle-même. N'hésitez pas à leur demander d'écrire à pyladiescon@pyladies.com pour toute question.

À tout moment, si vous avez des questions sur la conférence et le CFP, n'hésitez pas à contacter l'un des organisateurs de la conférence. Nous sommes disponibles sur Slack ou par courriel : pyladiescon@pyladies.com.

Informations supplémentaires

Liens pertinents à partager:

Nos identifiants sur les réseaux sociaux:

Lorsque vous publiez sur les réseaux sociaux, utilisez les hashtags:

#PyLadies
#PyLadiesCon
#ThePSF

Aidez-nous à faire de la PyLadiesCon un événement exceptionnel grâce à votre soutien et à votre collaboration. Merci d'être une part essentielle de la famille PyLadies !

PyLadiesCon - CFP Outreach Kit (Español)

2023-09-05T18:50:00Z

PyLadiesCon CFP Outreach Kit (Español)

Estimadas Organizadora Pyladies,

Necesitamos su ayuda para difundir la noticia sobre PyLadiesCon. Ustedes, como organizadoras de nuestra comunidad, pueden contribuir a llegar a personas que podrían ser excelentes ponentes para la conferencia y que quizás aún no han oído hablar de ella. Su conexión y presentación serán fundamentales para hacer de nuestra conferencia un evento excepcional.

Les alentamos a invitar a posibles ponentes a enviar una propuesta para la PyLadies Conference. Esto podría incluir a:

Alguien que haya dado charlas en su evento o en otro evento al que hayan asistido.
Alguien que haya mostrado interés en dar una charla.
Alguien que no haya dado charlas, pero que ustedes sepan que ha realizado un trabajo o proyecto interesante que vale la pena compartir

Pueden ayudarnos de diversas maneras:

1. Comuníquense con personas enviándoles un correo electrónico o mensaje privado

Utilicen sus propias palabras o siéntanse libres de usar uno de los siguientes mensajes.:

Hola {nombre}, Estamos buscando ponentes para la primera PyLadiesCon. Tu charla {ejemplo de charla} fue realmente interesante. ¿Puedes enviar tu propuesta aquí? https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Hola {nombre}, ¿Estarías interesada en dar una charla en PyLadiesCon? Por favor, envía una propuesta aquí: https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Hola {nombre}, PyLadiesCon está buscando ponentes, y creo que serías genial para ello. Échale un vistazo aquí: https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Hola {nombre}, Vi tu publicación en el blog/proyecto sobre {algo}. Creo que sería una buena idea de charla para PyLadiesCon. ¿Puedes enviarla como charla? https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

2. Compartan noticias sobre la convocatoria de propuestas de PyLadiesCon en las redes sociales (Twitter, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, etc.).

Comparte las siguientes publicaciones:

Publicación de blog: https://pyladies.com/blog/Announcement-CFP-Launch/cfp-launch-announcement/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pyladiescon/status/1689681818591666177
Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@pyladiescon/110866389133560784
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7095449927098478592?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

3. Conecten a posibles ponentes con uno de nuestros organizadores de la conferencia.

Si tienen información de contacto de ponentes que deberíamos invitar, compártanla con nosotros por correo electrónico: pyladiescon@pyladies.com

Nuestros miembros y el comité del programa estarán encantados de responder a preguntas sobre PyLadies, la conferencia y la propuesta de charla en sí. Por favor, pídanles que escriban a pyladiescon@pyladies.com si tienen alguna pregunta.

En cualquier momento, si ustedes mismos tienen preguntas sobre la conferencia y la convocatoria de propuestas, no duden en ponerse en contacto con uno de las organizadoras de la conferencia. Estamos disponibles en Slack o a través del correo electrónico: pyladiescon@pyladies.com.

Información adicional

Enlaces relevantes para compartir:

Nuestras redes sociales:

Cuando publiquen en redes sociales, utilicen los hashtags:

#PyLadies
#PyLadiesCon
#ThePSF

¡Su colaboración es fundamental para el éxito de PyLadiesCon! ¡Gracias por ser parte de nuestra comunidad! 🐍

PyLadiesCon - CFP Outreach Kit (English)

2023-09-03T18:50:00Z

PyLadiesCon CFP Outreach Kit (English)

Dear PyLadies organizers, members, and supporters,

We need your help in spreading the news of PyLadiesCon. You, as one of our organizers, members, and supporters, can help in reaching out to individuals who could be a great speaker for the conference, and who might not have heard of the conference. Your connection and introduction will help make our conference great.

We encourage you to invite potential speakers to submit a talk to PyLadies Conference, this could be:

Someone who have given talks at your event or an event that you attended (i.e another conference)
Someone who showed interest in giving a talk
Someone who has not given a talk but you know they’ve done interesting work/project that is worth sharing

You can help us in a variety of ways:

1. Reach out to individuals by sending them an email or private message.

Use your own wordings, or feel free to use one of the following:

Hi {name}, we’re looking for a speaker at the first PyLadiesCon. Your talk {example talk} was really interesting. Can you submit your talk here? https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Hi {name}, would you be interested in giving a talk at PyLadiesCon? Please submit a proposal here https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Hi {name}, PyLadiesCon is looking for speakers, and I think you’d be great for it. Check it out here: https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

Hi {name}, I saw your blog post/project about {something}. I think it would be a good talk idea for PyLadiesCon. Can you submit it as a talk? https://pretalx.com/pyladiescon-2023/cfp

2. Share news about PyLadiesCon CFP on social media (Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, etc).

Re-share the following posts:

3. Connect potential speakers with one of our conference organizers

If you have contact info of speaker we should invite, please share it with us via email: pyladiescon@pyladies.com

Our members and program committee will be happy to help answer questions about PyLadies, the conference, and the talk proposal itself. Please ask them to write to pyladiescon@pyladies.com with any questions.

At any time, if you yourself have any questions about the conference and the CFP, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of the conference organizers. We are available on Slack, or through email: pyladiescon@pyladies.com.

Additional info

Relevant links to share:

Our social media handles are:

When posting on social media, use the hashtags:

#PyLadies
#PyLadiesCon
#ThePSF

PyLadiesCon - CfP Workshop

2023-08-17T18:50:00Z

PyLadiesCon - CfP Workshop

Have you heard of the PyLadiesCon? Do you want to speak there but don’t know how to do it? What is a call for proposal and what do you need to submit? Worry not, we will have a CfP (Call for Proposal) workshop for new speakers who have not done it before.

In the workshop, via some exercises, we will help you to find something you want to talk about and start drafting a very rough proposal as a start.

Time and Date

There will be two workshops but the content covered will be the same:

Workshop 1 - Date: 29th Aug 2023 - Time: 10:00 UTC - Venue: online

Workshop 2 - Date: 4th Sep 2023 - Time: 17:00 UTC - Venue: online

Application

Fill in the registration form here

*The workshops above will be mainly conducted in English. However, if you are not comfortable with speaking in English, you can still fill in the form and let us know which other languages you prefer. We will see if we can accommodate you.

Announcement: CFP Launch

2023-07-28T18:50:00Z

📢 Call for Paper Launch: PyLadiesCon - Share Your Insights with Us!

Dear PyLadies community members,

As we venture further into the journey of PyLadiesCon, we are thrilled to announce the official launch of our Call for Papers.

🎉 What is PyLadiesCon?

PyLadiesCon is an extraordinary event designed to promote diversity, learning, and empowerment within the Python community. It celebrates women in Python, aiming to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for all attendees.

Conference dates: Dec 1-3, 2023 Location: Online across various timezones

🌟 Share Your Knowledge: Call for Papers

We invite speakers from all backgrounds and experiences to share their insights, expertise, and stories with our vibrant community. Whether you’re a seasoned Python developer, an industry expert, or a first-time speaker, we encourage you to submit your proposals!

As we are a global community, we welcome talks in the following languages: English, Español, Português, Français, and 中文.

🔗 Submit Your Proposal:

Please click here to submit your proposal.

The topics can range from technical talks to best practices, case studies, and more. Every story and perspective is valuable, and your contribution will enrich the conference experience for everyone.

🗓️ Important Dates:

Call for Papers Launch: August 4th

Proposal Submission Deadline: September 10th

Speaker Notifications: October 10th

🚀 Be Part of the Journey

Join us in shaping this remarkable event that empowers and inspires women in the Python community and beyond. Your voice matters, and your presence will contribute to the success of PyLadiesCon.

If you have any questions or need further information about the Call for Papers, please don’t hesitate to contact us at:

pyladiescon@pyladies.com

Thank you for your unwavering support and dedication to the PyLadies community. Together, let’s make PyLadiesCon an extraordinary celebration of women in Python!

Announcement: PyLadies Conference

2023-06-22T18:50:00Z

📢 Announcement: PyLadies Conference - Join Us!

Attention all PyLadies community members! We’re excited to share that we are in the early stages of planning a PyLadies Conference (PyLadiesCon), a transformative event designed to promote diversity, learning, and empowerment within the Python community. 🎉

Save the date! The conference will take place on the first weekend of December, where we’ll gather together for a weekend filled with insightful talks, engaging panels, and collaborative networking opportunities.

We’re reaching out to you, our fantastic community because we believe in the power of teamwork. As we embark on this journey, we seek enthusiastic volunteers passionate about Python, equality, and fostering a welcoming environment for all.

🌟 Volunteer with Us:

By becoming a volunteer, you’ll play a crucial role in making PyLadiesCon a memorable experience for all attendees.

🔗 Apply to Volunteer:

Join us in shaping this remarkable event that aims to empower women in the Python community and beyond. Your involvement will make a difference and provide invaluable networking opportunities and personal growth.

While the conference is still in the planning phase, we want to ensure we have a strong team of dedicated volunteers ready to help us bring this vision to life.

If you have any questions or need further information, please don’t hesitate to contact our volunteer coordinator at:

pyladiescon@pyladies.com

Thank you for your unwavering support and dedication to the PyLadies community. Let’s make PyLadiesCon an extraordinary celebration of women in Python!

Global Council Announcement

2021-06-20T18:50:00Z

2020 was quite a complicated year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, humanity has faced multiple unforeseen challenges, to tell the truth, in this modern era no one imagined having to experience something like what is happening. But we would also like to highlight that 2020 has given us a new perspective on how we see things, on everything we take for granted. This was the year we rediscovered the spirit of solidarity and community.

Today, as we see vaccines being rolled out all around the world, we can begin the summer with so much hope and gratitude.

The PyLadies Global Council wants to give a special thanks to all the organizers of the different PyLadies chapters in the world, because despite the difficulties and challenges they have continued to give their time and effort to the community, finding new ways of communicating and staying together.

We are working hard to establish our new goals as a council so that we can move forward together to build our community therefore, we will send out regular updates - so please stay tuned !

If you would like to get in touch or have any questions:

council@pyladies.com

Thanks again to the entire community for your commitment and willingness to continue contributing to share knowledge in this community.

Announcing the Inaugural PyLadies Global Council

2020-09-21T18:50:00Z

Announcing the Inaugural PyLadies Global Council

We’re thrilled to announce the results for the inaugural PyLadies Global Council!

The Global Council has 9 seats, including 6 seats selected by public election with a 2 year service commitment and 3 seats selected by application with a 1 year service commitment. Additionally the Council has a diversity and inclusion requirement that sets a maximum of 3 seats to be filled by members from the same counry of residence.

The inaugural Council members include:

Ana Cecília Vieira Silva (Brazil) - 2 year term
Juliana Ferreira Alves (Brazil) - 2 year term
Ana Valeria Calderón Briz (México) - 2 year term
Jessica Upani (Namibia) - 2 year term
Lynn Root (United States of America) - 2 year term
Tania Allard (United Kingdom) - 2 year term
Sarah Adigwe (Nigeria) - 1 year term
Marie-Louise Annan (United Kingdom) - 1 year term
Bethany Garcia (United States of America) - 1 year term

Election Summary

The public election results have been computed and if you voted, you can use your Helios ID and password to view the results here. Below is a summary of the election.

Votes Cast

Candidate	Votes Received
Ana Cecília Vieira Silva	140
Ana Valeria Calderón Briz	102
Jessica Upani	95
Juliana Ferreira Alves	123
Lynn Root	90
Olga Berezovsky	67
Sayantika Banik	85
Tania Allard	87
Tereza Iofciu	64

436 ballots were sent out of which 192 votes were cast, amounting for 44.03% voter turn out.

Voting by Country

Country	Number Votes
Brazil	80
Unknown (* No local chapter or PyLadies Remote)	36
United States of America	29
Mexico	7
Germany	6
India	6
Canada	4
Ghana	4
Australia	4
United Kingdom	4
Uganda	3
Nigeria	2
Sweden	2
Spain	1
Guatemala	1
Colombia	1
Ireland	1
Thailand	1

Voting by Voting Member’s Preferred Language

Language	Number Votes
English	100
Portuguese	77
Spanish	14
French	1

Application Summary

For seats selected by applications, 7 applications were received and reviewed by 5 PyLadies organizers including: Mariatta Wijaya (PyLadies Vancouver), Débora Azevedo (PyLadies Brazil), Niharika Krishnan (PyLadies Chennai), Annemarie Paul (Pyladies Hamburg, Mariana Dias Guilardi (PyLadies São Paulo). All applications were anonomiyzed by election coordinator Lorena Mesa before being sent for review.

Based on the votes provided, the third seat resulted in a tie between two applications. The tie was broken using the break-tie.py script:

python break-ties.py -n 1 \
-c "Name of applicant 1" \
"Name of application 2" 
['Reshama Shaikh']

Contact

For any questions regarding the PyLadies Global Council selection contact the election coordinator Lorena Mesa at lorena@pyladies.com.

Announcement for Registering PyLadies Members

2020-07-01T18:50:00Z

Announcement for Registering PyLadies Members

This has been a busy past many months for PyLadies!

As we shared on our blog in August 2019, PyLadies has been hard at work, revamping our PyLadies presence as well as our global leadership. Why? To enable us to better run our chapters, not only locally but globally. The intent is to bring together all of our local chapters, to help us collaborate, to share ideas and also start a PyLadies Global Council , which will be responsible for overseeing the Global PyLadies Community.

To do this, however, we need your help! We want to engage with our PyLadies members! Starting today, PyLadies members can register to become a basic member or a voting member.

As of today we have registration available in:

We’re currently in the process of translating our registration documentation into Arabic. If you’d like to help with translation, let us know by adding your voice to the GitHub issue here.

Questions? You can open an issue on the PyLadies Info repo here. Or else join us in PyLadies Slack! As always, you can keep up to date with the work for PyLadies Global through the PyLadies Global repo where monthly meeting minutes are posted, such as Feb 2020 minutes.

Thank you to the volunteers for their translation efforts:

Portuguese: Débora Azevedo
Spanish: Diana Rodriguez
Russian: Volodymyr Kirichinets
Chinese: Georgi Ker
French: Georgi Ker

As well as a thank you to the PyLadies Global Interim Admins and broader team!

PyLadies Global Council Selection Process Voting Now Open!

2019-12-18T18:50:00Z

PyLadies Global Council Selection Process Voting Now Open!

The PyLadies Global Interim team has now opened voting for PyLadies Chapter organizers to select one of three proposals for how the inaugural PyLadies Global Council election will function.

All information about voting can be found on the PyLadies Global Organizing repository on issue #50. The proposals have been translated by volunteer community members to various languages: Arabic, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese (Mandarin). We’d like to thank Python community members for stepping up and for helping PyLadies in the translation effort including Fadma Adam, Tania Allard, Debora Azevedo, Philippe Gagnon, Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer, Maria Ronacher, Elizaveta Shashkova, Ivy Fung, and volunteers in the Python Software Foundation Translation Workgroup.

Questions? Email info@pyladies.com or else ask in the PyLadies Slack.

Help us decide our PyLadies Projects and PyLadies Global Council Selection Process!

2019-11-04T18:50:00Z

Help us decide our PyLadies Projects and PyLadies Global Council Selection Process!

The PyLadies Global Interim team has continued to meet monthly to discuss the future of our PyLadies Project teams and our PyLadies Global Council.

PyLadies Projects

We have an open GitHub issue on selecting the initial PyLadies Projects we’d like to focus on. PyLadies Projects will be managed as open source projects and be focused to working on one specific area. For example, we have PyLadies Technology and Infrastructure Project proposal open. All Project teams are open to any self-identifying PyLadies member.

Please weigh in today on these teams! We will close the PyLadies Project issue on November 18 2019 23:59:59 Anywhere on Earth.

Selecting the PyLadies Global Council

Additionally there is an open GitHub Issue discussing how the PyLadies Global Council selection process will work. If you have thoughts on how the selection should work, what requirements should be in place for Council members, or more please add your feedback on the issue today! We will close the PyLadies Project issue on November 18 2019 23:59:59 Anywhere on Earth.

Stay in touch with PyLadies and PyLadies Global!

Have something you want the PyLadies Global interim team to work on? Please add your item under “New Business” to our next meeting - which you can find on the PyLadies Global Organizing Repo. If you are just looking to stay updated on our work, all meetings have minutes and published notes.

As always, please join us on Slack! You can sign up at: https://slackin.pyladies.com/.

PyLadies Interim Global Team:

Debora Azevedo (@Debora Azevedo)
Rachell Calhoun (@rachell)
Jes Ford (@jesford)
Georgi Ker (@Georgi Ker)
Katia Lira (@katia)
Lorena Mesa (@lorenanicole)
Mariatta Wijaya (@mariatta)
Carol Willing (@willingc)
Elaine Wong (@elaine)

Important PyLadies Update

2019-08-15T18:50:00Z

Important PyLadies Update

As PyLadies enters its ninth year, we’re taking steps to refresh PyLadies' online presence and introduce a new approach to how PyLadies will manage itself globally.

To help us get the ball rolling, we have some news below to share and some action items we need you to complete. Please also share this email with your co-organizers.

Chapter Update

Our PyLadies chapter directory has gone stale and we need to know if you are still organizing! If you are a chapter organizer, please check your PyLadies chapter email address. if you don’t see an email titled “Important PyLadies Update”, please email info@pyladies.com.

Where to stay in touch

When PyLadies began, we setup a few places to communicate online including IRC and Google Groups. As of September 15, 2019 we will be retiring these communities and encourage all our members to join us on the PyLadies Slack! You can sign up at: https://slackin.pyladies.com/.

When you sign up introduce yourself in the #introductions channel and if you are an organizer you can ping @mariatta, @lorenanicole, or @elaine to be added to our private #organizers channel.

New GitHub repository for PyLadies resources!

PyLadies has created a repository where you can submit your chapter resources from talks and workshops you’ve ran! All submitted materials will be free to reuse for your chapter to use and draw inspiration for. When using material created by others, remember to attribute the creator as outlined in the resource materials.

Have more questions? Consult the repository README or open an issue! We also have a #chapter-resources Slack channel.

PyLadies is creating a global governance model and we need your input!

After consulting with a group of international PyLadies organizers and stakeholders at PyCon USA 2019, PyLadies has decided to take steps to develop a global governance model. We’re looking for comments and feedback on the model, inspired by R-Ladies, which you can read on GitHub here. We will be accepting comments until September 15, 2019 11:59:59pm Anywhere on Earth.

This proposal only captures the structure for the global governance model. Who will be active in this group and how we will select that group will be determined after the request for comment period has passed.

Looking to keep up to date with the interim PyLadies global workgroup?

Every month an interim working group focusing on the global PyLadies community meets every second Wednesday of the month. All notes can be found on the PyLadies global repo in the monthly issues and will be posted in #feed-global-minutesin Slack. Have something you want to add to the next meeting? We invite you to add your notes to next month’s (and all future months) agenda!

Thank you PyLadies! We’re thrilled to continue PyLadies work into the future and welcome all feedback!

PyLadies Interim Global Team:

Rachell Calhoun (@rachell)
Katia Lira (@katia)
Lorena Mesa (@lorenanicole)
Mariatta Wijaya (@mariatta)
Carol Willing (@willingc)
Elaine Wong (@elaine)

EuroPython 2016, a first time participant's thoughts!

2016-08-01T18:50:00Z

EuroPython wrapped up July 24th in Bilbao, Spain. As a first time participant I was thrilled to attend, speak, and represent the PSF as a member of the Board of Directors!

First of all, the entire ambience of EuroPython was cool. The Gaudì-esque styled venue, the Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall, is in the heart of new Bilbao only a few minutes walk from the internationally acclaimed Guggenheim. I really enjoyed the EuroPython attendee gift, a beach towel! It came in great use when I visited the beach; Bilbao is only 30 minutes from the Bay of Biscay.

Something else I noticed at EuroPython was the range of languages spoken in the halls. From Spanish (or Castellano to those that speak Euskara, the Basque language) to Dutch to Norwegian I met Pythonistas from all across Europe (and a few from North and South America as well). I had arrived early to EuroPython to participate as a DjangoGirls coach where I tutored in Spanish, a brand new experience for me! If I had to sum up EuroPython in one word it’d be cosmopolitan.

Some of my favorite talks

Rachel Willmer’s keynote 20 Years without a ‘Proper’ Job - generally a discussion on why following your own path is the best path and how Willmer has been doing it and loving it!
Cameron Macleod’s Implementing a Sound Identifier in Python ** also presented in Spanish! - a review on Macleod’s implementation using the ‘magical’ technology behind Shazaam’s old sound identification platform, aptly named abracadabra on GitHub. While Macleod didn’t have a fully functional prototype he did challenge us to try it ourselves!
Larry Hastings' Day 1 Lightning Talk Life as a Meme - basically how Larry Hastings became an internet meme affectionately known as #dsdad <3.
Daniele Procida’s Mind, Machines and Python - an interesting chat about what it could mean to consider intelligence programmatically if we try to understand the structure of intelligence itself. Procida explores the idea of consciousness then as a ‘tangled hierarchy’ that consists of self-referencing loops, aka things that we use daily in Python programming.
Radomir Dopieralski’s Making robots walk with Python - exactly as it sounds, a chat about how Dopieralski used Python to make robots walk. The talk is more on the mechanics of what it means to engineer a robot vs. the Python behind the robots. Oh and it has lots of cute robots!
Stéphane Wirtel’s Exploring our Python Interpreter with CPython 3.6.0a+ - an excellent introduction to CPython interpreter and how to contribute to CPython. Also, a great proposal for a CPython patch so we can more easily see the Python bytecode generated when we do a thing!

All of the talks are available on YouTube.

If you haven’t been to EuroPython before, I strongly encourage you to go! A beautiful setting with great tourist perks, Pythonistas from all over Europe, and great talks? Well, I think you’ve got nothing to lose.

Tweet me if you have questions or want to know more about EuroPython (specifically speaking if you are considering applying next year).

Web Development

2015-05-03T18:50:00Z

Django is one of the most popular web frameworks. It’s a great option if you want to use Python to build web apps. Start with the official Django polls tutorial or the Django Girls blog tutorial. Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices For Django 1.11 was co-written by one of the co-founders of PyLadies!

Some popular Django hosting options:

Webfaction
Heroku and Getting Started with Django from Heroku: A tutorial using Django and deploying with Heroku. Assumes some knowledge of virtual environments.
OpenShift
Google App Engine

Other web frameworks

Experiment with all of them! Here are a few links to get you started.

Pyramid (merger of Pylons and repoze.bfg)
Flask
A huge list of Python web frameworks

A PyLadies-packed PyCon 2015

2015-03-23T18:50:00Z

Want to pack your PyCon schedule with PyLadies events? Here are all the details!

For easier calendaring (is that a word?), we’ve made a public Google calendar that you all can follow: XML or iCal. It will be updated in case anything changes, too.

PyLadies Cocktail Mixer with Twitter

Day: Thursday, April 9th Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm RSVP?: Required - details below Location: Santos (5 minute walk from conference center)

Kick off PyCon with a friendly cocktail hour with PyLadies and Twitter!

RSVP via EventBrite!! Spots limited!

PyLadies Booth

When:

Thursday: Opening Reception, 6pm - 9pm
Friday: 8am - 5pm
Saturday: 8am - 5pm

Where: Expo hall, Montreal Convention Center RSVP?: None

Stop by the PyLadies booth at PyCon to meet chapter organizers, grab stickers, and pick up an especially-made-for-PyCon PyLadies t-shirt (sold by donation)!

PyLadies Auction

When: Saturday, April 11th, 6:30pm Where: Room 516, Montreal Convention Center RSVP?: Required

Come check out the 3rd annual PyLadies charity auction! All proceeds go towards PyLadies' fundraising for financial aid next year’s PyCon.

$5 cover charge - sign up via your PyCon registration, or at the door!

Want to donate an item for auction? Shoot Lynn an email.

PyLadies Lunch

When: Sunday, April 12th, 12pm Where: Room 516, Montreal Convention Center RSVP?: Required: Be sure to sign up here!

Thanks to the generous support of the PSF and the conference, PyLadies will be having a luncheon for the women at PyCon! Join us for a free lunch and meet your fellow women Pythonistas! RSVP via EventBrite!

Open Spaces

When: TBD Where: Various conference locations RSVP?: None

Open spaces are a way for people to come together to talk about topics, ideas, or whatever they want. Any subject that two or more attendees want to talk about is a candidate for an Open Space. Just show up if you want to attend! More information about open spaces can be found here.

PyLadies GPG Key Signing Open Space

When: 6-7pm - targeting Sunday afternoon Where: Room 512BF RSVP?: None

This year we’re trying something new: A GPG Key Signing Open Space. This will be open to everyone. We will have how-tos for the very beginner of GPG key signings and how to use PGP encryption. Not sure what GPG is? Read up a little here.

Be sure to follow @pyladies and our calendar (linked above) for updates on when/where the open space will be!

PyLadies Sprint

When: Monday April 13th - 16th Where: TBD RSVP?: None

Another new “event”! This year, PyLadies will host a sprint on all things related to PyLadies, including our website, kit, and Python package. This is great for folks of all levels of programming experience wanting to contribute to PyLadies.

Be sure to follow @pyladies and our calendar (linked above) for updates on which room(s) the sprint will be!

More information about sprints at PyCon can be found here.

PyLadies at PyTennessee

2015-02-01T18:50:00Z

PyLadies at PyTN 2015

PyTennessee will be kicking off its second annual event on Feb 6th to 8th, 2015 in Nashville, TN.

The speaker lineup looks strong and a broad representation of Python’s many uses. PyTennessee’s blog profiles some of the speakers including some fabulous PyLadies. It’s interesting reading and fun to see what other Pythonistas are working on.

Friday night

Things will be getting started with a PyLadies Dinner hosted by Eventbrite. Rumor has it that there will be PyLadies cupcakes for dessert. Yum!

Saturday

We love the workshops for Young Coders. Katie Cunningham and her team will be sharing some fun coding activities and very colorful Raspberry Pis with 12 to 17 year olds.

Sunday

A special day devoted to PyLadies awesomeness and our positive impact on the Python community. There’s also a pretty special person giving the closing keynote.

Thanks to all who have been working on organizing and preparing this event. We’re looking forward to a fun time in the ‘Music City’.

Coming soon

Later this month, Southern California PyLadies groups are going to SCALE 13x (Southern California Linux Expo). PyLadies will be having a booth in the expo. If you will be attending or speaking at SCALE 13x, please let us know or stop by the booth.

Share your ideas and good news

Do you or a PyLadies friend love to write? Do you have a handy tip to share? Are you working on a project that would like to welcome other PyLadies?

We would love to hear about it. Please consider jotting down your thoughts and submitting it to the PyLadies website. It’s cool to hear what things are going on in your chapter.

Donate to PyLadies @ PyCon 2015!

2014-12-01T18:50:00Z

TL;DR: Donate to PyLadies for PyCon!

With PyCon 2015 planning in high gear, PyLadies is revving up to raise funds to help women attend the biggest Python conference of the year.

Just like last year, we’re hoping to raise at least $40,000 to help women attend this coming PyCon. Here’s the breakdown:

Our numbers

In addition to registration, it will take about $500-1000 per woman in North America to attend PyCon 2015 in Montreal
In addition to registration, it will take about $1000-2000 per woman outside of North America to attend PyCon 2015 in Montreal
We’re using all of the $12k that PyLadies raised at last year’s PyCon auction to increase the aid pool, in addition to raising $40,000.

Why PyLadies? Our effect on the community

(percentages are not at all accurate, and are roughly estimated based on guessing names-to-gender scripts):

PyCon 2011 had less than 10% women attendees (speaker % unknown)
PyLadies started in late 2011
PyCon 2012 had about 11% women attendees, and about the same in speakers. 2013 with about 14 chapters, PyCon had over 20% women attendees and 22% women speakers.
For PyCon 2014, we saw that about one-third of attendees and speakers were women.
No overhead - we’re all volunteers! ;-)
Lastly, donations tax deductible since PyLadies is under the financial enclave of the Python Software Foundation

What you will get in return

Unless you explicitly choose to be anonymous (though the online donation site or in private discussions), we will profusely thank you via our public channels (Twitter, this blog, and at our PyCon booth)
Provide a detailed write-up and financial introspection of how many women we’ve helped because of this campaign
Visibility! It shows the PyCon/Python community that your company/you are serious about women in tech - which can directly benefit sponsors with increased hiring pool of female Pythonistas.

Ways to donate

All of the following methods are tax-deductible with funds going to the Python Software Foundation, a 501©3 charitable organization.

Through our donation page (ideal for individuals)
Email me at lynn@lynnroot.com (ideal for companies or anyone needing a proper invoice, or individualized solutions)
Become a sponsor for PyCon (this is more indirect and less potent, but overall helpful to PyCon)

More information is available on the PyCon Financial Aid site if you would like to apply for financial aid for PyCon, whether you are a PyLady or PyGent.

Fundraising for PyLadies for PyCon 2015

2014-11-02T18:50:00Z

TL;DR: Donate to PyLadies for PyCon!

It’s that time again! With PyCon 2015 planning in high gear, PyLadies is revving up to raise funds to help women attend the biggest Python conference of the year.

Last year, we raised $40,000. We’re hoping to do that again to help women attend PyCon. Here’s the breakdown:

Our numbers

In addition to registration, it will take about $500-1000 per woman in North America to attend PyCon 2015 in Montreal
In addition to registration, it will take about $1000-2000 per woman outside of North America to attend PyCon 2015 in Montreal

Why PyLadies? Our effect on the community

(percentages are not at all accurate, and are roughly estimated based on guessing names-to-gender scripts):

PyCon 2011 had less than 10% women attendees (speaker % unknown)
PyLadies started in late 2011
PyCon 2012 had about 11% women attendees, and about the same in speakers.
- This included giving PyLadies and Women Who Code booths to help promote our messages
At the time of PyCon 2014, PyLadies had over 35 chapters, doing stuff like:
- hosts events like learning python, learning git/github,
- providing space for study groups,
- enriching members with speaker series (like Guido van Rossum!),
- events to help think up of talks to submit for PyCon (as well as DjangoCon),
- hold events for folks to practice their talk, etc
PyLadies work showed:
- PyCon 2013 had over 20% women attendees, and about 22% women speakers.
- PyCon 2014 had over 30% women attendees, and about a third of the speakers were women.
No overhead - we’re all volunteers! ;-)
Lastly, donations tax deductible since PyLadies is under the financial enclave of the Python Software Foundation

What we’re actively doing:

We’re using all of the $12k that PyLadies raised at last year’s PyCon auction to increase the aid pool - something that we were hoping to actually use towards growing PyLadies locations (but it’s okay! $10k for more women friends at PyCon!)
We’re bugging companies and individuals do donate (hence this blog post!).

What you will get in return

Unless you explicitly choose to be anonymous (though the online donation site or in private discussions), we will profusely thank you via our public channels (Twitter, this blog, and at our PyCon booth)
Provide a detailed write-up and financial introspection of how many women we’ve helped because of this campaign
Visibility! It shows the PyCon/Python community that your company/you are serious about women in tech - which can directly benefit sponsors with increased hiring pool of female Pythonistas.

Ways to donate

All of the following methods are tax-deductible with funds going to the Python Software Foundation, a 501©3 charitable organization.

Through our donation page (ideal for individuals)
Email me at lynn@lynnroot.com (ideal for companies or anyone needing a proper invoice, or individualized solutions)
Become a sponsor for PyCon (this is more indirect and less potent, but overall helpful to PyCon)

More information is available on the PyCon Financial Aid site if you would like to apply for financial aid for PyCon, whether you are a PyLady or PyGent.

Community

2014-09-14T18:50:00Z

Are you interested in doing a women’s Python workshop of your own in your city? Email any of the organizers and we’ll help you get the word out. Here are some resources:

Workshops for Women

Community-building

Workshops are just one part of PyLadies' effort to increase the female count in the Python world. PyLadies is a community of female developers who care about helping other women get into Python.

We plan to put together a package of materials to help you build your own local women’s Python community. We’ll be posting a “PyLadies Kit” here soon.

Austin Ladies Hack

2014-09-01T18:50:00Z

PyLadies Austin hosted Austin’s first ever Ladies-focussed Hackathon - Austin Ladies Hack, from Aug 15th-17th, 2014.

On Friday, Ladies met at the Flying Saucer to meet with fellow hackers, discuss ideas and form teams. Thanks to the PSF, food at this event was free to all the ladies who attended. On the 2nd day, the hackers were treated to a yummy breakfast by hosts and sponsors Rackspace. 25 ladies formed 5 teams and promptly started hacking at 10:15 am. They took a brief break for lunch and continued till 5pm, after which some teams met at local coffee houses to continue working on their apps. On the last day, all the teams worked feverishly to finish their apps and presentations before lunch.

Summary of presentations

First to present was Water Your Wallet, who presented an app which will find the cost of watering your plant, based on the type of plant and location. Technologies used: Kivy and Python

Next was a team of all first-time hackathon attendees, including a teenager, presenting Workout Buddies. This app help find workout partners with similar interests and also featured new event creation. Technologies used: Ruby, Sinatra, and Postgres

Third to present were team Symptom Tracker, who made an app to make it easier to track all your symptoms to take to the doctor, and which also allowed tracking for multiple family members. Technologies used: Java and SQLite

App #4 analysed job postings to tune in on skill pairings SkillCluster. Technologies used: Python and SQLAlchemy

Last but not least, Texas Women’s Clinic Finder provided maps and funding information for women’s health in Texas. They also translated their site into Spanish. Technologies used: Python, Google Maps API, Mapbox, and JavaScript.

All attendees were given door prizes - glasses laser-etched with a PyLadies Logo and “Austin Ladies Hack”, made by one of the organizers (Jess F). Special prizes - books from O'Reilly Media - were also handed out to winners of the foosball tournament.

First time hackathon attendees scored the 3rd prize with their app Workout Buddies. Each won a $50 gift card. 2nd prize went to Water Your Wallet, with $150 for each winner. Texas Women’s Clinic Finder scored first prize with $250 each. Cash prizes were generously sponsored by NumFOCUS and eBay, Inc.

More Pics

Twitter hashtag

Thank you to our sponsors!

Without your support this event would not have been possible!

PyLadies, PyCon, and You

2014-08-26T18:50:00Z

This document is curated by PyLadies and shared with the entire Python community.

PyCon Talk Proposals and CFP

PyCon 2018 Call for Proposals (CFP)

PyCon blog post about CFP

PyCon 2018 Important Dates

A list of important dates, including financial aid, can be found on the PyCon website.

Tutorials CFP deadline: November 24, 2017
Talk, Poster, and Education Summit CFP deadline: January 3, 2014
CFP Poster Close: November 1, 2014

Financial Aid

Financial aid application opens: October 23, 2017
Financial aid application closes: February 15, 2018.

Choose your own speaking adventure

PyCon offers many opportunities for speaking:

Formal, traditional spaces:
- talks (30 minutes, a few 45 minute slots)
- tutorials (3 hours of interactive teaching)
- lightning talks (bitesized talks of 5 minutes each)
- posters (an opportunity to talk one on one with others)
And the informal spaces:
- Birds of a Feather sessions (BoFs)
- sprints
- open spaces
- the ever popular hallway track

Whatever you choose, remember “your” Python experiences, whether beginner, advanced or somewhere in between, are valuable. Please consider sharing “your” voice with the community.

Official resources and links from PyCon

Topics and Advice
Speaker Mentors are available! Indicate your interest on your Speaker Profile when you submit your proposal.
PyCon links to Brandon Rhodes’s example proposals

Speaking

Speaker support of awesomeness, Julie Pagano
CR@P I’M SPEAKING AT [insert conference here]! How do I prepare?, Lynn Root
Pro tips for conference talks, Craig Kerstiens
25 minutes is a …, Ned Batchelder
Presentation tips: entertain, educate, practice, Ned Batchelder
You would make an awesome speaker, We Are All Awesome
How to become a public speaker in 1 year, Catt Small
Public Speaking for Nerds, Barbara Shaurette

Watching talks for inspiration

“You can be a speaker at PyCon” by Anna Ravenscroft (PyCon 2013)
“PyLadies Remote: Your First Conference Proposal” by Lacey Williams Henschel (PyLadies Remote 2016)

Past PyCon talks can be found at http://pyvideo.org.

Crafting a good talk proposal

“What your conference proposal is missing”, Sarah Mei
“Conference prompts or how to submit proposals and influence people”, Noel Rappin
“What I learned from reading 429 conference proposals”, Noel Rappin

Encouraging talk submissions

How to encourage new speakers, We Are All Awesome
Getting more women to submit talk proposals, PyLadies blog post

PyLadies Values People

2014-08-25T18:50:00Z

A caring community matters to us

“Thank you.” “I’m so sorry.” “Please forgive me.”

These three simple phrases offer so much compassion and humanity when shared genuinely. As a child, I don’t know that I learned how important those phrases are. Unlike some of you, I didn’t hear those words often enough.

I know that I am human. I have my successes and also my failures. It hurts me when I think that I may have hurt some one else. My optimistic hope for the world is that people will value and cherish other people. With no strings attached, a person is valuable simply because they are a person.

Now, those three simple yet powerful phrases are often used in my own adult life:

“Thank you for…” …helping me learn how to code this feature. …volunteering your time and talents. …understanding that we are individuals with varying needs. …being humane and compassionate to others and yourself.

“I’m so sorry…” …that I arrived late to our meeting. …that I am stressed and let my stress result in unwelcoming and unprofessional behavior. …that I forgot to pause, check my privilege, and listen to you.

“Please forgive me…” …for hurting you in any way. …for letting my stress spill over in to our conversation. …for failing to understand your perspective. …for speaking more than listening.

Here are a few more words I have found helpful as an adult: * Participate. * Prioritize people. * Proactively practice compassion and self-care.

Sometimes people act in ways that compel us to take a moment to pause and think about that person and their perspective. One humble PyLady’s plan: When in doubt, please practice People > Python.

Educational Resources for Community Conduct/Creating Safe Spaces

2014-08-25T18:50:00Z

There are a number of excellent resources on creating healthy, inclusive steps for communities. These are just a few of them. If you think another PyLady would find a resource useful that is not on this list, please submit a pull request or open an issue with the link. Thank you!

The PSF

Ada Initiative

Geek Feminism Wiki

Microaggressions (from Geek Feminism Wiki)

Leslie Hawthorn OSCON 2014 Keynote: “Checking Your Privilege: A How-To for Hard Things”

The Python Software Foundation and the global Python community welcome and encourage participation by everyone. Our community is based on mutual respect, tolerance, and encouragement, and we are working to help each other live up to these principles. We want our community to be more diverse: whoever you are, and whatever your background, we welcome you.

Equally important, we expect all participants in the PyLadies community to follow the Code of Conduct so that everyone can feel safe and welcome at all PyLadies events.

PyLadiesATX event: What's a Web Framework? Python, Django, and more

2014-08-24T18:50:00Z

From August 9-11, I led a 2-part, all-women workshop series on web frameworks & learning Django for PyLadiesATX.

For this class, I decided to teach Django 1.7, and, after verifying my demo project on 2.7 & 3.3, let the students use any Python version they preferred. This ended up working really well: teaching migrations without bothering with South is great, and dealing with 18 very different laptop platforms is a tiny bit easier when pre-existing Python versions aren’t a problem!

The first class in the series was a two-hour session, which began by covering the basics of how the web works (we started with the question, “what happens when you hit ‘enter’ after typing a URL into the browser?”) and where a framework like Django fit into the big picture. We then spent the second half of that first session working to get everyone’s development environments set up, and Django 1.7 installed in a virtualenv. This turned out to be a huge improvement over single-day workshops, as it meant everyone was able to show up to the 2nd class ready to start working immediately. After seeing this work so well for us, I strongly recommend anyone planning a similar workshop consider splitting a setup session out from the main class time.

For the second class, we met in a classroom at a local library and spent all day learning to build a Django application: our simple CRUD app let users submit & view recipes to a “Recipe Minder” site. I tried something new for this class, experimenting with a code-by-diff sort of process: after discussing each new topic and giving the student’s a new assignment to work on, I put short URLs on the slides they could type easily, which pointed to relevant commits on GitHub. I used this more heavily as we progressed - at first the students had to type a complete code update before I gave them a short URL to check against, but as the project got more detailed they would see the URL to the next commit at the same time they were working. Of course, after linking to the first GitHub commit, some students were able to “skip ahead” and work on their own - but for the most part the group kept pace together and ended up completing their projects right around the same time. You can find the code for the finished demo on GitHub, and the slides for both classes here: Part 1, Part 2.

All in all, we had 18 ladies come together to attend both classes. An “Intro to Django” class has been top of PyLadiesATX’s “most requested” list for a while, so I was really glad to finally get this off the ground. Based on the feedback received, I’m already pretty sure I’ll be doing this again next quarter. Meanwhile, if you are interested in running this class for your own local PyLadies chapter, feel free to use the code & slides linked above (all are released under an MIT license, if you’re interested in that sort of thing). Also if you have any questions or comments, please do get in touch! I’d love to hear your thoughts on improving future instances of the class.

Sara is an organizer for PyLadies Austin. Contact her at sara@sarasafavi.com

Python is for everyone

2014-08-06T18:50:00Z

We started PyLadies as a friendly support network for women and a bridge to the larger Python community.

The Python community has enthusiastically supported us in turn, and over the last few years, PyCon has seen a massive surge in diversity of speakers and attendees, and dozens of PyLadies chapters have emerged all over the world.

We believe that tech should be accessible and welcoming to everybody, and we want other groups to be as successful as us.

So, if you want to start a PyLGBT, PyMuslims, PyInuit, PyGreatestGeneration or other under-represented group, we have open-sourced our tools and resources for you to use.

Our handbook and startup kit is here:

http://www.pyladies.com/blog/pip-install-pyladies/

We encourage you to take it as a starting point and use it for your community.

And for support, encouragement, and advice, please join the PyDiversity mailing list:

https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/diversity

and we’ll be there to help.

Together, let’s make Python awesome for everyone.

The first Django Girls happened!

2014-08-05T18:50:00Z

This is a story about turning 45 women into Django developers.

I bought the djangogirls.org domain on 15th April. At that time I didn’t have plans to do Django Girls in any near future but I’ve kind of known for a long time that I would organize it one day. Just two weeks later I was going to Berlin for ThingsCon and Markus Holtermann tweeted me asking if we could meet. This meeting finally gave me a much needed kick in the butt to just go and do it.

I emailed Ola Sendecka just two weeks after that, when the EuroPython team agreed to host us. I knew Ola was the perfect person to help me with that: she is the best female Django developer I have the pleasure to know, I love working with her and we both really care about bringing more women into the Django world. Back then it was supposed to be this one-time thing we were doing to help bring more diversity into EuroPython, but it grew out of proportions on the very first day after we showed it to the world. I’m so happy it did!

The first Django Girls

For the first event we received 310 applications from 33 different countries. We were really stressed about running our first workshop. Yeah, we’ve done huge conferences before, but this is quite different. This is different because we care so much about good experiences: we know that the first experience is crucial and we wanted all of our 45 Django Girls to fall in love with programming.

The first Django Girls took place on Monday on the very first day of EuroPython 2014 in Berlin. We’ve managed to get together an amazing group of 45 women coming from 15 different countries. 15 great coaches showed up to spend their free time before, during and after the workshop teaching our attendees about the Internet, computers, the command line, Python, Django, open source and much much more.

We loved the energy, atmosphere, people and everything about this day. Our expectations were met to the fullest extent. 90% of our attendees finished the whole tutorial and successfully deployed their blogging application to Heroku. You could feel the excitement in the air! It was a challenge to make them stop and go get some rest after 11 (11!) hours of intense programming.

Experience

We believe that first experiences are the most important and I also know that there is a lot that we can do to make this first experience friendly, positive and leaving only good memories.

That’s why we invested a lot of time and energy in creating a great atmosphere. We did this by caring about little things like nice tablecloths, colorful posters, fresh flowers, sweet cupcakes and laser-cut Django Pony necklaces. But also by making sure that everyone was happy, motivated and felt totally awesome and accomplished.

I can’t stress enough how important these little big details are.

Tutorial

During the workshop everyone worked in small team (3 beginners + 1 coach) and they met each other before online on Google Hangout or Skype to do the installation and just get to know each other, so that there would beat least three friendly faces during the workshop.

All groups were following the tutorial. We spent a lot of time browsing the web for the perfect tutorial: one that is up to date, has an interesting topic and is beginner-friendly. And I don’t mean beginner-friendly in the terms of someone who is new just to Django. We were aiming for beginners who use their computers to only browse the Internet until now. There was not any resource that would fit that specific group. Shocking, isn’t it?

So we decided to write our own. 2 people, 5 evenings + nights, the tutorial was.. far from done. We didn’t have any more time to test it before the workshop, so we decided to do it on production: what’s a better environment to test it than 45 curious women, right? :)

While writing the tutorial, we focused on a couple of things:

learning by making mistakes - this is how we learn stuff in real life, too. Every step involved creating a bug first, learning how to read and understand the error and then fixing it. It made them understand how it all work together. It made them not afraid of errors, problems and bugs. This approach also showed them what programming is all about: solving problems. It worked out amazingly well.
assuming our reader knows nothing - if you’re a programmer, it is hard to put yourself in the mindset of a person who knows nothing about programming or computers. All other resources on the internet assumed that you know what a terminal is or that you’re familiar with urls, views and templates.
fast achievements - programming can get very frustrating if you spend a few hours on it, fix lots of bugs and accomplish nothing that looks real. That’s why we’re focusing on fast effects - doing things not necessarily in the right order, but in an order that gives rapid small wins that boost productivity and motivation.
“you’re awesome” - we’re fighting the impostor syndrome with every step. Celebrating small achievements is important.

All of this turned out to be really important during the workshop.

EuroPython

But Django Girls weren’t done after just one day: it was only a kick off to a full week filled with Python awesomeness.

Thanks to the EuroPython organizers' generosity, every attendee received a full pass to the entire conference for free. We wondered if this week would be a waste of time or an actual learning experience for them, but decided to just try it and see.

It was the best decision ever: everyone showed up on the conference for the whole week, attending talks, trainings and parties. They had fun, they learned something new and it was really empowering for them to just go to some tutorial and be able to follow the instructions because they know their way around the command line already.

The best thing: you could actually see a difference that Django Girls made at the conference. You could see A LOT more women on the corridors and session rooms. It also gave us time to really get to know each other and make some meaningful connections. We were saying good-byes with tears in our eyes.

But the most wonderful thing happened during EuroPython Sprints! The Django Girls attendees also came for the Sprint time. We joined the Django team in their room and decided to show Django Girls how this open source thing works. Thanks to that, many of them contributed back to the tutorial by fixing typos and grammar or even writing whole new chapters on their own! Our inbox was flooded with Github notifications and the tutorial’s repository received more than 30 pull requests. Yay!

<3

Of course, all of this wouldn’t have happen without the support from our amazing sponsors and coaches! Thank you :)

What’s next?

Django Girls @ EuroPython was a wonderful experience for us, attendees and coaches. The 2nd Django Girls just happened at PyCon Australia thanks to great work done by Elena Williams.

While choosing our attendees, we focused on looking for leaders. People who will get back to their hometown and do something awesome with their new skills. We also spent some time to write down everything we’ve learned in a Django Girls Organizer’s Manual. Thanks to our amazing attendees, Django Girls will now happen in 20 new cities!

You can help us make a small dent in the universe, too. Want to organize, coach, sponsor or support? Drop us a line and let’s talk! hello@djangogirls.org

CfP: PyCon 2015

2014-08-04T18:50:00Z

ZOMG It’s happening! It’s back!

The call for proposals for PyCon 2015 is now open! Submit your proposals for talks, tutorials, or posters to PyCon in Montreal, closing on September 15th. Financial aid applications will open up September 1st, and close January 1st. If you’d like to help women attend PyCon, please consider donating to PyLadies!

Last PyCon, we had many women give tutorials, talks, and posters, setting the record of 33% female speakers. CAN WE DO BETTER?!

Keep on the lookout for local and global PyLadies Meetups and Hangouts to help the Python community brainstorm proposals!

PyCon’s site has many resources and advice for ideating and creating a proposal (or two, or three…nothing is stopping you!).

Tutorials and How-tos

2014-07-29T18:50:00Z

Learn Python The Hard Way
How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
Intermediate Python
Introduction to Twisted: A thorough introduction to Twisted and Asynchronous programming in Python.
Code School’s Try Python: A free online tutorial for learning Python with Code School.
tryGit: Learn Git with GitHub& Code School’s new tutorial.
Model, View, Controller explained.
Basic Python Syntax Tutorial. (Helpful for both new to programming in general, and new to Python with prior programming experience).
Online Python Tutor: Learn & Practice programming in your browser.
Python Puzzles: Puzzles to solve using Python, by the Boston Python Workshop (solutions included)

Call for Blog Posts: Share Your Inspiring Stories

2014-07-27T18:50:00Z

PyLadies wants to hear your inspiring stories about Python programming and Python community leadership.

As our contributing instructions say: “We’re looking for posts about Python and the ladies doing cool things with it.”

Whether you run a PyLadies or DjangoGirls chapter, maintain a Python library, or are simply learning and want to show off your Python project, we want to hear about it and help share your successes with the world.

First read the contributing instructions for pyladies.com, then get started.

If you run into any problems while trying to post, file an issue so we can help.

Attend Google I/O with PyLadies!

2014-04-26T18:50:00Z

Are you a PyLady who missed the lottery to attend Google I/O? Well, now is your chance! As a PyLady, you have an opportunity to buy one of 50 allotted tickets from Google for $300.

PLEASE NOTE: No additional financial aid will be given! You are responsible for your own funds, travel arrangements, etc. Feel free to coordinate on the PyLadies Google Group mailing list or others (e.g. DevChix, Systers, etc) for roommates, etc.

About Google I/O:

June 25th & 26th
San Francisco, CA at Moscone Center
$300 for a ticket (versus $900 of the regular sticker price)
Social networking opportunities for women
Link: https://www.google.com/events/io

Requirements:

Identify as a woman (emphatically trans & queer friendly)
Are not a Google employee
Are able to arrange and pay for your own travel and stay (absolutely NO additional financial aid will be given)
You are applying for yourself (not on behalf of someone else)
Not already signed up/registered to attend

General Criteria (including, but not limited to):

Usage of Google Apps, products, and APIs
Involvement with PyLadies, Python, and/or the Open Source community
Ability to give back to Python/PyLadies community

Timeline:

Applications due: Friday, May 9th at 11:59 PM Pacific Time
Notifications of recipients: Friday, May 16th (roughly)
Award recipients must register within 2 weeks of receiving award letter and signup process

All information here will not be made public, and will be reviewed by PyLadies leadership only. Please contact us regarding any questions you have.

APPLY HERE

pip install pyladies

2014-04-18T18:50:00Z

At PyCon this year, I had the pleasure of announcing pip install pyladies.

Yes! You really can install a PyLadies package! It’s available on PyPI, with the handbook portion available on Read the Docs.

The pyladies package contains all that a PyLady needs to start her own local PyLadies:

Complete handbook that walks through how to start a PyLadies group,
A script that launches the handbook, with more functionality slated to be added, including:
- Interactive script to submit initial interest form,
- Interactive script to submit final registration form,
- Tools to admins to interact with Twitter and Meetup APIs,
Workshop materials for ideas and blueprints to run events,
Images and other assets for swag printing, global and local logos, etc.

This is the bare minimum for a shippable viable product - so issues/ideas and pull requests are welcomed!!

PyLadies @ PyCon 2014

2014-03-27T18:50:00Z

PyLadies Activities at PyCon 2014 in Montréal

So many happenings! Add these PyLadies events to your schedule! Or bookmark this quick reference link.

PyLadies Mixer

When: 7:30PM Thursday, April 10 Where: 5 minute walk from conference venue (location details given to lottery winners)

Kick off PyCon with a friendly cocktail hour with PyLadies and Twitter! Sign up to enter the lottery before the end of day Sunday, March 31st to attend the #PyLadiesMixer, taking place in Montreal on April 10th!

PyLadies Booth

When: Thursday evening; Friday and Saturday 10AM-5PM Where: Expo hall, Montreal Convention Center

Be sure to visit the PyLadies booth at PyCon to grab a PyLadies sticker and get a PyLadies shirt (sold by donation).

PyLadies Auction

When: 6:30PM Saturday, April 12 Where: Room 710B, Montreal Convention Center

PyCon: Last year, PyLadies held its first auction at PyCon in Santa Clara and raised over $10,000. This year, we have the audacity to do it again! Come with thick wallets or your employer’s credit card and bid on items contributed by OpenStack, Spotify, Rackspace, Facebook, the Python Software Foundation, Numerical Algorithm Group, and more! More information can be found here.

PyCon Lunch with PyLadies

When: 12:00PM Sunday, April 13 Where: Room 516, Montreal Convention Center

Thanks to the generous support of the PSF, PyLadies will be having a luncheon for women on the third day of the conference! Join PyLadies for a free lunch and meet your fellow women Python developers. RSVP via Eventbrite and more information can be found on the PyCon site.

Open Spaces

Where: Various PyCon locations

Open spaces are a way for people to come together to talk about topics, ideas or whatever they want. Any subject that two or more attendees want to talk about is a candidate for an Open Space. Just show up if you want to attend! There are manyplanned open space meetups (as well as ad-hoc ones, too!). Here are a few highlighted ones:

Trans* Pythonistas and Allies Meetup
Geekfeminism and feminist hackerspace meetup
Mani/Pedi party - check back on the open spaces site for more information!

To our Sponsors: THANK YOU

The following companies stepped up in a big, big way to help increase diversity at PyCon. We are so encouraged by their support.

At PyCon 2014 - 2nd PyLadies Luncheon

2014-03-10T18:50:00Z

Thanks to the generous support of the PSF, PyLadies will be having a luncheon for attendees who identify as women on the third day of the PyCon 2014 conference!

More than one hundred PyLadies attended last year’s lunch at PyCon 2013, and this year the venue will be large enough to accommodate even more!

In order to help the organizers plan the event, we highly recommend you procure your free ticket now, via the RSVP link below.

Who - Anybody attending PyCon 2014 who identifies as a woman When - Sunday, April 13, 2014 during lunch Where - Room 516 at the Convention Ctr RSVP - Eventbrite - Free but exclusive to conference attendees.

The PyLadies Lunch is a great opportunity for women attending the conference who love Python, or who want to learn more about Python or PyLadies, to meet others in the same boat in a fun, relaxed environment.

We cordially invite you to join us and make new friends, forge connections, and share Python programming stories with folks from all around the world.

Contributing your first patch to Python: PyLadies office hours

2014-03-05T18:50:00Z

PyLadies is proud to be working with the Python Software Foundation to support paid Python internships for women this summer through the GNOME Outreach Program for Women.

Please visit the project page for the full program details and how to apply!

Applications are due by March 19th. You do not need to be a student to apply.

Part of the application process is submitting a patch for a bug in Python. Need help getting started? We’re running virtual office hours this Sunday.

What: Submit your first patch to Python! When: Sunday, March 9th, from 12pm - 6pm Eastern (UTC - 5). Where: IRC, in the #pyladies channel on the freenode network. Who: Anyone interested in contributing to Python. While we particularly encourage prospective OPW and Google Summer of Code interns to attend, this event is open to everyone.

These are unstructured office hours; you’ll go through this material on environment setup and contributing your first patch at your own pace, with support from a great group of mentors on IRC.

The setup material includes instructions for installing an IRC client and joining the #pyladies IRC channel.

See you on Sunday!

Get paid to contribute to Python this summer

2014-03-03T18:50:00Z

The Python Software Foundation is proud to announce that it is sponsoring CPython internships for women this summer through the GNOME Outreach Program for Women.

Please visit our project page for the full program details and how to apply!

What: Earn a $5500 USD stipend while contributing to the CPython interpreter and standard library. When: This is a full-time summer internship lasting from May 19th through August 18th. Where: Anywhere! This is remote internship, with most communication happening on mailing lists, bug trackers, and IRC. Who: This internship is open to anyone who identifies as a woman or is genderqueer, genderfluid, or genderfree. Note that unlike Google Summer of Code, you do not need to be a student.

Applications are due by March 19th.

First-time contributors to Python are welcome and encouraged to apply. We have a great group of mentors who will help you practice the tools of open source development, get comfortable with the CPython development cycle, and work with you to craft a project proposal that fits your background and interests and what you want to learn this summer.

Projects are not restricted to code: documentation, user experience design, web development, and translation are just some of the other possible areas of focus this summer.

We’ll also be running some in-person and virtual events leading up to the March 19th deadline, so stay tuned for details!

Contributing a patch to CPython is a prerequisite to applying for the program, so get started today to maximize your time to learn, practice, and contribute.

PyLadies at PyCon 2014: tutorial spotlight

2014-01-30T18:50:00Z

PyCon 2014 has a record-setting percentage of women speakers, at 33%, up from last year’s record-setting 20%. The talk schedule has been announced, and tutorial signups are open.

Take a peek at the tutorials offered by PyLadies this year:

Python for Social Scientists — Renee Chu

Many provocative social questions can be answered with data, and datasets are more available than ever. Start working with it here. First we’ll download and visualize one data set from the World Bank Indicators page together, using Matplotlib. Then you’ll have time on your own to pick another data set from any online source and plot that. At the end every person/pair will share what they found.

A hands-on introduction to Python for beginning programmers — Jessica McKellar

Beginning programmers: welcome to PyCon! Jumpstart your Python and programming careers with this 3-hour interactive tutorial. By the end, you’ll have hands-on exposure to many core programming concepts, be able to write useful Python programs, and have a roadmap for continuing to learn and practice programming in Python. This class assumes no prior programming experience.

Django for Web Designers and Front End Developers — Tracy Osborn and Andrey Petrov

Traditional tutorials for Django usually assume some programming experience, but what if someone is learning Python and Django with a HTML/CSS background? This tutorial focuses on the web-based features of Django – templates and the admin – and goes over the basic building blocks of Django programming to get web designers excited and interested in learning more.

Build your own PiDoorbell ! - Learn Home Automation with Python — Rupa Dachere and Akkana Peck

Rupa and Akkana will walk you through the setup/code to build your own super-cool PiDoorbell project to monitor/notify you about visitors at your house. Learn about the RaspberryPi, PiDoorbell software/hardware and build your own PiDoorbell to take home with you! Bring a RaspberryPi, power cord, USB cable (USB camera optional). We will provide the rest of the hardware (wifi, prox. sensor etc.).

Beyond Defaults: Creating Polished Visualizations Using Matplotlib — Hannah Aizenman

When people hear of matplotlib, they think rudimentary graphs that will need to be touched up in photoshop. This tutorial aims to teach attendees how to exploit the functionality provided by various matplotlib libraries to create professional looking data visualizations.

Search 101: An Introduction to Information Retrieval — Christine Spang

Data is everywhere! And most of the time, the best way to find what you want in a pile of data is to search it. In this project-based tutorial, you’ll get an introduction to the basic theory of search and write a program to index and search a collection of Wikipedia documents using the Whoosh library. You’ll leave with the ability to add search functionality to all of your own projects.

Let’s Learn Twisted Python — Aurynn Shaw

Let’s Learn Twisted is a short 3-hour tutorial covering the basics of writing a Twisted Python client-server application using Twisted Python’s Factory and Endpoint APIs to construct a peer-to-peer chat and RPC network.

Contribute with me! Getting started with open source development — Jessica McKellar

Want to contribute to a Python project or the core language, but not sure where to start? Join us for 3 hours learning the nuts and bolts of open source contribution. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have the tools and practice to confidently contribute to your favorite projects. Beginning programmers are welcome and encouraged!

Tutorials will fill up, so sign up today: https://us.pycon.org/2014/schedule/tutorials/

Fundraising for PyLadies for PyCon 2014

2013-10-07T18:50:00Z

TL;DR: Donate to PyLadies for PyCon!

With PyCon 2014 planning in high gear, PyLadies is revving up to raise funds to help women attend the biggest Python conference of the year.

We’re hoping to raise at least $40,000 to help women attend PyCon 2014. Here’s the breakdown:

Our numbers

In addition to registration, it will take about $500-1000 per woman in North America to attend PyCon 2014 in Montreal
In addition to registration, it will take about $1000-2000 per woman outside of North America to attend PyCon 2014 in Montreal

Why PyLadies? Our effect on the community

(percentages are not at all accurate, and are roughly estimated based on guessing names-to-gender scripts):

PyCon 2011 had less than 10% women attendees (speaker % unknown)
PyLadies started in late 2011
PyCon 2012 had about 11% women attendees, and about the same in speakers.
- This included giving PyLadies and Women Who Code booths to help promote our messages
At the time of PyCon 2013, PyLadies had about 14 chapters, doing stuff like:
- hosts events like learning python, learning git/github,
- providing space for study groups,
- enriching members with speaker series (like Guido van Rossum!),
- events to help think up of talks to submit for PyCon (as well as DjangoCon),
- hold events for folks to practice their talk, etc
PyLadies work showed: PyCon 2013 had over 20% women attendees (!!), and about 22% female speakers (!!!!).
No overhead - we’re all volunteers! ;-)
Lastly, donations tax deductible since PyLadies is under the financial enclave of the Python Software Foundation

What we’re actively doing:

We’re using all of the $10k that PyLadies raised at last year’s PyCon auction to increase the aid pool - something that we were hoping to actually use towards growing PyLadies locations (but it’s okay! $10k for more women friends at PyCon!)
We’ve raised about $5000 from individuals/grassroots and companies as of this blog post.

What you will get in return

Unless you explicitly choose to be anonymous (though the online donation site or in private discussions), we will profusely thank you via our public channels (Twitter, this blog, and at our PyCon booth)
Provide a detailed write-up and financial introspection of how many women we’ve helped because of this campaign
Visibility! It shows the PyCon/Python community that your company/you are serious about women in tech - which can directly benefit sponsors with increased hiring pool of female Pythonistas.

Ways to donate

All of the following methods are tax-deductible with funds going to the Python Software Foundation, a 501©3 charitable organization.

Through our donation page (ideal for individuals)
Email me at lynn@lynnroot.com (ideal for companies or anyone needing a proper invoice, or individualized solutions)
Become a sponsor for PyCon (this is more indirect and less potent, but overall helpful to PyCon)

More information is available on the PyCon Financial Aid site if you would like to apply for financial aid for PyCon, whether you are a PyLady or PyGent.

PyCon 2014: Lightning Talks Proposals Due October 15th!

2013-10-04T18:50:00Z

For the first time at PyCon, you can submit a proposal to give a Lightning Talk! If you missed the earlier call for proposals for the longer talks, you still have a chance to present your beloved subject in front of a large audience.

The deadline is coming soon, so hurry up! You have until October 15th, 2013 to propose your 5-minute presentation. If your Lightning Talk is pre-accepted, you will have a reserved slot on the lightning talk schedule.

For those who enjoy spontaneity, don’t worry! We will embrace our tradition of accepting Lightning Talk proposals on site.

For more information on submission guidelines, check out our How to Submit a Lightning Proposal, or get inspired by looking through previous year’s lightning talks.

PyCon 2014 Proposal Brainstorm Sessions!

2013-08-18T18:50:00Z

When someone suggests you to submit a talk, tutorial, or poster to Pycon, sometimes, it feels like this:

But seriously, you should submit. Speaking at PyCon is an amazing experience. Everyone has something they can share, even if they are just starting out. PyCon is consists of all types of talks at all levels.

Pyladies are here to support you through the process. We will help you sort through your thoughts, write a proposal, and help you practice when your talk is accepted. Your win is a win for the whole group gets celebrates.

PyLadies is hosting a few online sessions to help you through the submission process.

Scheduled Sessions:

Tues Aug 20
- 8pm EST/5pm PST
- 11pm EST/8pm PST
Thurs Aug 22
- 8pm EST/5pm PST
- 11pm EST/8pm PST
Mon Aug 26
- 8pm EST/5pm PST
- 11pm EST/8pm PST
Thurs Aug 29
- 8pm EST/5pm PST
- 11pm EST/8pm PST
Wed Sept 4
- 8pm EST/5pm PST
- 11pm EST/8pm PST
Mon Sept 9
- 8pm EST/5pm PST
- 11pm EST/8pm PST

Are you going to you join us?!?!? Then RSVP for a session today and give yourself a high five, because… You. Are. Awesome.

RSVP here!

Getting More Women to Submit Talk Proposals

2013-08-17T18:50:00Z

Getting More Women to Submit Talk Proposals written by Celia La, for NYC Pyladies

The deadline for PyCon 2014’s call for proposals is quickly approaching, and NYC PyLadies is organizing a workshop on Thursday, August 22nd to walk attendees through the process of submitting a talk proposal.

In the 2-hour workshop, each developer will discover her expertise, find potential speaking topics, write a proposal, and submit it to PyCon. The workshop is based off Anna Ravenscroft’s talk “You can be a speaker at PyCon”, and the agenda from Write/Speak/Code, which emphasizes accomplishing concrete tasks through timeboxing and iterative feedback. Here is our format:

Individuals spend no more than 5-7 minutes filling out a brainstorming worksheet from Write/Speak/Code
Attendees pair up and take turns finding potential topics for their partners, using the brainstorm worksheet as a starting point for further discussion
Individuals spend no more than 5-7 minutes writing a rough outline for one of their topics
Attendees pair up, go over outline, give feedback based on PyCon’s proposal advice
Individuals incorporate feedback and convert their outlines into a proposal
Individuals submit completed proposals to PyCon

We welcome all women coders to attend our workshop on August 22nd, but if you aren’t in the NYC area, we encourage you to try this on your own! The group setting is ideal because we will share and discuss results which may inspire more ideas, but the above format be done with just one other person.

We hope that by sharing the thought process and concepts that went into the workshop, others will not only submit their own proposals, but enlist a fellow developer to do the same!

PyCon 2014 Call for Proposals is open

2013-07-16T18:50:00Z

The PyCon 2014 call for proposals is open, and we want to see talk submissions from you!

http://us.pycon.org/2014/speaking/cfp/

PyCon is the largest annual gathering for the Python community. It is a volunteer-run, supportive, happy, diverse conference for people of all programming backgrounds, from beginning to advanced Pythonistas and for professional and hobbyist programmers alike. The conference has tutorials, talks, poster sessions, development sprints, and more.

PyCon is in beautiful Montreal in April of 2014. Need help getting to PyCon? No problem: the conference has a robust financial aid problem (and the best way to ensure assistance is to be giving a talk).

Talks are 30 or 45 minutes long. Beginners can give talks. Hobbyists can give talks. You, yes you, would give a great talk on something that excites you about Python. Proposals are due by September 15th.

Check out:

Need some inspiration? Have a look at the talk list from last year and some of last year’s talk titles:

Using Python To Generate Art And Sound
PyNES: Python programming for Nintendo 8 bits.
Iteration & Generators: the Python Way
How Import Works
Lessons Learned in Teaching Python
Porting Django apps to Python 3
Crypto 101
Teaching with the IPython Notebook
Copyright and You
Who’s there? - Home Automation with Arduino/RaspberryPi
SimpleCV - Computer Vision using Python
Visualizing Github
Kivy: Building GUI and Mobile apps with Python
Scrapy: it GETs the web
Funding and Coordinating Python Projects via Non-Profits
Messaging at Scale at Instagram
How the Internet Works

A project you’ve been working on, a fun library, a cool language feature, how you use Python at work: these are all good talk opportunities.

Pick a topic and get started! http://us.pycon.org/2014/speaking/cfp/

User Groups

2013-05-07T18:50:00Z

A great way to continue learning Python is to work on your own, then attend presentations and ask questions at local user groups. Attend as many as you can!

Python groups on Meetup.com
Python.org list of local user groups

If you are unable to find a local group, you can still communicate with people around the world on the #pyladies IRC channel, on FreeNode.

Guide to getting started on IRC

IRC is a great way to get in touch with open source developers around the world. Here’s a guide to setting up an IRC nickname and joining the friendly #pyladies channel, a great way to get familiar with how IRC works.

Introduction to IRC

2013-05-07T18:50:00Z

Updated March 7, 2019

IRC is a great way to get in touch with open source developers around the world. The FreeNode network hosts chat rooms, formally called channels, for almost any open source project or framework which you are likely to encounter as a Python developer.

PyLadies has it very own IRC channel #pyladies on the FreeNode network. Here’s a guide for getting started with IRC and joining the discussion on the #pyladies channel. Let’s start by using a web based IRC chat client, setting up an IRC nickname, and joining the friendly #pyladies channel.

Connect to IRC using a web client

Let’s start by using a web based IRC client:

Go to https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=pyladies
For an IRC “Nickname”, pick an available username (legal characters are anything A-Z, 0-9, - and _)
Fill out the captcha code
Do not fill in any other fields (other than nickname and captcha) and hit the “Connect” button

Register your Nickname

Once you decide that you will use IRC on a regular basis, you may wish to register an IRC nickname that you may use each time you connect to IRC. Here are the basic steps to registering a nickname:

Pick a VERY INSECURE password (all communication with IRC is viewable by anyone on the internet so don’t use a sensitive password!!!) and use it to register, via email.
At the bottom of the messaging window, type the following (all IRC commands begin with the forward slash):

/msg nickserv register YOUR_INSECURE_PASSWORD your_email@address.com
Check your email and verify that you are now registered by following the email’s instructions (it’ll tell you to type something like the following in the message window):

/msg NickServ VERIFY REGISTER YOUR_NICKNAME THEIR_VERIFICATION_CODE

Installing an IRC client

While a web client is a handy way to get started with IRC, you may wish to use an installed IRC client which is especially useful to follow multiple channels. There are many different IRC clients available for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, as well as Android and iOS.

Some popular clients are:

XChat (Linux, Mac OSX, Windows)
LimeChat (Mac OSX)
mIRC (Windows)

Installing XChat

Download from http://xchat.org
Install and open. You will get the following window. Fill in Nickname with the nickname you just registered. Fill in the * other fields if you’d like.
In “Networks”, find and select “FreeNode”

(Optional) XChat Configuration

Configure XChat so that you can Identify yourself to IRC and automatically join #pyladies whenever you open XChat.

Otherwise, you will have to do run these commands yourself to connect manually every time:

/msg nickserv identify YOUR_NICKNAME YOUR_INSECURE_PASSWORD
/join #pyladies

IRC Etiquette

Although IRC is an instant-messaging medium, people are not necessarily expected to respond immediately, even if they appear to be available in a chatroom.
To call someone out in particular, you can write (into the channel input line) ping PERSON'S_NICK. When they are available, they will respond to you with the word “pong”
You are free to speak directly to specific people in the general channel (with the understanding that literally everyone will be listening in on your convo.
You may also privately message a person. It’s good etiquette to first ask in the general channel if you may send them a private message. (Note: In XChat, right-click their nick and select “Open Dialogue Window”)
Please be aware that IRC communication is transmitted in plaintext - i.e., it is very insecure (which is why you should register with a very casual password which you are not using for other accounts and NEVER share critical or privacy information over IRC)

Helpful commands

Other useful commands to get you started:

/help – get help from the IRC bot
/join #CHANNEL – join a channel
/me ACTION – describe yourself performing an action
/msg OTHER'S_NICKNAME MESSAGE– send someone a private message
/part – leave a channel
/quit – leave IRC

Libraries

2013-04-19T18:50:00Z

Code checking using PEP-8 + PyFlakes: Are you writing code according to the standard Python guidelines? Have no idea? Try out this library Logr: Simple Python blogger Git Legit: Git for Humans

Speaking at PyCon, DjangoCon, etc

2013-04-19T18:50:00Z

Speaking at conferences about Python is a great way to give back to the community with your own knowledge.

We Are All Awesome: hosts IRC office hours to help women speakers.
Protips on Conference Talks: Thinking about giving a talk at a conference? Here is some great advice on how to rock it!
SpeakUp.io

Newsletters

2013-04-19T18:50:00Z

Python Weekly is a free weekly newsletter all about Python (articles, news, jobs, etc).
Pycoders Weekly is a free weekly python newsletter for Python developers by Python developers (Project, Articles, News, and Jobs).

Tools

2013-04-19T18:50:00Z

Text Editors

gEdit (Linux & Mac OS X)
Notepad++ (Windows)
Sublime (Windows, Max OS X, and Linux)
Sublime for Python and Web Developers: How to squeeze more power out of one of the most popular, light weight text editors for Python.
Sublime Short cuts: Learn to get more out of the latest text editor.
More “advanced” editors are emacs, vim (although @audreyr knows how to use both of those pretty well and still swears by gEdit for everything)

IDEs

PyCharm
Eclipse with PyDev plugin
Wingware

Highly recommended Python package tools

pip: better installation of packages.
virtualenv: create isolated Python environments
virtualenvwrapper: make virtualenv easier to use.

Code of Conduct

2013-04-10T18:50:00Z

As a fiscal sponsoree of the Python Software Foundation, we adhere to their Code of Conduct. Refer to the Code of Conduct page in the PyLadies kit for the full policy and contact information.

Intro to Python, April 6 - Recap

2013-04-10T18:50:00Z

This past weekend, I helped a bright group of Austin women take their initial steps into the Python world. Austin PyLadies' first women’s ‘Intro to Python’ class took place on Saturday, April 6th. Our classroom space was generously donated by by Erica Douglass of Opportunity Space. We also had the help of several terrific volunteers: Sara Safavi, Cassidy Santaguida and Andrew Dupont.

This one-day workshop covered some computing and programming concepts, then launched straight into the basics of the Python programming language. We worked with an open-ended curriculum: starting with simple math and strings operations, working up to logic and functions, then writing and running scripts. This meant that we were able drop some things off at the end when we ran out of time (which we did - objects/classes did not make the final cut).

The entire program was very hands-on - almost every section contained examples or exercises that could be run in the Python interpreter.

One recurring problem that comes up when teaching Python, though, is showing beginning students how to save and execute scripts. I like students to understand as closely as possible what it will be like to work with Python in a real working environment, but introducing beginners to scripting can be difficult for a number of mundane reasons:

many beginners don’t have a clear understanding of their file system, how to navigate it or where things are located
when students bring their own laptops, there will be a variety of different operating systems and text editors at play

With enough time and volunteers, it’s certainly possible to teach everyone the basics of file systems and walk every student through working with different text editors, saving and navigating to files, etc. But in our case we didn’t have enough time or bodies, so we used Appsoma.com for writing/running scripts. Appsoma is a relatively new browser-based app development platform, but it also makes a terrific free tool for practice and learning. (To get an idea of its capabilities, head to the Code tab where you can create, save and run a script.)

Some of the other key things we did to facilitate learning included:

Arranging students in small work groups. Our students came from a variety of backgrounds, some with experience in other programming languages and some with no programming experience at all. Seating them in groups of 5-6 allowed them to get to know each other and made it easier for them to help each other. We also encouraged group collaboration on some of the more difficult exercises. This student bonding led to some great friendships by the end of the class. Some students have already made plans to get together and practice, and it’s my belief that these students, now that they know each other, are more likely to continue learning because they’ll be motivating and helping each other.
Plan for follow-up. It was a happy scheduling accident that the next Coursera Python class starts just about a week after this one, so we encouraged students to sign up and then come back to our next scheduled hack night to get help. We also emphasized the hack nights on their own as a place to come back and participate with some guidance.

My slides from this class can be found here: https://github.com/pyladiesatx/pyladiesatx/tree/master/resources/IntroToPython

Feel free to fork and remix these slides for your own classes. The repository includes:

a PDF of the setup instructions (how to install Python and get to a prompt for Windows, Linux and OS X)
a Keynote source file of the main slide deck
a PowerPoint export of the Keynote slides (there may be some errors)
a PDF of the main slide deck

Some things I’d like to add for the next class:

An introduction to code blocks and more discussion of indentation (and possibly how code blocks are handled in other languages), before introducing topics like if/else, loops, and functions
More discussion of objects and classes - we skipped it entirely this time because of time constraints, but I’d like to find a way to work them in
More structured exercises (not every section had them this time) so that students can also get a little more experience with problem-solving

Workshop Photos

How to hook people on CS through Magic

2013-04-04T18:50:00Z

Computer Science Outreach Magic

Thanks to Katie Cunningham of Tucson for letting us copy this post from her blog!

For several months, I always carried a deck of cards in my backpack. I like playing gin rummy as much as anyone, but that’s not the reason why. I carried them because I had discovered Computer Science Outreach Magic.

I learned a Computer Science magic trick from cs4fn.org/magic, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve performed this trick to much success when manning booths at outreach events and teacher visiting days. It lets you engage people while illustrating a bit of computer science. At the PyLadies' lunch at PyCon ‘13, Esther Nam convinced me to write a blog post about this card trick I was so excited about. “Lots of people want to know how to demonstrate computer science without a computer!” she said.

That’s exactly why I love this trick. It’s portable, it’s easy, and it doesn’t use a computer. It allows people to see an easily digestible example of the logic, discrete math, and information that is at the core of Computer Science. For people who aren’t impressed by physical computers or cryptic terminal windows, this can really be a draw.

“[Computer science] is not really about computers – and it’s not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes…. Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don’t really understand it very well, it’s very easy to confuse the essence of what you’re doing with the tools that you use.” - Hal Abelson (1986)

Here’s how I do it:

You need three people: The magician, the assistant, and the learner.
The magician closes her eyes and keeps them closed until the end of the trick.
The learner is given the deck and told to make a four by four matrix of cards with some face up and some face down, randomly distributed.

The assistant takes the deck back and whispers to the learner: “I’m going to make it harder for her and add another row and column”. The magician might groan at this point and say “Nooo it’s so hard already!!!” The new row and column are added.

The assistant tells the learner to flip one card, and that the magician will tell him which card he flipped. The learner flips one card.

The magician opens her eyes, hovers her hands over the cards, and identifies the flipped card!
The learner is very impressed. While the amazement hasn’t worn off, the magician and assistant tell the learner that this method is used to identify errors in computer data. Face up and face down cards are just like the way a computer stores information in 1s and 0s. Perhaps the information is being sent from one computer to another and one of the bits – one of the 1s or 0s – gets changed to the other (flipped!). Computer Scientists invented this technique so computers could discover where the error took place. If the learner is still interested, explain how the trick worked.

How does the trick work??!!??

When the assistant adds the extra row and column, he is actually adding parity bits. For non-CS people, that means that the assistant adds another card to each row and column so the sum of face up cards in that row or column is now even. If there are an even number of face up cards in the row or column, the assistant adds a face down. If there are an odd number of face down cards in the row or column, he adds a face up.

The cards need to be put down seemingly without thought, like the assistant is just adding the extra row and column randomly. Here’s a walkthrough:

Add a parity bit to the end of each of the columns

Add a parity bit to all of the rows, including the row you just added. (Notice that the column you are adding has parity automatically.)

Now when the learner flips a card, the row and column of the card that was flipped have an odd number of face up cards! You can quickly find the flipped card, even though you’ve never seen the grid before.

It works just as well when the flipped card is in the parity row or column.

The kids at the CSUnplugged show figured it out on their own, I was very impressed. The presenters used this trick as their opening act, and then explained it at the very end, so the kids had some time to think about it. If you want to see their explanation, check out this video

Optional Follow-up

Make sure the learner really understands by putting the cards back into their parity’d state and asking him to close his eyes and guess which card his friend flipped. This is demoed in the video above. If you have more time for more than a quick wow moment, you can ask the learner:

Does it matter if the error is in the parity bits?
Is it possible to detect two errors, and if so, can they be corrected?
How about three errors?

Practice!

I’m sure you are excited now to show this trick to all your friends. With this trick in your pocket, every person becomes someone you can impress with computer science! You’ll live for the stunned look on people’s faces when you pick the right card!

But to make it go smoothly, you’ll need to practice practice practice practice! The trick might sound simple enough, but every time I or someone else has attempted the trick without recent practice, it has been a major fail.

Practice with your cat! And people.

Alternate versions

I like doing this trick with cards because cards are easy to get my hands on when I’m inspired to perform. Usually I have limited table space, so it’s hard to squeeze in more cards than I have described. In the CSUnplugged version, they start with a larger grid and black and white squares. (Note that it doesn’t matter how big your grid is – the trick works the same.) They also had the nifty idea to make them magnetic so the trick can be performed on a whiteboard.

CSUnplugged has the magician add the extra row, eliminating the assistant. I like having the assistant better, because the magician’s reveal is more impressive, since clearly no memorization is done – the magician hasn’t seen the cards at all! Also, when a little kid is the learner, the assistant is necessary to make sure he or she puts down the cards correctly and flips only one card. But for a demonstration in front of a classroom or when you’re alone, it’s worth thinking about.

Find the original cs4fn version of the trick on page 25 here: http://www.cs4fn.org/magic/downloads/cs4fnmagicbook1.pdf. They add the extra row based on face down cards instead of face up cards. It doesn’t matter really of course – do what’s easier to see quickly. Or if you change the size of the grid to have an even number of rows and columns at the end of the trick, it doesn’t matter! Face up and face down will both have to be even or odd.

P.s. Now that you are using this trick, you have to watch out for Magnita Makov, world’s greatest magician.

Good luck! Go forth and impress all your friends!!!

A big thanks to Daniel Harms for helping me improve this trick :)

PyLadies @ PyCon - Join Us!

2013-03-07T18:50:00Z

PyCon’s Opening Reception is less than a week away, are you excited?

PyLadies Booth

Come check out PyLadies at our booth in the Expo Hall! We’ll have information on starting your own local PyLadies group, stickers, and candy! We’ll also raffle off some PyLadies t-shirts!

Check out a previous blog post on the list of talks from PyLadies!

And be sure to check out the booths of our friends:

Ada Initiative’s Feminist Hacker Lounge
Women Who Code
CodeChix
LadyCoders

Where to find us

Here is a run-down of where you can find your PyLady friends and where to sign up:

Tutorials

The women of Python are ruling the tutorial schedule:

WEDNESDAY MORNING

Digital signal processing through speech, hearing, and Python - Mel Chua
Python for Programmers: A Project-Based Tutorial - Alexandra Strong, Katharine Jarmul, Christine Cheung
A hands-on introduction to Python for beginning programmers - Jessica McKellar
Going from web pages to web apps with Python - Karen Rustad and Asheesh Laroia
SPECIAL The Young Coder - Barbara Shaurette, Katie Cunningham

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

Analyzing Social Networks with Python - Maksim Tsvetovat, Alex Kouznetsov, Jacqueline Kazil

THURSDAY MORNING

A Gentle Introduction to Computer Vision - Katherine Scott, Anthony Oliver
SPECIAL The Young Coder - Barbara Shaurette, Katie Cunningham

THURSDAY MORNING

Contribute with me! Getting started with open source development - Jessica McKellar
Wiring up Django Packages - Daniel Greenfeld, Kenneth Love, Audrey M. Roy

Thursday, March 14th

PyLadies Booth @ the Opening Reception @ 6pm - 8pm in the Expo Hall
Women’s Open Tech Office Hours @ 6pm - 3am in the Hyatt in room 1332

Friday, March 15th

PyLadies Lunch for Women of Python @ 12:30pm - 1:30pm in rooms 209/210 in the Convention center. Currently all sold out but we have a short wait list!
Taste of Py: Afterparty @ 7pm - 10pm in the Hyatt Hotel with New Relic, Loggly, PyLadies, Rackspace, Raspberry Pi, and Solano Labs. Network with your Python community peers over drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Enjoy entertainment and win great prizes in our Python Trivia Contest. We’ll even have some tasty pie on hand for dessert!
Women’s Open Tech Office Hours @ 6pm - 3am in the Hyatt in room 1332

Saturday, March 16th

BoF Mani Party!! @ 5pm - 6pm in room 202 - What started as a cute joke snowballed into an actual thing, as many of the best things often do! Hosted by Katie Cunningham.
Charity Auction for PyLadies @ 6:30pm - 8:30pm - come laugh at the PyLadies as we try our hands as auctioneers! Dinner included.
Women’s Open Tech Office Hours @ 6pm - 3am in the Hyatt in room 1332

Sunday, March 17th

Women’s Open Tech Office Hours @ 6pm - 3am in the Hyatt in room 1332

Get Your Mac Ready for Python Programming

2013-03-06T18:50:00Z

2018 Update

This has been one of our most popular posts. Here is a quick update followed by the original post.

Step 1. Install Xcode or command line tools

Install Xcode from App Store or Apple website.

Install Xcode command line tools (an alternative to the larger Xcode):

xcode-select --install

Step 2. Open Terminal. Get comfy.

Refer to original post below.

Step 3. Install Homebrew

From the instructions on the Homebrew site:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Step 4. Install Python

We recommend using Python 3 for all new projects.

Python 3

brew install python

Python 2

brew install python@2

Step 5. Install pip

pip is included in Python installs now. There is no need to separately install pip.

You may wish to update the installed versions of pip and setuptools:

pip install --upgrade setuptools
pip install --upgrade pip

Step 6. Install virtualenv

There is no need to install virtualenv for Python 3. With Python 3, you can create and activate a virtual environment using:

python3 -m venv myenv
source myenv/bin/activate

Steps 7 and 8: Refer to the original post below.

Additional Information

See this helpful resource about configuring a Mac.

Original post

As an absolute beginner to programming, you can very quickly learn to do lots of cool things using just your Python interpreter and simple Python scripts. However, you’re going to want a few more tools eventually to help you expand to more complex projects. Why not start getting familiar with them now?

For me, the hardest thing about branching out was figuring out what tools I really needed and how to interpret their install instructions. Here’s a list of tools you will need and a list of easy steps to follow to get set up on a Mac. I’ll explain what each line of code is doing so you can learn a little bit about working with a command line interface in the process. All of this should work on Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8.

1. Install Xcode

Xcode is Apple’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE), and there are some tools that come with it that we’ll need later. You can get Xcode in the Apple appstore. It’s a pretty big download, but this is the easiest way to get these tools on your machine. If you get bored while you’re waiting, you could skip ahead and do steps 2, 5, and 6 now. If you want an alternative way to just get the tools you need, without the whole IDE, look here.

Once Xcode is installed, you still need to install the Apple command line tools! They’re easy to get, though. Under the Xcode menu, click preferences. On the window that pops up, go to the Downloads tab. Find “command lines tools” and click the install button.

2. Open Terminal. Get Comfy.

If you’ve never used Terminal or some kind of command line interface before, it’s a good idea to take a minute to familiarize yourself with how they work. Here’s a quick intro. Later you you can learn a bit more with the free online book, Learn Command Line Interface the Hard Way.

I like to have a central place to store all of my programming projects, so I have a folder in my home directory called Code. To make a new folder called Code, open up Terminal. You should be in your home directory. Just to make sure you could type the following in your Terminal window. Don’t type the $, though.

$ cd

Command line instructions usually start with $, which represents the end of your prompt. The prompt is the string of characters Terminal prints out to let you know it’s ready to accept commands. The cd means change directory. If you don’t specify where to go, it sends you to your home directory. Now, to make a folder called Code, you would type:

$ mkdir Code

The mkdir part means ‘make directory’. A directory is analogous to what Finder calls folders. If you make a directory through your command line, it will show up as a folder in Finder. The Code part is an argument for this command. mkdir needs us to specify a string that will be the name of the new directory, so we pass it the Code argument. Unlike cd, mkdir will give us an error if we don’t also provide a name. As shown below, the error message (second line) tells us that we used mkdir wrong and gives us some guidance on how to use it. Anything in brackets is optional, but the directory name is not!

$ mkdir
usage: mkdir [-pv] [-m mode] directory ...

3. Install Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for OS X. A package is a collection of code files that work together. Installing them usually means running a script (a bit of code) that puts certain files in the various directories. A lot of the packages you will want are going to have dependencies. That means they require you to have other packages already installed on your computer. Homebrew will find and install dependencies for you AND it will keep them organized in one location AND it can tell you when updates are available for them. On top of all of that it gives super helpful instructions when everything doesn’t go smoothly. You can read more about it at Homebrew’s website. For now, install Homebrew using the following line of code:

 $ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

So what’s going on here? The last bit is obviously a URL. If you were to open this URL in your browser, you would just see code. This is a Ruby script that tells your computer what to do to install Homebrew. The curl part is a command line tool that transfers files using URLs. The -fsSL part is a combination of four option flags for curl that specify how to handle the file at the url. If you want to know more about what these flags do, type man curl at your command prompt. (You can use man in front of most commands to open up a manual page for that command.) We also need to actually execute this Ruby script, so we used the command ruby at the beginning. The -e is an option flag for ruby that executes a string as one line of code, in this case, the "$(curl … /go)" part. You may need to follow a few more instructions to finish the install, but Homebrew will help you do so.

4. Install Python

Python comes with OS X, so you can probably don’t need to do this step. You can check this by typing python --version into Terminal. If you get an error message, you need to install Python. If Terminal prints something like Python 2.7.3 where the exact numbers you see may be different, you’re all set to move on to step #5.

If for some reason you don’t have Python or if you want to get the current version, you can now do this easily with Homebrew! Anytime you use Homebrew, you will start your command with brew followed by the Homebrew command you want to use. To install the latest version of python 2, simply type:

$ brew install python

If you’d rather install the latest version of python 3, replace python with python3.

5. Install pip

There are a few package managers that are specific to Python, and pip is the preferred one. The name pip stands for “pip installs packages”. pip has one dependeny–distribute, but Homebrew doesn’t know how to install either one. Luckily, both distribute and pip can be easily installed with python scripts that are available on the web. We can use curl, just like we did to get Homebrew.

$ curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
$ python get-pip.py

This time we are getting and executing each script in two commands, where we did it all in one command before. Remember that you can look up what -O does with $ man curl, if you’re curious.

It’s possible that you will run into a permission issue here. Every file on your computer stores information about who can access and modify it. The get-pip.py script is going to try to write files to some of your system directories and it’s possible that your user account doesn’t have the right permissions. You can get around that though. If you get an error for one of these Python commands about permissions, type sudo before the rest of the command. Sudo stands for “superuser do”. The superuser does have permission to modify system files and when you say sudo, you are acting as the superuser. You will need the admin password to do this.

For more information about using pip, you can go here.

6. Install virtualenv

A virtual environment is useful when you start to get invovled with projects that have different or conflicting dependencies that you dont want to install globally on your machine. For example, you might use a library that requires Python 3 and have another project that is only compatible with Python 2.

To install virtualenv, simply:

$ pip install virtualenv

Here is virtualenv’s documentation.

7. Install Git and make a Github account

Git is a version control system. It keeps track of the revisions you make to your code and other files associated with a project, without storing multiple copies of each file. It will also help you merge your work with that of other programmers if you’re working on a collaborative project. To install Git, type the following at your command prompt.

$ brew install git

Github is a website that uses git and is the most common way people share their code. You can use it just to back up your own projects or to have a centralized repository for a collaborative project, but it’s also sort of a social media website for programmers. You can look at other people’s code, follow projects you’re interested in, submit bugs, and even contibute code to open source projects. If you want to get involved with an open source project or find good sample code, Github is the best way to do it. Go to github.com and follow the instructions to make your account.

If you’re a little confused about this step, or want to know why and how you should use Github, you might want to read this.

8. What now?

You have a lot of powerful tools on your machine, now and it may be a little overwhelming. That’s okay, you don’t have to learn them all at once, but at least you have them set up now. but there are also plenty of resources freely available on the web to help you learn. Try browsing the Pyladies Resources page, or just using Google to find what you need. Talking with a more experienced programmer is always helpful as well. Have fun!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rebase

2013-02-26T18:50:00Z

Rebase is a downright scary concept. When the best way to explain how it works I’ve heard starts with thinking that you’re time-traveling back to before certain changes were ever introduced to a project, you probably should be afraid. We’ve all read enough science fiction to know what happens if you go back to the Age of the Dinosaurs and step on an ugly-looking bug.

But while rebase is a responsibility to take seriously - especially if you’re working on a team and you could wipe out every commit people have added since last Sunday - perhaps we’re in less danger from time travel paradoxes than I previously assumed.

A Quick Example of Rebase

Just so we all are on the same page, let’s go through a quick example of how you might use rebase:

Let’s assume that you have a git repository with a file in it and that you’ve branched that file and made some changes. Meanwhile, someone else has modified that same file on the master branch. In order to get everything put back together again, you may consider using git rebase. To do so, you would need to do the following:

$ git rebase master

That’s it. There might be some conflicts that you’d need to go in and clean up if your co-coder has been up to some serious business since you’ve last merged in your changes, but the command itself is simple. Now it looks like your changes started from the current master rather than from the original branch point.

If you want to now add your up-to-date changes back into the master, you’ll still need to merge it in.

$ git checkout master
$ git merge branchname

How is this whole process different from just using git merge in the first place? It’s just prettier: someone going through the code’s history would see straight forward progress along the master branch.

A Better Metaphor for Rebase

Rebase is generally considered a slightly-nuclear option. It’s possible to be careful about rebasing code, say by duplicating the master branch and rebasing your code on that new version to see if you accidentally destroy the world before trying to rebase within the actual master. Somehow, though, we still see it as something dangerous.

Perhaps a new metaphor may be more useful here. I’m the type to go out and read a bunch about a particular command before I’ll get comfortable with using it. I’ve gone over this section from ProGit a couple of times and something finally became clear: when you rebase, you can reorder a whole bunch of different things!

For me, this is like sewing. When I was little, I would help my grandmother with her sewing projects. She grew up in the Great Depression and not one bit of material would ever go to waste in her sewing room. A piece of clothing didn’t fit right? She’d tailor it. A seam wound up in the wrong place? She’d rip it out and go again. A project went horribly, horribly wrong? She’d take it apart and put it together again in a different way.

Rebase is a seam ripper and a bowl full of pins, all in one. You’ve got a bunch of concrete pieces of code that you’ve committed over time and you can rip them apart with rebase. In the same action, you can pin them back together and run them through the sewing machine again. As a result, you’re not just limited to what you might do with the master branch and whatever branch you’ve been working on seperately.

Just like in sewing, though, there are some rules that you absolutely need to follow. The “don’t accidentally sew your fingers to the garment” rule of rebasing is that you should never rebase commits that you have pushed to a public repository. It’s not out of the question to fix such a problem (and there’s probably less blood than the sewing machine-finger combo), but it requires some serious clean up.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

In fact, as long as you’re taking proper precautions, it’s possible to come back from most rebase screw ups (though this opinion is based on my own, admittedly limited, experience). The precautions seems a little tedious, just like measuring fabric twice and double-checking that you know what to do with your pattern can be. But that tedium can help you avoid big screw-ups, even if you never notice the accident you avoided.

The moment that I realized that rebase isn’t so much a bomb as a seam ripper, it was a lot less worrying to type in that command and hit ‘enter.’

Written by our own PDX PyLady, @thursdayb and regularly writes for her blog.

Why PyLadies?

2013-02-23T18:50:00Z

PyLadies is a group of women working on welcoming, encouraging and directly inviting women to join the Python community and to learn from each other.

I started a PyLadies chapter in Portland, OR last September (2012). We started out with weekly meetings to do homework from a Coursera class to make games with Python. That turned into weekly meetings – plus homework meetups on Saturdays at a local coffee shop, and IRC hangout time to test homework. And that turned into me giving mini-lessons at each Coursera meetup about the material from the class. People seemed really excited.

Before we knew it, it was December, we had over 60 women subscribed to the Meetup, 30 of which had attended a meeting. Today, we’ve got 85 subscribers, 50 people have attended a meeting, and more have signed up to attend events in the future than ever before. And, it’s done by women. Using open source. Teaching classes. Learning developer tools. And writing software.

Since September, I’ve met even more women involved in running PyLadies chapters across the country. Much like the way the PostgreSQL community is organized, we’ve got a loosely connected group of people working independently. We offer support to each other, but don’t have hard and fast rules about what each chapter does. We encourage teaching and workshops, but don’t require them. We share our resources and are quick to put git repos out there of our materials. We send lots of pull requests. And we’re constantly looking for ways for women to get more involved in open source and Python.

I’m completely energized by the positive feedback we’ve gotten for every meeting. More recently, I’ve heard from people that they feel confident and sure of their knowledge because they’ve spent time in our meetups talking and learning from other women.

My goal is to make every get together like that - by having great lessons, a shared understanding of coaching and peer-based education and presentations from our members. Building these groups takes time, and I’m impatient to get to the part where I feel like every interaction with the group is rewarding for every member.

And I can’t do it alone. We’ve got four meetup organizers (although one is about to relocate to the Bay Area!). I work closely with Flora Worley, a kickass developer who chose programming as a career path after working on a PhD, on topic details and planning for the meetings. I’m so looking forward to meeting in person with the many members of the PyLadies community at PyCon next month.

This post was originally posted on Selena Deckleman’s blog and reposted with her permission. Thanks Selena!

PyLadies Lunch @ PyCon

2013-01-28T18:50:00Z

This year, there is such an amazing line up of talks, tutorials, events, and sponsors at PyCon that we’re sure you don’t have enough planned. Us PyLadies have organized to host a lunch for women attending the conference who love Python, or who want to learn more about Python or PyLadies.

What’s this all about?

PyLadies is a mentorship group for women in the Python community. Come join us for an opportunity to chat with your fellow female Pythonistas while taking a break from the jam-packed PyCon schedule.

Who: Women who love coding in Python

When: Saturday, March 16th, 12:30pm - 1:30pm

Where: Second floor, Rooms 209/210

We invite any woman conference-goer to lunch at an informal, friendly meet & greet to form connections, and share Python programming stories.

RSVP!

Be sure to reserve your spot as space is limited!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Lynn Root.

PyLadies Speak at PyCon!

2013-01-13T18:50:00Z

PyCon talks were announced last week, and this year a record number of them are being given by women in the Python community, many of whom are PyLadies contributors! Congratulations to all the smart, accomplished women in the Python community who are helping to change the ratio at PyCon!

Here’s the run-down - be sure to add these to your schedule when PyCon comes to Santa Clara, CA in March of 2013:

How to Except When You’re Excepting: An introduction to the practice of exception handling (Esther Nam - Los Angeles)
What teachers really need from us: What teachers say about what they need and what the Python community has to offer K-12 classrooms. (Selena Deckelmann - Portland, OR)
Using Python To Generate Art And Sound: Navigating the Python audio/imaging landscape (Audrey M. Roy - Los Angeles)
Lessons Learned in Teaching Python (Alexandra Strong and Christine Cheung - Los Angeles)
Location, Location, Location: Building a Django application that needs to handle geographic location data (Julia Grace - San Francisco)
Who are we? A sociological analysis of the indigenous Python tribe (Jacqueline Kazil - Washington, DC)
Sink or swim: 5 life jackets to throw to New Coders (Lynn Root - San Francisco)
Visualizing Github, Part I: Data to Information: Practical data visualization with Python and web technologies (Dana Bauer, with Idan Gazit - Philadelphia)
Twisted Logic: Endpoints and Why You Shouldn’t Be Scared of Twisted (Ashwini Oruganti - India)
Designers + Developers: Collaborating on your Python project: Working in developer/designer teams (Julia Elman, with Mark Lavin - North Carolina)

Prior to the conference are a number of tutorials for those of all skill levels, from Jessica McKellar’s Introduction to Python for Beginners to Mel Chua’s Digital Signal Processing workshop.

PyCon 2013 takes place from March 13-21, 2013 in Santa Clara, California. For more information, or to register, check out the web site: https://us.pycon.org/2013/.

PyCon Proposal Brainstorm Session Aug 27th

2012-08-25T18:50:00Z

[Thanks Lynn for putting this together!]

Ever thought about speaking? Want to give speaking at PyCon a shot, but not sure what to talk about? Even if you have a tiny inkling that you’d want to speak, beginner level or advanced, come to our workshop to get help brainstorming ideas & learn what makes a good proposal!

Join the PyLadies hangout, open to PyLadies and PyLaddies, with help from PyLadies’ leaders, previous years PyCon speakers & current Program Committee members (e.g. the folks that review proposals) to ideate, write, and submit your proposal to speak, give a tutorial, or a poster session at PyCon 2013.

Space is limited by the Google Hangout technology. An invite link will be sent out about 15 minutes prior to the start time.

For those in the Bay Area, be sure to check out the PyLadies San Francisco meetup, Workshop: Talk Proposal Writing for PyCon, on Tuesday, August 28th.

By Esther Nam

DjangoCon 2012: Pro Tips for those new to D.C.

2012-08-09T18:50:00Z

[_This guest post is lifted straight from D.C. PyLady Katie’s wonderful blog! She will be writing a series of posts to help Djangonauts from all over feel at home in the U.S. capital come early September!_]

Coming to DjangoCon in September? Let’s have a chat about DC.

by Katie Cunningham (with mad props to Jackie Kazil, who helped write this post!)

The location

DjangoCon DC is actually in Northern Virginia, not in the heart of the Capitol. Specifically, it’s being held in Crystal City at the Hyatt Regency, which is close to the Crystal City Metro Station (the yellow and blue metro lines) and one stop away from Reagan National Airport (DCA).

I worked in the area for many years, and while it doesn’t have as much of the DC grit and history, it makes up for in being a great nexus between convenience and cost. As someone who’s been to several conferences in DC, I can tell you this is a good thing. It is a safe, clean, affordable, and transportation-accessible part of the DC metro area that is littered with Django developers.

If, for some reason, you aren’t going to be staying at the conference’s hotel, you’re in luck. DC has a LOT of hotels. In general, the closer they are to a metro stop, the more expensive they are, but it’s still possible to find no-frills hotels very close to a metro stop. If you want to remain close to the main action, I would get a hotel at L'Enfant (which is close to the Mall), Crystal City, or National Airport. Franconia/Springfield may look convenient, but it’s actually not close to anything.

Getting to DC

Flying

View DC airports in a larger map

There are three airports in the D.C. region. Travel sites like Hipmunk and Kayak try to make all our local airports equivalent, as if it’s just a short jaunt from each to DC. This is a dirty, nasty lie.

The airport visible from the hotel is Reagan National. It is only one metro stop from the hotel (or just under a mile walk if you are crazy). The other airports, Dulles and BWI, are inconvenient but usually cheaper if you are on a budget and willing to spend an extra hour to two hours using a combination of shuttle services, Amtrak, buses, metro. If you choose to stomach one of the other options, then add about $15 to your trip. If you take a taxi, you could end up spending more than the cost of your savings.

If you’re coming in on an international flight, it may be worth looking for a flight that lands at some other international airport like Atlanta or New York, then catch a flight into Reagan. Trust me, you will not regret this.

Train

The train station is located at Union Station. It can be nice way to travel if you are on the Eastern Seaboard. The commute from Union Station to the conference isn’t bad, since Union Station is also a metro stop.

Chinatown buses and other bus services For those on a budget or looking for adventure and located on the Eastern Seaboard you might check look into the Chinatown buses. Various companies in Chinatown shuttle to Baltimore, Philideplia, New York, and Boston. D.C. to New York is between three and five hours (depending on your driver aherance to the speed limit) and costs around $20 each way. They will drop you off in Chinatown near the metro, which is the same metro line that you would need to get to the conference. Sometimes you can find a service that offers wifi and plugs and sometimes there are live animals and sketchy late night stops. Adventure!

Other buses services will drop you off in other parts, but they are usually close to a metro stop. Bolt Bus is probably one of the nicest.

Driving

Don’t. It’s not worth it unless you are car pooling. You won’t need your car while visiting. If you do though, you can park you car at the Hotel (expect to pay a pretty hefty amount per night, though). If you want to bring your car, bring a GPS and some antacids. I’ve been told we’re pretty bad drivers around here.

Transportation

DC’s metro is stupidly simple and is probably going to all the places you want to go. DC metro area cabs are priced pretty well as a back up. I wouldn’t bother to rent a car.

However, if you want to rent a bike, I have good news! There’s a Revolution Cycles in Crystal City that rents bikes by the week. I spoke with the owners, and they have about 100 bikes available. Given how many people are going to be in town, they recommended reserving one ahead of time.

I’m no bike enthusiast (I still think my green Huffy was pretty rad), but I have been informed by bike geeks that these are good bikes.

There is also BikeShare, which is like Zipcars for bikes, through DC and in the conference hotel neighbor. Bring your own helmet, though. Don’t be one of those guys. But there are only 10 spots at the hotel, so don’t count on easily finding a bike at the conference. This is a better option used to tool around D.C. for a couple hours.

At the moment, I don’t have much information regarding bike parking at the hotel. Hotels in the region are starting to have bike parking sections available, but if you’re renting a bike for the week, keep in mind that you might be keeping it in your room (I hope I’m wrong).

More soon! I’m going to post something about our tourist scene, if anyone is interested in seeing the sites while you’re here.

By Esther Nam

Government Fellowship Opportunity

2012-07-10T18:50:00Z

The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is hiring a group of 30 designers and developers (Python- and Wordpress-friendly) to improve internal operations and the way that we interact with the public. The CFPB is a US government agency.

They are offering a Design+Technology Fellowship: a two-year program for developers, graphic designers, and UX pros to help build a new government agency almost from the ground up.

Join us, and you will be given an opportunity to help create a dream technology environment for a new organization. In the process, you’ll improve the lives of millions of Americans. Maybe you’re just out of college and you are looking to sharpen your skills. Or maybe you want a break from building widgets and want to spend some time making things that really matter.

Sounds like a fantastic way for a few good (or even a whole lot of) Pythonistas to make a big difference in many citizens' lives!

You’d better hop to it, though - the deadline for applying to the Fellowship is this Friday, July 13th. Email info@pyladies.com if you have any questions and we’ll direct you to the contact person for this opportunity.

By Esther Nam

SF PyLadies First Workshop

2012-06-06T18:50:00Z

Ed. note: This post about the first San Francisco PyLadies chapter’s workshop is copied straight from Lynn’s personal blog (with Lynn’s generous permission – thanks!)]

What a blast I had on Saturday! It was a great learning experience for both the attendees and for us PyLadies org board! Good lessons learned, such as virtualenv is a beast to install depending on one’s operating system. Next time, we’ll have a pre-workshop session for installation of dependencies and such.

We went through how to build a blog using Django and its class-based views. We also went over Model-View-Controller concepts, and how they apply to Django. We wrapped up with a quick overview of how easy it is to deploy an application on Heroku (way too easy!).

I’ve made a GitHub repo for people to fork & contribute. I didn’t find an easily accessible tutorial for building a blog, or for building a simple app using Django’s class views, so hopefully this will grow to something useful in the Django community. Til next time!

By Esther Nam

SF PyLadies First Workshop

2012-05-21T18:50:00Z

Ed. note: This post about the first San Francisco PyLadies chapter’s workshop is copied straight from Lynn’s personal blog (with Lynn’s generous permission – thanks!)]

By Esther Nam

Jessica McKellar to be Keynte speaker at DjangoCon Europe!

2012-05-17T18:50:00Z

[Originally posted on the DjangoCon Europe blog. Thanks Jonas for letting us repost here! DjangoCon Europe 2012 will go from June 4-June 8 in Zurich, Switzerland.]

By Jonas Obrist

I am really excited to announce our second keynote speaker for DjangoCon Europe 2012 - Jessica McKellar.

Jessica is a kernel engineer from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She’s a maintainer of several open source Python projects, most notably Twisted and OpenHatch. She’s also working on a new edition of Twisted Networking Essentials for O'Reilly.

On top of her open source contributions, she is also a Python Software Foundation board member and a crucial part in the Boston Python User Group, the largest Python user group in the world. With that group she runs the Boston Python Workshop, an introductory programming pipeline that has brought hundreds of women into the local Python community and is being replicated in cities across the US.

By Esther Nam

SF Study Group

2012-05-12T18:50:00Z

Udacity is offering a free online intro to programming course starting Monday April 16th. Each week, videos will be posted online at the start of the week and homework will be due on the Tuesday of the following week.

Let’s meet every Wednesday evening; exact time & place will be coordinated with soon, but will be in the SF city area.

Please watch the videos beforehand so we can work on homework together. There are multiple courses, no need to all do the same. We can help each other!

Also - this event is for women, those who identify as women, and their friends (of either gender). Emphatically queer & trans friendly.

See PyLadies SF event page

By Esther Nam

Workshop Planning Session

2012-05-10T18:50:00Z

On May 8, 2011, six of the PyLadies got together at Intelligentsia Coffee in Pasadena. It was really great to see everyone! Sadly Jess was out of town attending Google I/O, otherwise we would have had seven of us.

This was mostly a planning session for the workshop, where we divided up the remaining tasks among us:

Send out a pre-workshop email to attendees. Invite anyone who has setup problems to come early for extra help - Audrey
Show up on Sunday at 8:30am to help people who need extra setup help. Make sure tables/chairs are properly arranged - Katharine, Sandy, Sophia
Show up on Sunday by 9am to greet attendees: check in, ask if vegetarian/vegan - Esther, Christine, Jess, Audrey
Follow up with KPCC about the venue. Check whether they have whiteboards - Audrey
Bring backup whiteboards from home - Sandy, Esther
Bring large paper from home - Sophia, Audrey
(If needed - tbd) pick up 2 large easels from office supply store - Sandy
Bring bagels/spread, cups, plates. Bring projector, 2 24" LCD monitors, power strips, printer, label paper for nametags - Audrey
Bring extra laptops - Katharine, Audrey
Print 3 signs (on 8.5x11 paper) for each breakout session: Debugging, Django, Web Scraping - Sandy
Put together 10-20 min Why Python overview talk for the start of the workshop - Christine
Put together 2 hr Web Scraping breakout session material - Katharine, Esther
Review Django poll tutorial https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/intro/tutorial01/ for 2 hr Django breakout session - Christine, Sophia
Review How to Think Like a Computer Scientist http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/ for 2 hr Debugging breakout session - Sandy, Audrey
Be available as a “floater” to whichever breakout session needs help most during the event - Jess
Put together 5 min lightning talks. Katharine: web frameworks. Sophia: Java/Python code sample case study showing differences. Sandy: generators. Esther: generating docs (Sphinx?). Christine: tbd (possibly showing how to set up pyladies.com or other cms). Audrey: tbd (possibly PIL/PyCairo drawing). Jess: tbd.
Move organizer discussions to private Google Group - Audrey
Create Mailchimp announce list and Google Group discussion list for attendees, potential members, friends - Audrey
Create a Google Forms survey that gets sent out on Sunday at 3:30pm to attendees - Katharine
Send out a Thank You email after the event - Audrey
Email other user groups about co-hosting an afternoon/evening hack session in mid/late June - Audrey
Ask Danny and Grant for help with picking up lunch and ice cream - Sophia, Audrey
Bring nice camera - Jess
Ask photographer friends for photo or video help (even if just stopping by for 30 min) - Sophia, Sandy
Get organizer t-shirts printed - Audrey

Wow, that’s a lot of tasks! If you’re reading this and want to help, email me at audreyr@cartwheelweb.com and let me know what you can help with, whether it’s on this list or not. We can always use more help.

Also, we talked about some of the fun things we want to do together in the future:

More ladies' nights for just us :)
Follow-up hack session where people bring laptops and code together - afternoon/evening of June 18?
Get a PyLadies car or two full of people and drive to LayerOne security conference in Anaheim on May 28-29, 2011 (\$100 online; $140 at door) http://www.layerone.org/
Road trip to Las Vegas for DEF CON August 4-7, 2011 ($150, paid at door) http://www.defcon.org/
Take a train to Portland for DjangoCon, Sept 6-8, 2011. Hopefully all the Django ladies will submit talks!
Go “on tour” for a weekend and do a San Diego women’s workshop
Set up the PyCon 2012 PyLadies bus to Santa Clara, March 7-15, 2012, with wifi, snacks, drinks http://us.pycon.org/2012/

By Audrey Roy

Welcome to mynt

2012-04-12T18:50:00Z

For a quick overview of what mynt has to offer, give the quickstart guide a read. You can also find API reference style documentation on the docs page. If you run into any problems open an issue on GitHub. Lastly, if you have any questions or just want to chat, you can hop into our IRC channel on freenode, #mynt.

Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner

2012-03-29T18:50:00Z

Ed. note The most recent Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner was Python-themed, and hosted by Yelp. Many thanks to Lynn for letting us repost this article from her blog! Lynn is starting up the SF Chapter of PyLadies, so drop her a line if you’re interested in joining!

I had the pleasure of attending last night’s Girl Geek dinner at Yelp’s headquarters. The event was about empowering women by hearing their success stories.

Three of the speakers were not strangers to me, odd enough! Christine from PyLadies in LA spoke about increasing involvement of women in the Python community. And of course, spreading the Pyladies ingenuity to San Francisco with the help of yours truly!

Kaitlyn Trigger of lovestagram.com, a valentine overlay to instagram photos, spoke as well. I had the fortunate opportunity to invite her to one of my Women Who Code python workshop nights. I loved her message that one can not learn how to code by herself; it takes a village!

Lastly, Sasha of Women Who Code gave a great talk on how she starting the group, and her motivation behind it. Too bad she’s now in NYC :-/

I would highly recommend attending a Girl Geek dinner in the future!

By Lynn Root

PyLadies in the News

2012-02-24T18:50:00Z

The LA Weekly blog featured a few of the LA PyLadies in a recent post. The Open Hatchery highlights a nice example of the power of community collaboration and outreach (we can’t wait to meet Pam at PyCon!)

We’ve even stirred a bit of discussion on Reddit – care to join the fray? =)

By Esther Nam

Get the Most out of your Conference-going Experience

2012-01-22T18:50:00Z

As seen in our last newsletter: @kjam and @sandymahalo are pro conference attendees (and speakers!). Here they present advice for those who may be new to the world of tech conferences and other neck-beard-laden gatherings like SCALE10x, which is happening this entire weekend in Los Angeles.

1. Don’t be intimidated by intense topics or talks. Part of attending a conference is exposing yourself to new content and learning from it. If you don’t get it all, you may be reminded of it years later when you come across something similar.

2.**It’s okay to walk out.** If you aren’t sure about a talk, it’s *totally* okay to sit in the back and dip out if it’s not what you expected or if you don’t feel like it’s going to be interesting or helpful to you.

3. Do talk to people. One of the best things about conferences is meeting folks you enjoy or who challenge and inspire you. Don’t fill your entire calendar with talks, spend some of the time just chatting with folks who are there and making new friends.

By Esther Nam

Call for PyCon Applications and Sponsors

2011-12-15T18:50:00Z

As previously mentioned, the PyLadies are working with the PSF to ensure that PyLadies who want to attend PyCon 2012 can do so. To that end,we are accepting applications for grants to attend PyCon in Santa Clara, CA from March 7-15.

Let’s make PyCon as diverse as the Python Community as a whole – if not more! Many thanks to the PSF for partnering with us on this initiative.

Attendees: If you are a female Python developer who wants to attend but needs financial assistance in order to do so, please fill out this form as soon as possible.

The application period for this year has ended. If you have not received a reply from us about the status of your application, please email esther @ pyladies com immediately.

Sponsors: If you are interested in providing financial assistance to a budding Python developer in need, please contact esther @ pyladies.com

We did something similar this past year for DjangoCon, and plan to continue this program for as long as we can sustain it. If you can help us, you will helping to change the community, and maybe even a couple of lives!

How grant recipients will be chosen

Priority will be based on the following factors:

Genuine financial need
Talk proposal acceptance (those invited to speak at PyCon will have higher priority)
Level of experience in programming
Contributions to open-source
Contributions to Python diversity advocacy efforts
Desire to attend
Impact that attendance will have on her life, especially for first-time attendees

Sponsors will receive:

an email report from us about the person you’re sponsoring, and why you made the right decision
your link listed on a page that we’ll be putting up for sponsors
your logo displayed on that page, if you donate substantially more than others (amount TBD) and/or better placement
a personal guarantee from me that the PyLadies and I will mentor the person you sponsored. We will help them through their Python career and put friendly pressure on them to contribute to open-source =)

By Esther Nam

PyLadies at PyCon 2012

2011-12-12T18:50:00Z

We’re happy to announce that with the help of the Python Software Foundation, PyLadies will be making an appearance at PyCon 2012! We will be exhibiting during the main portion of conference and will be on hand to help any other interested PyLadies in joining or starting up their own chapter. We will soon have details about grants to attend this upcoming PyCon, so stay tuned!

By C Cheung

Recaps: October Hackathon, November Beginner's Workshop

2011-11-29T18:50:00Z

Idealab in Pasadena played host to a PyLadies hackathon this past October. Our very own Sophia has posted some great photos of the event over at her own site, backCODE – check them out!

Lightning talks at that hackathon were given by:

Ray T. on Unit Testing

Randall D. on easy Django deployment with Heroku

PyDanny on Painless Authentication and Registration

Emma S.: Hello world! A beginner’s Django App

Leo C.: Google App Engine

Ryan: Know your Time Complexities

Muchas gracias to Idealab, and especially to Joven Matias for their excellent hospitality. Extra thanks to our wonderful volunteer corps, who came early, helped set up the rooms, and delivered lightning talks!

USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism hosted a beginner’s Python workshop that was even bigger than the first one we held back in May. 50-odd geeks, nerds, and similar fought their way through some unexpected downtown traffic to attend this tutorial, taught by PyLadies kjam, Sandy, and xtine.

It was a bright crowd, with most people Learning Python the Hard Way at a fairly rapid clip. They were impatient to learn about web scraping from kjam, and eager to follow along with the code samples presented at the end-of-day lightning talks.

Photos from this event are up on our Flickr page! BIG thanks to Geneva Oh of USC Annenberg and Prof. Robert Hernandezfor proposing, organizing and promoting this workshop for USC students and journalists (including one intrepid nerd-to-be who flew in from Arizona solely for this event!), as well as sponsoring the venue and food.

Lightning talks from

xtine: scraping data from a music website for fun!

Michael: Why Documentation Matters

Robin: Python List Comprensions [.ppt]

Emma: “Hello world!” (an encore by popular demand)

Leo: I can’t remember at the moment but I’m sure it was fabulous!

Cars.com generously hosted a post-workshop PyLadies social hour, plying us with beer and delicious appetizers from the campus bar. Thanks to Michael and Robin from Cars for giving up their Saturday for us! Likewise to our brilliant volunteer corps – the event would not have been as successful without your participation and we are grateful! =)

We hope to follow up with some Intermediate Python workshops in the coming months for those who want to level-up some more, so stay tuned – subscribe to our newsletter (use the form at right) and follow us on the Twitter!

By Esther Nam

Djangsta Shirts - Extra Print Run!

2011-09-19T18:50:00Z

If you were at DjangoCon you probably saw people wearing these, standing out magnificently amongst the sea of bright green. They were the cool people – the Djangstas, if you will.

We were originally going to sell these only at DjangoCon, but demand was so high we’ve decided to do one more print run. If you hesitated the first time around (and are now full of regret), or were shortsighted enough to give DjangoCon a miss altogether this year (and are now SO full of regret), here’s your chance to redeem yourself and join the ranks of the Djangstas!

Shirts will now cost $25, to cover shipping and/or PayPal fees.

Please pre-order by October 1, by filling out the form below. We’ll email you to confirm so you can pay us (via check or Paypal) before we print and mail you your shirt.

Update

[The pre-order period has ended: Thanks to everyone who placed their orders! We will be contacting you shortly to collect payments and mailing addresses, so dig up that checkbook or dust off your Paypal account! :)]

By Esther Nam

Recap: PyLadies at DjangoCon 2011

2011-09-14T18:50:00Z

Last week the PyLadies took Portland, Oregon by storm: after months of planning, brainstorming, planning, rehearsing, and even a bit of planning, we flew in en masse to DjangoCon 2011 for six action-packed days of tutorials, talks, code sprints, and raucous socializing with Django developers from all over the world.

Tutorials, talks, and sprints

Most of the talks from DjangoCon will be available online soon (we hope!) - lots of slides and other docs are available via Lanyrd. Here’s a brief recap of how the PyLadies represented last week:

On Monday we labored through a pre-conference day of tutorials to help PyDanny lead the Ultimate Django Tutorial, all proceeds from which went directly to the PyLadies. We had invaluable assistance from other great mentors like DSF president Russell Keith-Magee and Gabriel Grant of DotCloud, to name just two.

The conference began in earnest on Tuesday, with Tracy delivering an inspiring talk about launching her own startup in six weeks by teaching herself Django. That afternoon, Sandy wowed even the most experienced developers in the room with her excellent talk on best practices in testing. Audrey and Christine picked up the PyLadies baton the following day, with talks about Django packages and Django for the Front-End, respectively. Katharine spoke on Wednesday afternoon about web-scraping methods.

I’m singling out the PyLadies-driven sessions specially here, but of course there were numerous other great technical talks on topics ranging from design (Idan Gazit), to security issues (Paul McMillan), to pouring out some good-natured haterade for our favorite framework and language (Glyph Lefkowitz’s memorable keynote was entitled: “Why does Django Hate Python”?).

Most of us were heavily sleep-deprived by Friday – thank heaven for Stumptown Roasters and Voodoo Doughnuts! Still, inspired by Steve Holden’s and James Bennett’s respective talks about Django’s documentation, a few PyLadies delegates got together with a number of other devs at Urban Airship for code sprints, to try and rework the official Django tutorial so that it would be more friendly to beginners and casual Djangologists. Nate Aune started a git repo for the project and we hope to continue to plug away at it even though the conference is over. Still, while coding remotely has its pros, it was pretty awesome to be able to sit in the same room with dozens of talented folks to plug away at the same open-source project!

Off the program

It wasn’t all work for us, of course – there was plenty of extra-curricular fun to be had in Portland, from printing and selling out our Djangsta shirts (conceived by Katharine and designed by Christine); to sneaking multiple trips to Powell’s Books and Portland’s famous food carts (deep fried pie FTW!!); to hosting a meetup for DjangoCon PyLadies/friends-of-PyLadies at McMeanamin’s Pub on night 2 of the conference. Emma Email Marketing pitched in for generous quantities of beer for us, and we are indebted to Portland PyLady Michelle for organizing this hugely successful get-together!

The best part about the conference, of course, was meeting, coding, and carousing with Django devs from all over the world, many of whom we’d first conversed with online, via IRC or Twitter. There seemed to be a fair amount of conference buzz circulating about the PyLadies even before we arrived; what an odd feeling it was to have strangers recognize me by my Twitter avatar – not to mention how odd it felt to introduce myself to others whom I’d recognized in the same manner!

Speaking of which: the background tweet-chatter and retweeting of points from sessions we were missing out on was great to follow, sure, but Twitter was also awesome for things like helping out PyLady Dana when she was having some trouble getting PostgreSQL running on her MacBook Pro, or for reserving Djangsta shirts before they sold out.

Special props go to Shinji and Emily, who used Twitter to reach out to us and find their way into the conference after I tweeted a call for applicants. We’re so excited that people like them are taking the initiative to start PyLadies (or similar) groups all over the country!

Help from our friends

Most of this would have been inconceivable without the incredible amount of support we received from a few great people and their companies – and all we had to do was ask! You can read the full report of the results of our DjangoCon sponsorship program, but suffice it to say here that we were overwhelmed by the response.

We also have to acknowledge the exceptional hospitality of the conference organizers, including Steve, Sean O'Connor, and Nancy Asche, who lavished the PyLadies with care & attention, using every possible opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to seeing diversity flourish in the Python community. It was especially awesome of them to have arranged the weather in Portland to be unseasonably pleasant for us out-of-towners ;)

**Big hugs to everyone** who came up to us offering support, tips, or twenties (for the shirts!). It’s really exciting to connect with others who want to join us in our efforts to promote Python and open source, and do their part to increase the overall diversity of our community!

We plan to put the money we earned from the tutorials and T-shirt sales toward establishing the PyLadies as a 501©3 non-profit organization so that we can continue to do the things we’ve been doing for a long time to come.

All in all, I left Portland feeling inspired by the openness, intelligence, and big-heartedness of the Django community, and I know I’m not the only one.

By Esther Nam

Djangsta Shirts on Sale at DjangoCon

2011-09-06T18:50:00Z

These “Djangsta” shirts premiered at DjangoCon to a rousing success and are selling out quickly! If you are coming to DjangoCon this year, find a PyLady and get one! Proceeds help PyLadies outreach efforts. Shirt logo was designed by xtine.

Available: Womens L, Mens S/L

A pre-order form will be available for a reprint run!

Model: Jeff Schenck

By C Cheung

PyLadies Meetup at DjangoCon

2011-09-05T18:50:00Z

All women at DjangoCon are invited to the PyLadies meetup, Wed night at DjangoCon US! Thanks to Michelle Rowley and Eric Holscher (both of PDX Python) for organizing and planning the party.

Gents who participate in IRC channel #pyladies and guests of women are invited too.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011 8pm onward Location: Ringlers Annex of McMenamins

(Note: this is the Annex a block east of Ringlers, not Ringlers itself) 1223 S.W. Stark Portland, OR 97205 (503) 384-2700

http://www.mcmenamins.com/250-ringlers-annex-home

By Audrey Roy

DjangoCon Sponsorship Program

2011-09-05T18:50:00Z

Announcing the results of the PyLadies' DjangoCon Sponsorship Program.

$4250 was raised, with 100% of it going to making it possible for female Django developers to attend DjangoCon. Specifically, excited and passionate developers who would not otherwise have attended (who happen to be women).

Here is a breakdown of how the money was used. For more details about this, see our PyLadies / DjangoCon US 2011 Sponsorship Program financial report (PDF download).

Thank you to the individuals and companies who sponsored the program:

Gold ($3000+)

Mozilla

Silver ($500+)

Cars.com

Steve Holden / The Open Bastion

Bronze ($150+)

Douglas Philips

Supporter ($50+)

Justin and Kristy Fields

Shawn Milochik

By Audrey Roy

Mid-August News Bites

2011-08-16T18:50:00Z

Mid-August – in France we’d be halfway through our nationally recognized four weeks of vacation, but here in Los Angeles we PyLadies have been as busy as ever, working hard to plan some big, big things!

Also:

Sophia and I wrote up a short narrative about our little group for Women 2.0
Katharine submitted a panel proposal for SXSW Interactive next March – please vote it up on the SXSW Panel Picker!
Audrey is delivering keynote speeches at PyCon Australia AND Kiwi PyCon in Wellington, New Zealand! There will also be a women in Python breakfast at PyCon Australia before the keynote, so if you’re in that other hemisphere and would like to attend, shoot Audrey an email.

And we do it all for YOU =)

UPCOMING EVENTS

Those who subscribe to the PyLadies newsletter should already know about the following events, but if you’ve been dilly-dallying about signing up for any, get thee quickly to those registration pages so we can be ready for you! (If you *don’t* subscribe to our newsletter – why not?? There’s a handly little form for you on our sidebar RIGHT THERE –> - The LA PyLadies have created a Meetup Group where we will post all our events – join us! - It’s not too late to register for this weekend’s Hacks/Hackers hackathon, held under the auspices of #PubCampWest at KPCC in Pasadena. The theme is “Hacking online audio” - Monday is another PyLadies hack night – an informal event where people can get together to work on code or just hang out on IRC to do the same. Actually, we’re always around on IRC, so if you’re busy Monday, you can still hang out with us virtually on any other day you want! - Saturday, August 27th is the official August PyLadies mini-conference/hackathon at Cars.com. This all-day event will begin with a morning session of talks about Django and other cool Python tools, followed by a hackathon.

By Esther Nam

Intro to Django at Mahalo

2011-07-25T18:50:00Z

Last Saturday the PyLadies and the LA Django meetup group held an introductory Django Workshop, with generous amounts of support by Mahalo and Cars.com Guided by Sandy and Katharine, two of the PyLadies' Djangologists extraordinaires, the morning tutorial covered the basics of setting up a Django web application, from database configuration to navigating the built-in admin interface.

As you can see, mentors circulated the room throughout the workshop; Michael of Cars.com brought party hats for us to wear so that people knew who to ask for help as they set up their first Django web app. To maintain the party-like atmosphere we also had slides of Python-trivia questions, and threw candy at participants who got answered them correctly! Do YOU know what BDFL stands for?

For lunch we dined on pizza donated by Cars.com, while soaking in some much-needed vitamin D, and spent some time getting to know our fellow hackers a bit better.

Introducing ourselves, we discovered that we came from a wide range of backgrounds, from meditation experts to bioengineers, united by our eagerness to learn this awesome Python-based framework, and our willingness to spend a whole Saturday doing so!

These folks came all the way from Texas!!!

In the afternoon, most attendees chose to push on through the Django tutorial with Sandy, where they delved deeper into Django views and templating. Others hacked away happily on their own Python projects, and later we all learned how to set deploy our apps on DjangoZoom, for which the DjangoZoom folks were generous enough to give us trial accounts. There was, of course, time for a short outdoor break (PyLadies are all about promoting well-rounded, healthy hacking habits!), led by Python dev/capoeira enthusiast PyDanny.

The hackday finished with another fine set of lightning talks:

Katharine gave an awesome talk on how to keep up with the PyLadies
Randall gave a presentation on the awesome Django-Twilio API, for adding telephony features to web apps
Michael gave tips on applying for programming jobs, aimed at n00bs but containing good advice for any job-seeker.
Laura showed us how to use the Python wrapper for the Twitter API
The indomitable Sandy found it in her to give another talk, this time on Django testing

Since no PyLadies event is complete without a social hour, we walked over to Warszawa for a round of drinking and relaxation (i.e., we began formulating plans for tattoos, future PyLadies events, continued world domination, etc).

Thanks again to our wonderful hosts at Mahalo, particularly CTO Jeff; and also to the crew of Cars.com, most notably Michael, who helped out enormously with every aspect of the event, from tweaking the tutorial to handing out candy for trivia. Also, the hats!

Finally, and as always, thanks to the PSF for their continued support. We were able to fit twice as many people into our hack space using the tables and chairs they paid for. We’ll also be thanking them in the near future when we announce a few other exciting new developments…

Stay on our mailing list to hear more! Or, if that’s not enough PyLadies for you, you know where else to find us!

By Esther Nam

Django Workshop and Hackathon

2011-07-12T18:50:00Z

The PyLadies are continuing their summer series of hackathons with a Django-themed day on July 23rd, hosted by venue sponsor Mahalo in Santa Monica. This time, we’re teaming up with the awesome LA Django Meetup Group, who have valiantly supported our efforts to increase diversity by providing mentors like Jacob and Jeff.

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The Django web framework is a great way to dive into Python while quickly building and deploying a simple and useful web application (like this blog, or even a whole startup!), which is why beginners are highly encouraged to attend.

Participants will begin by going through the Django Tutorial under the expert tutelage of PyLadies developers. In the afternoon, attendees are encouraged to hack away on their own projects.

As at the previous hackathon in Hollywood, mentors will be available throughout the day to help people on their individual projects and to answer any questions or resolve issues.

Like always, there will be a final hour of lightning talks (if you’ve attended our previous events, now might be a good time to consider presenting something yourself!). And of course there will a social hour following the event which is open to the whole Python community and its extended circles. You know how we love to party!

To register for this low-cost workshop (which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner), visit http://pyladies-django-july.eventbrite.com. For more information, email esther @ pyladies dot com.

P.S. Many thanks to the Python Software Foundation for their generous support!

By Esther Nam

Call for Sponsorship

2011-06-30T18:50:00Z

PyLadies needs your help getting women to DjangoCon. There are women who could really benefit from the experience.

Help us get more women to DjangoCon

What happens when you encourage a talented female Django developer to attend DjangoCon and then give her a free ticket? First she gets really excited:

|Why is @estherbester going to DjangoCon?|

Then she discovers a world of new opportunities. She gains the confidence to start open-sourcing reusable Django apps. She contributes to open-source Django projects, maybe even Django itself.

She proposes a talk the following year. PyLadies mentors her to help get her talk accepted. She gets accepted and presents on one of her open-source projects.

Her Django app turns out to be so useful that she gets asked to integrate her project into Django core during the sprints ;)

I counted about 5 women at DjangoCon last year. Let’s make this year different. Let’s aim to have 25 women. If there are 250 attendees, that’s 10% women.

How you can help

1. Email audreyr {at} pyladies.com. Say “I pledge to donate X amount to helping women get to DjangoCon.”

She’ll use this info to let a woman know ASAP that she should get her speaker proposal in before the deadline. Or to let a potential attendee start making plans.

2. We’ll send you an email with instructions about how to get the funds to us (probably PayPal or check). Plus background info from me about the woman whom you’re sponsoring, so that you know that this is for real.

How we decide who gets to go

Priority will be based on the following factors:

Genuine financial need
Desire to speak at DjangoCon, combined with Django expertise and speaking ability. Talented potential speakers get extra priority.
Contributions to open-source
Contributions to Python women’s advocacy efforts
Desire to attend
Impact that attendance will have on her life, especially for first-time attendees

You’ll receive:

an email report from us about the person you’re sponsoring, and why you made the right decision
a personal thank-you at DjangoCon from that person
your link listed on a page that we’ll be putting up for sponsors
your logo displayed on that page, if you donate substantially more than others (amount TBD) and/or better placement
a personal guarantee from me that the PyLadies and I will mentor the person you sponsored. We will help them through their Django career and put friendly pressure on them to contribute to open-source

In cases of extreme financial need, we’ll give the woman not just a ticket but help with travel, lodging, and/or food.

If you’re a woman reading this and could use assistance, email audreyr {at} pyladies {dot} com. We’ll do our best to help as many women as possible.

By Audrey Roy

Recap: Hollywood Hackathon at Border Stylo

2011-06-24T18:50:00Z

Last Saturday we held our first hackathon of the summer at the offices of Border Stylo in Hollywood, in partnership with the SoCal Python Interest Group (“SoCal Piggies”). We invited not only newcomers to Python programming, like those who attended the May Beginner’s Workshop, but also seasoned developers who came to hack away on their own projects – and who happily volunteered themselves to be mentors to those aforementioned n00bs.

Roughly 60% of the day’s 55 in-person participants and 90% of the 30 remote participants were female, well beyond the PyLadies’ goal of having a 1:1 male-female ratio at Pythonista events.

OSS Bounty

A few days before the hackathon, Audrey put out the call for hackers to contribute to open source projects, offering these freshly printed PyLadies shirts as a reward for anyone who committed code to a FOSS project (Audrey’s wearing the new one!):

Some of the PyLadies continued to work their way through Zed Shaw’s “Learn Python the Hard Way,” the book we used at the Beginner’s Workshop. @ardaniel was the first person to earn a PyLadies shirt, by committing to GitHub the exercises she’d done and notes she’d written up from LPTHW. A group of folks had driven down from NorCal to help the SoCal Piggies work on a new website using the Pyramid web framework. After traveling all that way, it’s no surprise that they opted for the comfy couches:

Even people who couldn’t attend the hackathon in person, citing lame excuses such as not being located in California, were nevertheless invited to join in the fun – Audrey will be shipping free shirts to everyone who participated remotely and contributed to open-source, including one PyLady who committed code from across the Atlantic:

What time was it in Poland???

During the hackathon we threw the #pyladies IRC chatroom up on the big screen so people could follow online discussions no matter where they were sitting – without straining their thumbs from alt-tabbing. (PS If you want to join us on IRC anytime, we are in #pyladies on freenode.net!)

The Future of Python

After 4 hours of intensive hacking, it was time to take a break! Audrey herded us outside for a group photo. As PyDanny notes, it’s a glimpse of the Python community of the future:

Pretty grand!

After Dark

Though the Hollywood sky was outside was warm and bright, we soon drifted back indoors to chow down on Crispy Crust pizza and wings while listening to the end-of-day lightning talks:

Dirk gave a demo of his Opani platform, which leverages the cloud for social supercomputing.
Michael introduced the Pyramid web framework and Jenkins CI.
Sandy shared some amazing demos of Python-Xbox Kinect hacking
Jacob gave a PEP8 talk on best practices
Jeff admonished us to leave no Windows developers behind
Katharine and Danny proffered some words of encouragement for developers of all skill levels.

After the lightning talks, it was time to clean up, load out, and head over to the Melgard Public House for some well-earned beer and socializing time! This part was originally supposed to be Python Ladies’ Night 4, but once we found that the PyDudes weren’t so bad to hang out with, we gladly invited them along. Fun was had by all!

Big Thank-Yous

Gabriel, who played the part of event host on behalf of Border Stylo, said that of all the events his company has held (which is a lot!), ours was by far the smoothest and most awesome. Hope this means you’ll have us back, Gabe!

We of course have to thank the Python Software Foundation for giving us two grants to support this hackathon. Thanks to them, we were able to purchase enough tables and chairs to keep 55 hackers coding happily away in the same room, which led to much mingling and mentoring. They also helped foot the bill for drinks, snacks and dinner, so that we could fortify our hardworking brains with glucose-heavy treats and sodas all day long. And let’s not forget the wonderful T-shirts for open source contributors!

Coming up….

We really want to keep the momentum going for opening up the Python community to people of all stripes, and to provide a non-threatening environment where everyone feels welcome to work on their projects and learn to become a better developer without having to worry about whether they fit in or feeling stupid for trying.

To that end, we’ve got at least a few more hackathons and other cool outings in the works, so don’t forget to sign up for our mailing list, and follow us on Twitter so you’ll be the first to know when and where and what the PyLadies will be doing next! Thanks to all who attended, whether virtually or in-person – and sorry to those on the waitlist who couldn’t: we hope you’ll catch us earlier next time, or connect with us online!

By Esther Nam

Thank you, Python Software Foundation!

2011-06-07T18:50:00Z

It’s true:

We are so incredibly grateful to the PSF for taking a chance and stepping up to help us in a big way. We have more to say about this and how it has impacted us, so stay tuned.

By Audrey Roy

Great turnout at the Python Ladies Night 3

2011-06-07T18:50:00Z

We had around 14 people come and go throughout the night. It was a blast! We talked Python but also other things. Did you know that there are enough of us who ride scooters/motorcycles that we could have our very own PyLadies rally club?

Attendees were mostly Python developer ladies, but also a few gentlemen of the Python community and possibly one guy who doesn’t know Python (yet ;) Here are some of us:

Sad that you missed it? Come for the next one! It’ll be right after the PyLadies Hack Session. Even if you can’t make it to the event, you can still join us for drinks afterward.

SAVE THE DATE

Python Ladies' Night 4 will be on Saturday, June 18 from 8pm onward, at Hollywood Canteen, 1006 Seward St, Los Angeles, CA 90038.

By Audrey Roy

Python Ladies' Night 3

2011-06-02T18:50:00Z

We’re looking forward to the upcoming Python Ladies' Night 3 tomorrow, starting at 9pm.

All female Python developers are invited to meet up for a night of fun in downtown LA. Significant others and friends are welcome, so don’t leave them at home!

Find us at Seven Grand bar in downtown LA:

http://www.sevengrand.la 515 W 7th St, 2nd floor, Los Angeles, CA 90014

Meet us there at 9pm. We may move the group to other nearby bars as the night goes on.

If you think you’ll be late, email audreyr@pyladies.com with your cell phone number, so she can text/call you if the group moves.

How will you find us? Some of us will be wearing PyLadies t-shirts. See you soon!

By Audrey Roy

PyLadies Intro to Python Workshop

2011-05-22T18:50:00Z

On Sunday, May 15, 2011, the PyLadies held an Intro to Python workshop at KPCC’s Crawford Family Forum in Pasadena.

The goal was to create a safe, comfortable space for women to learn Python programming and be able to ask questions openly. Men were welcome as volunteers or as the +1 guests of women.

It was clear that this was a gathering of educated, sharp, successful women. Our female attendees included:

Grad students from UCLA and CalTech, and over-educated women with multiple degrees and Ph.Ds.
Senior marketers and community managers with over 10,000 Twitter followers, working on prominent tech projects
UX (user experience) professionals working for top companies
Research scientists currently using other languages in their labs for numerical analysis
Co-founders of startups, with 1 or more funded and/or successful companies under their belt
Experienced software engineers with Java, C++, .NET, PHP backgrounds
Product managers at top companies
Talented Linux sysadmins
Hardware hackers involved with the various LA area hackerspaces

I could go on and on. Many were happily employed, but some were looking for technical jobs. I’m hoping some of the job seekers apply to work at KPCC, our venue sponsor!

In the morning, Katharine and I did a walkthrough of the popular Learn Python the Hard Way tutorial by Zed Shaw. Attendees typed along with each exercise. At the end of each exercise, we reviewed the new concepts covered.

During lunch, KPCC’s senior web producer Jason Georges took everyone on a tour behind the scenes of the radio station. KPCC is full of cool things like soundproof glass cube recording rooms.

Then we were greeted by former NFL player and pastry chef George Wrighster with a surprise tray of cupcakes from his bakery, Violet’s Cakes. Yummy!

In the afternoon, we split up into smaller breakout sessions:

craping the Web with Python, or How I Automatically Get Happy Hour Specials Delivered to my Inbox
Intro to Django with the Django Poll Tutorial
Learn Python The Hard Way, Part 2

Then the PyLadies volunteer organizers gave lightning talks:

Equality: Equivalence in Python by Jess Stanton
Project Euler Demo by Christine Cheung
Python Web Frameworks by Katharine Jarmul
Generators by Sandy Strong
Ergonomics by Esther Nam
The Code Behind PyLadies.com by Audrey Roy
Inequality: Stories from the Python & Developer Communities by Jess Stanton

At the end, we celebrated over root beer floats. It was interesting and exciting to see that no one wanted to leave at the end! I was thrilled and floating on a cloud, and so were all the other organizers and volunteers.

Thank you to our special out-of-town guests! If there’s anything we can do to help you in any way with your local women’s developer communities, let us know.

Angie Chang, co-founder of Women 2.0 Bay Area Girl Geek dinners & product manager at Zinch from SF, who flew into LA just for our event
Heather Payne, senior marketing coordinator for a global staffing/HR firm from Toronto, who flew home eager to start a local women’s Python coding group

Congratulations to all 25 ladies and 2 men who completed our intro workshop, and special thanks to all the men who attended and volunteered for braving the crowd of ladies.

By Audrey Roy

First Python Ladies' Night Recap

2011-04-19T18:50:00Z

On April 16, 2011, a group of 5 local female Python developers got together for the first ever Python ladies' night.

We had wine, sparkling elderflower and ginger waters, vegetable spaghetti, savory meat pies from Porto’s bakery, Caesar salad, homemade garlic bread, tea, and tiramisu.

We talked about:

Python women’s advocacy (mostly!)
virtualenv
the mod_wsgi documentation
Django-based content management systems
how we each got into Python development

And we started plans for a women’s Python workshop on May 15, 2011. Details about how to get tickets will be announced this week.

It was an exciting meeting with a lot of positive energy. Everyone present was passionate about Python women’s advocacy and wanted to help increase diversity in the local Python community.

At the end, we went up to the rooftop lounge, where we had a spectacular view of downtown LA. Some of us relaxed in the jacuzzi, while others hung out and chatted poolside.

Our next ladies' night is scheduled for May 6, 2011. If you’d like to come and get involved, please contact me at audreyr@cartwheelweb.com for more details.

By Audrey Roy