PyCon US 2024: Insights, Learnings, and Community.

Do you know that the Python programming language was birthed as a hobby project over a Christmas break? Well, now I’m questioning what I use for Christmas breaks for 🤭😂.

This year, I attended PyCon US (courtesy of PyLadies) at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from May 15, 2024 — May 23, 2024.

This article will highlight:

• Introduction

• Pre-Event Prep

• During the event

• Post-Event (Announcements)

• Wrap-Up

• Personal Tips

• Resources

Introduction

PyCon US is a conference with a myriad of events such as the Summits (Education, Documentation and more), Open Spaces, PyLadies Auction(a great experience by the way), Expo showcase, Lab Events, Job Fairs, side events and many more. This event brings together Pythonistas from around the world to come around, learn, share, network and have a great time overall.

Pre-Event Prep

I arrived a bit earlier before the event so I masked up and caught up with friends at the venue. I passed by the Registration Booth to self-check-in, and pick up my lanyard and tags. I checked out the Expo Hall where setup was in motion.

NB: Mask on Policy

I helped set up the PSF Booth Selfie Wall which turned out great. Afterwards, I decided to check the Black Python Devs and PyLadies booths to support.

During the event

During the event, we had a lineup of great talks(including keynotes, workshops and tutorials), summits and activities all outlined via the PyCon US app.

Take a look at the Conference event schedule here: https://us.pycon.org/2024/schedule/

I volunteered at the Black Python Devs and PyLadies Booth, attended summits, visited all the booths at the expo hall, participated in labs and quizzes such as the Ansys PyGeometry Lab, and MongoDB Quiz(just to name a few) and I interacted with various representatives of the organizations present.

Also, Black Python Devs celebrated its first anniversary at the JetBrains stand🎉🚀

Also, listen to Jay Miller’s Keynote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYZBpoYjxLo

PyLadies Auction

This was a great and entertaining experience as I had never been to a real auction before. I recommend getting a ticket to this event if you attend the next PyCon US.

Post-Event

On the last day of the conference, we had a closing ceremony and said our final goodbyes. After the main event was the Sprints which lasted from Monday till Thursday and is an opportunity to contribute to Open Source repos.

It’s said that “All good things come to an end sadly”, however, in this case, it’s just for a while till we meet again. The last days are pretty hard and sad but I am grateful to have been there, contribute and meet awesome people.

I had an unexpected great experience with people I didn’t know and I feel it was meant to happen. Thank you especially, Jim, Victor, and Velda — Sigh, I had the best time with you despite everything I had going on; you guys are the freaking best ❤️

To everyone I interacted with, reconnected with, volunteered with, answered questions, provided solutions, suggested improvements to my quiz/lab submissions, spoke to me about their product in the Expo Hall and the like, thank you so much. I hope we get to meet again. Wishing you the very best 🫶🏾

Sprints

After the conference, I joined the Sprints session for the first time where I set up the BeeWare and CPython repos locally; I made an open-source contribution to BeeWare(thank you so much, Russell-you are awesome ✨).

Velda and I started a journey to understand the internals of CPython so we got the CPython Internals book by Anthony Shaw to kickstart our journey.

Exciting Announcements

Abigail M. Dogbe was awarded for being an Outstanding PyLady and Velda Kiari got an offer on the Python Steering Council 🎉

It is great to see BPD members reach higher levels and get rewarded for their work.

Wrap-Up

Upon reflection, it was a great experience overall. It allowed me to learn more, meet new amazing people, reconnect with other Pythonistas I hadn’t seen in a while, get updates on Python, and tech tools and gain a deeper sense of community.

Personal Tips

These are a few tips I would recommend for your next PyCon:

• The conference can be overwhelming so review the schedule and keep reviewing because things could shift.

• Please register for events on the dashboard early before they get sold out.

• Make it a point to attend the summits because they contain great information which isn’t recorded so you may miss out on a lot if you don’t attend.

• Keep an eye out for the mailing list.

• Be bold because it helps :)
  There are some friendly people you’d meet or reconnect with there; that was one of the best experiences.

Resources

Here are some great reads with more information on PyCon US you should take a look at:

• Kati’s Post (Katherine Michael): https://katherinemichel.github.io/portfolio/pycon-us-2024-recap.html

• Hugo compiled a list here: https://dev.to/hugovk/pycon-us-2024-a-roundup-of-writeups-26hj

• Pawel’s Experience: https://python.ascendance.dev/my-first-ever-python-conference-bb8c88f1517b

This took a while to put out but I hope you enjoyed the highlights of my experience :)

I wish you the very best.

#Python #PyConUS #Tech