My experience of attending Pycon Pune 2017

_posts/2017-03-14-pycon-pune-2017-a-wonderful-python-experience.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Pycon Pune 2017: A wonderful Python conference"
+date: "2017-03-14 18:18:02 +0530"
+tag: python conference
+---
+
+![pycon_pune_group_photo]({{
+site.url}}/assets/images/pycon_pune_group_photo.jpg)
+
+## tl;dr
+
+The conference is worth attending if you are a student, programmer or a
+hobbyist.  If you are a swag-hungry then don't expect much as a swag from this
+conference. If you are a Devsprint lover, then this conference has the coolest
+Devsprint. A great number of keynote speackers are invited for this conference.
+
+
+## Detailed Experience
+
+Because I was volunteering for this conference I reached Pune one day earlier
+than the conference days. The volunteer meeting was happening at Reserved-bit.
+
+### Volunteer
+
+#### Reserved-bit
+
+[Reserved-bit][reservedbit] is the best hackerspace I have ever come across. It
+has a large collection of programmable boards. You will find boards like
+[Raspberry Pi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi), [Bana
+Pi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pi),
+[Dragonboard](https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/dragonboard-410c),
+[Bigalbon](https://www.bigalsmods.com/product-p/1001.htm),
+[BBC-microbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Bit) and the 3D printer.
+Furthermore, this space has a great collection of books on Compilers and
+Embedded programming. I managed to found few on open-source too. The owners are
+great hackers. You will love to interact with hacker [Siddhesh
+Poyarekar](https://siddhesh.in/). Hacker [Nisha
+Poyarekar](https://twitter.com/nisha_poyarekar) is volunteering the [PyLadies
+community](https://www.meetup.com/PyLadies-Pune/) at Pune.
+
+
+#### Pune to Mumbai
+
+I spent my half day in this space. I got the responsibility of receiving one of
+the keynote speakers who was landing at Mumbai airport midnight. To be frank,
+estimation of Google Maps between Pune to Mumbai is wrong. It showed nearly 2
+hours but it took almost 4.5 hours to reach Mumbai. It took few more minutes to
+reach the airport.  The road is impressively smooth. You will encounter the
+beautiful mountains of [Lonavla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonavla). The
+task of moving from Pune to Mumbai airport, receive Katie and come back to Pune
+was completed in almost 13 hours. I left from Pune around 4.30 PM and came back
+at nearly 5 AM next day early morning.
+
+#### Illness during conference
+
+Because I did a huge amount of traveling at that night, I was unable to get
+enough sleep. Such tiredness resulted in an eye infection. I managed to attend
+the first day of the conference, but I was not in a condition to attend the
+second day. Treatment from local doctor healed me in two days and then I was
+able to take part into Devsprint.
+
+### Conference
+
+The conference was a total of 4 days where the initial two days were for the
+talks and the end was assigned for a Devsprint. It didn't overwhelmed me with
+many tracks but gave the quality talks presented in a single track. The talks
+were set from 9 AM to 5 PM which was taken little lightly by the attendees.
+
+I was pretty impressed with the keynote speakers of this conference.
+
+#### [Katie Cunningham](https://twitter.com/kcunning)
+
+Katie is the O'Reilly author. Her
+[book](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920024514.do) on Accessibility
+depicts her area of expertise. She is fun to talk to. She likes to listen about
+developer communities, writing and most importantly computer games. Her broad
+vision on product development is amazing. She is an avid reader. I enjoyed
+listening to her experience of being in India for the very first time.
+
+#### [Honza Kral](https://twitter.com/honzakral)
+
+Honza is the dude who loves contributing to
+[Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/). He is a core contributor of Django
+too. He hacks on Python drivers at [Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/). I was
+impressed with his suggestions on a code design problem I was trying to solve
+from the past few months.  His suggestions on code design are worth noticing. He
+is a vimmer and maintains little [vim](http://vim.org) plugins as a part of his
+interest.
+
+#### [Stephen J. Turnbull](https://twitter.com/yasegumi)
+
+Stephen professes the Dismal Science of Economics. His knowledge is deep-rooted
+just like his beard. You will enjoy discussing computer science, books and
+his experience of programming. He is authoring few books written in the Japanese
+language. Stephen is [Emacsite](https://www.gnu.org/s/emacs/).
+
+![stephen_turnbull]({{
+site.url}}/assets/images/stephen_turnbull.jpg)
+
+#### [Terri Oda](https://twitter.com/terriko)
+
+Terri is a security nerd. She spent most of her time exploring tools at Intel.
+Terri knows how to hide from the spying of the U.S. Government. She is leading
+[Google Summer of Code](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/) section from
+[Python Software Foundation](https://www.python.org/psf/). Terri is PSF
+community service award winner. If you are a student and want to take part in
+GSoC choosing PSF as your organization then she is the right person to talk to.
+
+#### [Florian Fuchs](https://github.com/flofuchs)
+
+His knowledge on [ReST
+API](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer) construction
+is the best. He is a [Falcon](https://falconframework.org/) nerd too. I enjoyed
+discussing various authentication mechanisms for ReST API with him.  He is a
+Redhatter.
+
+![gnu_mailman_team]({{
+site.url}}/assets/images/gnu_mailman_team.jpg)
+
+#### [Nick Coghlan](https://twitter.com/ncoghlan_dev)
+
+Nick listens more than he speaks. I will advise you to not disturb him if he is
+coding. He enjoys concentrating while coding. Getting his mentorship was a great
+experience. He has been contributing to [Core
+Python](https://github.com/python/cpython) for a few decades now.  You will
+enjoy discussing on interesting code compositions with him. He is a Red Hatter.
+
+#### [Praveen Patil](https://twitter.com/_gnovi)
+
+Unfortunately, I didn't get much time to talk with Praveen during this
+conference. He is a math teacher who teaches concepts of mathematics using
+Python programming language. You should feel confident to speak with him on
+Python in education and mathematics with him.
+
+
+#### [John Hawley](https://github.com/warthog9)
+
+John is the wittiest person that I know. His lines always end with humor. He
+hacks mostly on hardware and GNU/Linux. Micro Python and GNU/Linux should be
+considered as part of his interests.
+
+I am sad to declare that I was unable to attend any keynote speeches because of
+the illness. Mostly I rested at the hotel or talked with people during the
+conference days.
+
+
+![pycon_pune_2017_keynote_speackers]({{
+site.url}}/assets/images/pycon_pune_2017_keynote_speackers.jpg)
+
+
+#### Volunteer Party
+
+If you are volunteering for this conference, then you will be invited to a
+volunteer dinner party. We enjoyed party colored disco lights dancing on the
+bits of the DJ. Punjabi food was served, and if you were above 25 than you were
+allowed to take a sip of a beer.
+
+#### Devsprint
+
+Devsprint happen at the [Redhat Headquarters,
+Pune](https://goo.gl/maps/mXeirzQhPFz). I found the building has tight security.
+You will find an individual pantry section dedicated to each department. We were
+instructed to hack at a huge cafeteria section. I myself contributed to Core
+Python. Nick Coghlan was mentoring for Core Python. I reviewed one PR, found one
+broken test case and wrote a fix of an existing issue with his help.  Honza was
+leading the development of Django web framework. A team of [Anand
+Chitipothu](http://anandology.com/) mentored for [Web2py](www.web2py.com/).
+[Farhaan Bukhsh](https://twitter.com/fhackdroid) mentored for
+[Pagure](https://github.com/pypingou/pagure). John Hawley encouraged
+contributing to [MicroPython](https://micropython.org/). Terr Oda, Stephen
+Turnbull and Florian Fuchs mentored for
+[GNU/Mailman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Mailman).
+
+
+![cpython_devsprint]({{
+site.url}}/assets/images/cpython_devsprint.jpg)
+
+#### Why attend this conference?
+
+* This conference has the coolest Devsprint. The organizers understand the value
+  of the Devsprint in a conference. I have never observed such an importance of
+  Devsprint at any other Python conference happening in India.
+
+* If you are a student, then this is a beginner friendly conference. Don't be
+  afraid to attend if you are a Python noob. You will receive a student
+  concession for the tickets too.
+
+* If you are a developer, coming to this conference will inspire you to grow
+  from your present level. You will meet core contributors, lead programmers,
+  owners of startups and project managers. You will find a huge scope of
+  opportunities to network with people.
+
+* The conference is single track event. This decision helped me to not miss the
+  interesting talks. In my previous experience, parallel tracks forced me to
+  choose between talks when I was interested in both, which killed me.
+
+* I have never seen such a huge amount of keynote speakers at any conference
+  happening in India. Keynote speakers were the main attraction of this
+  conference.
+
+#### What was missing?
+
+* If you are a swag-hungry fellow than attending this conference won't be worth
+  it. The conference attendees have to be satisfied with the conference T-shirt.
+
+* I observed there were fewer corporate stalls than at other Python conferences.
+  A stole from Reserved-bit, Redhat and PSF community stall was there.
+
+* A workshop section was completely missing. In my opinion, the workshop helps
+  the beginners to start. There were a few topics which can be better
+  represented as workshop rather than a talk.
+
+* I was unable to observe any dedicated section for an open space discussion.
+  This section is helpful for communities and contributors to discuss
+  interesting problems and think together.
+
+###### Proofreader: [Benaiah Mischenko][benaiah], [Chameleon][chameleon]
+
+[reservedbit]: https://reserved-bit.com
+[benaiah]: https://benaiah.me/
+[chameleon]: https://chameleon.kingdomofmysteries.xyz/