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Labels: .NET, CODE Magazine, IronPython, PyCon

As I finally settle back into side projects after work, I realize that I need to recap my PyCon experience. Since I blogged about my goals, let's see how they went.

Goal #1: Present at PyCon. (accomplished)

My presentation was at 10am on Sunday morning, and it was an experience that I won't forget. It started out with video difficulties, and then we ran into audio issues as well. We heard the start of Mark Ramm's Paver talk in our room. Of course, I had to run with it - I couldn't let that throw me off. I did have a great audience, and that helped as well.

It was the largest group I've presented for, and it's been the largest room that I've presented in on my own - the only other experience that compares is my CodeFest panel at OOPSLA '99. Despite the nervousness, I moved right along.
I was able to show some basic examples of what you can do with IronPython, including a cross-platform form that uses the Environment.OSVersion property to show which operating system was running. This cross-platform was the only demo I ran in Windows. Everything else ran in openSUSE thanks to Mono.

After I finished presenting, I had to check the pycon Twitter feed to see what was said. Yes, I was using vim for my editor. This time around, I used an openSUSE VM in VirtualBox. I've given this presentation before in Ubuntu, but I wanted to use the IronPython 2 bits, which aren't in a package yet for Ubuntu. (This would involve compiling from source, and there's a problem with that - so no package yet.)

I still need to get my demos online, but my slides are available on my Slideshare.

Goal #2: Meet some of the IronPython people. (accomplished)

When I arrived at PyCon on Friday, I managed to make it in time for the Python VMs panel. When Harry walked in, Dino yelled to him, and that's when I made the note that these guys were here in person. After the panel, I talked with Harry a little, and then I ran into Michael Foord.

It was great to hear Jim Hugunin's talk on IronPython, immediately following the Python VMs panel.

On Saturday, I went and hung out at the IronPython open space with these guys and a few others. It was nice to hear the other guys asking about IronPython and talking about using it.

Finally, on Sunday, I saw these guys in my audience for my presentation, and I stayed for Dino's talk as well.

It has been great to meet these guys in person, and I hope to run into them again sometime.

Goal #3: Meet with the PyOhio team. (accomplished)

On Saturday night, I went to the PyOhio open space, and I was quite impressed with the turnout. We had Eric, the token Columbus python rep. The Cleveland group was there in rare form (or maybe just in their normal insanity), and Cincinnati was also well-represented. We also had at least a guy from Maryland, a guy from Texas, and a guy from Utah.

In the hour that we met, we were able to cover quite a few issues and get a few volunteers. I have volunteered to help them with publicity, and I will also be carrying the IronPython torch there as well. (If you're on Twitter, make sure to follow @pyohio.)

Goal #4: Check out the Stackless python presentation by CCP. (failed)

This was my only goal that I didn't make. I managed to make it to the room just as the presentation was starting, but the snow outside kept bugging me and so I gave up the fight. We had a 6.5 hour ride home, and I didn't want to take any chances with it.

Final Thoughts

This was my first python event, and it was great to see such an awesome community. People from all over the world came together to talk about, hack in, and show off Python and its various implementations. I look forward to PyCon 2010 in Atlanta!

Labels: IronPython, PyCon

As I'm finishing up my slides and looking at my "Search:pyohio" column on TweetDeck, I'm reminded of the many things I hope to accomplish while at PyCon.

Goal #1: Present at PyCon.

On Sunday, I will be giving my talk on IronPython. My timeline is slightly skewed from what I had anticipated, but that's because I've got more slides and a better VM to work with. I had a couple questions come up that I've included this time around. So if you're at PyCon and want to hear what I have to say on IronPython, I'm speaking in Ballroom D at 10:00am (Chicago time, that's 11:00am EDT).

Goal #2: Meet some of the IronPython people.

While we're all spread throughout the world, there are other IronPython people out there that will be at PyCon. I've followed them on Twitter for awhile, and I'm hoping I get to finally meet them while at the event. If you see me there, feel free to yell "Hey, sadukie!" and I'll most likely respond.

Goal #3: Meet with the PyOhio team.

PyCon is the national event, but PyOhio is the statewide python mini-conference. It's held usually at the end of July down in Columbus. I want to meet them and help where I can, and it'll be good to carry the IronPython torch for them as well. It does seem a little odd, though, that we have to leave our state to meet, but hey, whatever works!

Goal #4: Check out the Stackless python presentation by CCP.

Of all the presentations out there, I really want to see this one, as I've been an EVE Online player for awhile now. I'm typically mining or building things, and I've also had the joys of rooting for my alliance (Manifest Destiny) in the alliance tournaments. But having experienced the update as user is one thing - I'm very curious to see what this will be like from a developer's standpoint.

I'm leaving later this week, and I look forward to arriving in time for the talks on Friday. Hope to see some of you there!

Labels: EVE Online, IronPython, PyCon, PyOhio, sadukie

Yesterday, I realized that my upcoming speaking schedule is going to be fun - 3 talks on 3 different topics in 3 different states in less than 1 month. So... where am I when and what am I talking about?



Talk 1: PyCon, Chicago, Illinois. Sunday, March 29, 2009. "Pumping Iron into Python: Intro to FePy"

I have to thank Catherine Devlin for suggesting that I submit something to PyCon. I will be giving a mostly abridged version of my talk from CodeMash. However, unlike my demos at Codemash, I plan on showing IronPython in both a Windows environment and in Mono. I can tell you it's a combination of my CodeMash slide deck and my original IronPython talk that I gave last May. I should have my slide deck on the PyCon website later this week for those who are interested.

Note: Although I say this in the abstract: "This session will introduce the open source .NET implementation of Python known as IronPython without using Windows.", I've been asked by some Windows Python programmers to show Windows examples as well. So I will have both on hand. However, I plan on showing most of the demos with the ipy console on my Ubuntu VM.



Talk 2: Central Ohio Day of .NET, Wilmington, Ohio. Saturday, April 18, 2009. "Intro to the New Data Types in SQL 2008"

What originally started out as a presentation for my local SQL SIG - the Ohio North SQL SIG - has evolved into a Day of .NET talk. It debuted in September 2008. At the suggestion of Chris "Woody" Woodruff, I added FILESTREAM to my presentation in time for Ann Arbor Day of .NET last October. At Central Ohio Day of .NET, I will be presenting this talk - complete with revamped examples of hierarchyid and FILESTREAM.



Talk 3: Kalamazoo X Conference, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Saturday, April 25, 2009. "Social Networking for Developers Geeks"

When I first heard about this conference late last year, I was intrigued. My buddy Mike blogged about the X Conference, and I'd recommend checking it out. I won't be showing any code, but I will be showing social networking profiles and some tips and tricks behind it. In an economy where companies are more prone to layoffs than to hiring new people, it helps to have a social network to find possible job leads and to possibly establish relationships and maybe form companies of your own. It also helps to network with others to bounce ideas and questions off of each other and even just to hang out. But we geeks aren't known to be social. So leave it to me to show a bunch of geeks how to get out there and how to get the best experience out of each tool.

I'm looking forward to giving these talks - they should be a lot of fun! I hope to see some of you there!

Labels: Central Ohio Day of .NET, Kalamazoo X, PyCon

Many moons ago, I was a Girl Scout, collecting badges for my sash in Brownies and then for my vest in Juniors. But once the troop dissolved, I stopped earning badges.

Here I am decades later, now collecting badges on my blog's sidebar. So what's the deal with the badges? Here we go:



This isn't a badge, although it appears with my badges. This is one of the Microsoft Tags that I've created, and I will unpassword it when the timing is right. For a very informative post on Microsoft Tag and some of its capabilities, check out Jeff Blankenburg's post on Microsoft Tag.



On Saturday, February 28th, I will be speaking at the first Ignite Cleveland. With an Ignite event, you have 20 slides, 15 seconds each, for a total of 5 minutes. The title of my talk is "Marketing Your Event Online". In my 5 minutes, I will be showing some of the tools to market events online - including Eventful, CrowdVine, Meetup, and Twitter. While showing off the tools, I will be mentioning effective ways of using them and some of the local companies that are using these tools. I've been mentioning this event on Cleveland Tech Events and as clevtechevents on Twitter.



On Sunday, March 29th, I will be in Chicago, speaking about IronPython at PyCon. I'm looking forward to hearing some of the Python and IronPython talks, and I look forward to meeting more people there.



On Saturday, April 18th, I will be in Wilmington, Ohio for Central Ohio Day of .NET. I've submitted talks on Iron Python, SQL 2008 data types, and XAML, but their call for speakers is open a bit longer, so I won't know if any of the talks will be accepted for awhile yet. I know of another IronPython talk being submitted by Darrell Hawley, and if both of our talks get accepted, I'd recommend checking them both out - I'm hoping to do a "look at the cool things you can do with IronPython" kind of talk, whereas he's hoping to showing off some of the tools to use with it and how to get into debugging and stuff.

Even if my talks don't get accepted, I plan on being at Central Ohio Day of .NET and hope to see you there!

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If you want to hear me talk on anything, check out my list of presentation abstracts. IronPython, databases in general, and social networking are the main things that I like talking about, but I'm always looking into new technology and may add more to my list of interests. Drop me an email at sarah at codinggeekette dot com if you want to hear me speak!

Labels: badges, Central Ohio Day of .NET, Ignite Cleveland, Jeff Blankenburg, Microsoft Tag, PyCon

The PyCon 2009 team has posted the talks. It looks like they have a little something for everyone.

I will be speaking at PyCon on IronPython (#12 in the talk list). For those who saw my presentation at CodeMash, my presentation at PyCon will be a condensed version of the CodeMash talk.

I am interested in seeing the presentations "Making games in Python - Tools and techniques at CCP" and "Stackless python in EVE, pt. 2", as I've been a huge fan of EVE Online. When I'm not blogging or coding, I can be found mining in game, to help my husband and some of our friends in manufacturing items. One of my side projects currently is to help my husband master the game of "playing spreadsheets". He's got an Excel spreadsheet with the cost accounting for some of his manufacturing projects in game, but he recently hooked me up with a database dump, from which I was able to create most of his spreadsheet programmatically.

Looking at the talks list, there is one other IronPython presentation, given by Dino Viehland, the lead developer of IronPython at Microsoft. While I will be presenting what IronPython is at the beginner level (what it is, what you need to run it, some neat things with it), he will be presenting some of the internals of the language. He will also be representing IronPython on the Python VMs Panel. So if you are attending PyCon 2009 and are interested in learning more about IronPython, check out our talks - "Pumping Iron into Python: Intro to FePy" and "IronPython Implementation".

I hope to meet some of you there!

Labels: CCP, EVE Online, IronPython, PyCon, talks

One of the latest talks that I will be adding to my list is "Pumping Iron into Python: Intro to FePy". Originally, I had named the talk "Pumping Iron into Python : Intro to IronPython", but that title was too long for the CodeMash submission page. So then I shortened the name, but in changing the name, it changed the context of my talk as well. My abstract changed from an intro to IronPython similar to the one I did at Cleveland Day of .NET to this:


As python grows in popularity, IronPython has started making more waves. What is IronPython and why should regular python programmers be familiar with it? This session will introduce the open source .NET implementation of python known as IronPython without using Windows. Come see FePy (IronPython community edition) in action via Mono -- a cross-platform open source implementation of the .NET framework.

I'm extremely excited to announce that it has been accepted for CodeMash, so I will be giving this talk in January 2009 at the conference at Kalahari resort in Sandusky.

When I first put together the abstract for this talk, I was looking forward to showing just IronPython. But after seeing Catherine's comment here and having to shorten my title for the CodeMash submission, I changed my perspective and decided to take this another way.

I decided to act on Catherine's comment and submitted this talk for PyCon 2009. That talk is currently in the review process. Now I've spoken at user groups and Days of .NET, and those submission processes are fairly short and straightforward. Even the CodeMash submission process was fairly painless, other than maybe for the decision makers since they had quite a few sessions to review. But the PyCon submission process has been probably the most interactive, most detailed process that I've gone through so far - and I definitely like it.

I submitted the talk to PyCon on the same day I submitted it to CodeMash, before the November 3rd cutoff. Since then, I've had a few people look at my submission and comment on my submission. The comments came from my reviewers, who basically wanted to know more and had things to say about the topic with the description that I posted here. I was able to go in and hopefully answer their questions.

I liked that there was a way to interact with the reviewers. There are stricter guidelines and an agreement to be videotaped, amongst other things. This is what the PyCon submission timeline is for proposals. Now, I wait until December 15th or so, when I find out if my talk will be accepted.

However, I'm not really sitting and doing nothing while waiting. Remember... this talk has already been accepted for one conference, and I'm really looking forward to showing off IronPython in a different development environment besides Visual Studio. I'm looking forward to showing off Mono and developing with that. I will also be showing off some of the things that FePy has that makes it different from the standard IronPython implementation, as well as what IronPython has to offer for non-Windows users.

Look forward to hearing more about this talk as we get closer to CodeMash... teasers will definitely show up between now and then!

Labels: CodeMash, FePy, IronPython, Mono, presentation, PyCon