PyCon Philippines 2012 Day 2
The second day of PyCon Philippines 2012 had a really good turnout. My unofficial estimate is that we had about 90% of the attendees from the first day attend (with the unfortunate exception of most of the faculty and students of Agoo Computer College).
The day started with...
Lightning Talks
Unfortunately I don't normally take notes on lightning talks. I'm kicking myself now. Really hard. I'll try and relate some of the talks:
- Import this and that, a parody talk by Daniel Greenfeld (me). Malcolm comment on it.
- Getting into space using weather balloons by Frank Pohlmann
- Ponystrap by Audrey Roy (video from DjangoCon Europe)
- Call for Tagalog and other Philippine languages translation of Django by Malcolm Tredinnick
- The obligatory PyCon lighting talk on Vim by Bryan Bibat
- OpenERP by Frank Pohlmann and Ann Tan-Pohlmann
- A parody talk by Sony Valdez
Then it was on to...
Sprints and Tutorials
Encouraged at #pyconph seeing so many people declaring themselves beginners and then diving in. Enthusiasm was a bit contagious.
-- Malcolm Tredinnick on twitter
Primary funding for the sprints came from the Django Software Foundation and Python Sprints. That funding went towards food, drinks, and various logistics for handling the estimated 200+ attendee turnout. Things sprinted on:
Django
Django had it's own dedicated and very full room (no more chairs could fit so I sat on the floor), with Malcolm Tredinnick leading the effort, with Marconi Moreto helping out. It turned into mostly an effort to get a lot of people kick-started in Django. What was very heartening was watching people race through the tutorials on their own, and then work on projects using the framework.
I suspect next year the sprints will see a lot of submissions to Django core.
I had hoped to continue my work on Class Based View documentation, but it was wisely pointed out that I should focus more on helping others get moving in Django and other projects.
Ansible
Rodney Quillo led the sprint on the Ansible tool of which he is so fond. About seven people fond of engineering joined him. They seemed very productive and happy by day's end.
pymongo
A number of developers working on embedded devices gathered to work out an edge case issue with pymongo. I wish I knew more about their efforts, but I can tell you that this sort of very serious engineering effort is very common amongst professional Filipino developers. Because of geography, telecommunications and embedded devices are much more prevalent in the island nation.
Other efforts
Again I'm kicking myself. There were a ton of other development going on and I didn't document any of it. Certainly I was busy here and there helping out, but this is the sort of thing you need to document at the moment. Next time I assure you I will be very diligent about recording the efforts of so many.
Tutorial Room
About half the people stayed in what I dubbed the tutorial room. This is where speakers took turns going over material we had brought to the conference. Attendees followed along, and the diligence and focus in the room was very impressive. The tutorials/talks included:
- Intro to Python using Turtle by Sony Valdez
- Introduction to git and github by Bryan Bibat
- 21 Cool Things You Can Do With Python by Daniel Greenfeld (me)
Food and drinks
I mean to mention that the breakfast, lunch, and snacks at PyCon Philippines 2012 were pretty good. The logistic chairs had decided rather than gamble on the usual sort of over-priced and not-so-good professional catering service that most conferences rely on to the dismay of... well... everyone, to go with local restaurants.
For dinner people went out on their own. We were lucky enough to go to Pino in Quezon City both times. The Kare-Kareng Bagnet was really tasty.
Conference End
The conference chair, Frank Pohlmann, gave us a few well spoken words about how wonderful the event was to run and host. How gratifying it was to see the enthusiasm and dedication of the attendees, and how inspired he felt.
Then we cheered him.
After that it was a lot of pictures and goodbyes to many new friends. Which meant a lot of sad feelings about a great event coming to an end. I felt inspired and changed. I wasn't the same person going in as I was coming out. I'm more grateful for what I have, and deeply honored that I had this chance to bring PyCon to so many wonderful people.
More thoughts on PyCon Philippines in a forthcoming blog post.
Tags: python django Philippines pycon