Indianapolis Python Workshop for women and their friends

Mel Chua, I, the team from the Boston Python Workshop, and IndyPy are all working together to bring about the Indianapolis Python Workshop for women and their friends in just two weeks!

There are several great things about this style of workshop:

- It's designed for beginners. No, really. I've taught what I thought of as "introductions" before, but like most non-beginners, I'm way too prone to zoom ahead and forget what it's really like for beginners. The BPW staff has worked hard to overcome this, and put together an amazing curriculum that really covers what beginners need in detail.

- The participants will be mostly (but not exclusively) women. There is an awkwardness about being the "only girl in the room" which, when heaped on top of garden-variety beginners' nervousness, can make people decide to just stay home... or make them nervous as heck if they do come. (There's nothing like feeling like the reputation of all women everywhere rest on your n00bish shoulders...) The quickest way to short-circuit that problem is to make sure that there are plenty of other girls in the room!

- It's very hands-on, concentrating on getting people using and enjoying code in a short time.

- It's designed to help participants plug immediately into using and enjoying their local developers' community, moving from the workshop into cooperative Project Nights with their local user group. In fact, this workshop takes place at Indiana LinuxFest, so their first exposure to the user community is right outside the door.

Please tell the Midwesterners you know. And if your company is excited about this, too, talk to me about sponsorship opportunities!

PyCon 2012

Best. PyCon. Ever.

And since PyCon is like my Christmas (in the 5-year-old sense: "I get new toys to play with!"), that's extremely high praise.

This isn't a proper retrospective - don't know if I'll have time to write one - but I just wanted to give thanks and glory to Jesse Noller, the entire volunteer staff (from whom I was notably absent), the proud ranks of the sponsors, and the awesome participants (the word is definitely "participant", not "attendee"). If you were wondering if PyCon's magic could scale, be reassured: the rainbows only proliferate.

PyOhio CFP should be out within a couple weeks, too.