My tutorial was intended to encourage women in computer science by serving two purposes: discussing the source code and functionality of a particular project, and openly discussing some of the issues they faced in their current programs and surroundings. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that these women needed no technical or social encouragement. They are already enthused, technically and socially well prepared, and on their way to a very bright future in engineering or computer science. I was pleasantly surprised that they were very comfortable in the bash shell, and as comfortable in their current college curriculum. Like children at play, they picked up the moderate-levelled tutorial code quickly, made great strides in such a short time, and had a lot of fun doing it.

It was profoundly encouraging to see such a small computer science program achieve diversity as well as such a high level of skill. It made me wonder why larger colleges and universities cannot accomplish the same on bigger budgets, with larger staff, and a more diverse mix of students. It touched me to hear and see the enthusiasm, eagerness, and skill of the students in this program. Their learning experience under the Department Chair, Dr. Burch, comes as close to perfect as I have ever seen.

The next day’s events at PyArkansas were held at the also-very-nice campus of University of Central Arkansas, where an entire day’s worth of tutorials took place. Two Python 101 tracks were held: one for programmers and one for non programmers (a great concept). An all-day Django Track was given, where the advanced course was taught by Jacob himself. I held an afternoon tutorial addressing advanced Python concepts, with downloadable example code, where we compared and contrasted build and deployment tools, played with regex, and showed examples of some internal Python oddities involving static variables. I unfortunately missed the Python Blender tutorial, held at the same time as mine, and I heard it went quite well.

The campus facilities were very accomodating. Everything was well organized,and up and running for us when we arrived. This is a very welcome surprise to anyone who has travelled a bit to do tutorials. I was specifically told by Dr. Chenyi Hu, the Department Chair of UCA, that he really does care about diversity, and it is something they strive to achieve. This was truly touching, quite impressive, and a pleasant surprise from such a small town.

Kudos to Greg Lindstrom, Dr. Carl Burch of Hendrix College, Dr. Chenyi Hu of UCA, and everyone else involved. You induced a big technical “tremor” through your small town, which echoed far and wide. It is yet another example of the great people drawn to the Python community, and the amount of quality effort they are willing to give back. I feel honoured to have been part of this event, and I hope to be involved in many more to come.

Gloria

I’ve worked with pair programming at just 1 company for 9 months, the results were both good and bad.

During the time when you are pairing you share your computer with another person. You also share your virtual life details, such as:

The one billion dollar question is: “What happens when the pair does not get along?”

If both people aren’t open to learning with from the experience, the day by day can become difficult.

Pair programming doesn’t work when one party feels the result could be better if the work was done alone. In this case, pair programming is an intrusive and negative experience.

Some people doesn’t understand this situation. To make it easier to understand I usually like to compare pair programming to driving a car and having someone beside you.

First case: Going by a known path.

Second case: Learning new path.

You are driving but now this person prefers to do the driving. If you make some mistake that person says “It would be better if I was driving.” or “If I was driving it wouldn’t have happened.”. What would you do?

Probably both of you arrive at the party in a bad mood and will try to avoid sharing the same the car again.

Maybe if you were in the car a debate would start. But, during pair programming you’re in a company and some words wouldn’t and shouldn’t be said.

Satchmo is based on the Django framework. More accurately, it is loosely coupled to Django through several external Django plugins. For example, registration functionality is extended through the django_registration external interface, installed as a separate egg in the Python distribution directory. Satchmo makes calls to this extension, leaving Django code untouched.

Compare this to Drupal registration changes, where source code is wedged into the existing framework, applying deep back end database schema changes, as well as code changes throughout the framework. The changes are irreversible, and if they fail, you’re SOL. Look under the hood of Drupal, and you see a tangle of database calls, auth and group checking calls, intertwined around back end logic. It’s not pretty, which is why it’s so hard to maintain and upgrade over time.

The Satchmo/Django coupling is not perfect. If you mismatch incompatible versions of Django plugins to Satchmo, or other applications, cryptic messages can appear from either side, pointing back to code compiled elsewhere and placed in your Python distro. This makes it difficult to trace back, even if you vaguely know where the failure point is.

But this is the worst problem Satchmo has presented to me so far. I can certainly live with that, compared to digging through many chunks of Drupal framework source code and database schema backups to figure out why a recent patch broke authentication, how group permissions were changed, etc.

Satchmo takes full advantage of all of the juicy Django goodness that makes web framework development fun again: built-in internationalization and localization all the way down to currency handling and language choices in templates, built-in registration, email verification and customer account management, built-in form data validation, seamless form-to-database data entry.

This is a revolutionary, much needed improvement in the Open Source store front choices. Now all we need is an Open Source back end inventory system, and a very functional Open Source phone bank system based on Asterisk, with Python wrappers, and life would be wonderful.

Gloria

Want to get more familiar with Python? Want to participate in shaping this community, and helping to drive the effort behind new libraries and modules? Want to do something fun and new in the Open Spaces and code sprints? Be sure to be there in 2010. I think it’s going to be a unique, interesting and most spectacular year for PyCon, and I’d really like many women on this list to be a part of this great event.

I know, it’s late for my time zone, and you must be thinking that I’m juiced up on Club Mate right now. Maybe I am, but I was excited about this well before the Mate. I am a bit more involved this year, reviewing talks, discussing some possibilities for new types of Open Space events and code sprints, poking my head into various discussions, etc. It’s getting exciting, but it will be even better if more women show up this year, I guarantee this (HINT HINT).

If you want to come, but can’t afford it, don’t let this stop you! Contact me and I’ll put you in touch with organizers who may be able to help you get to PyCon this year.

Yes, I’m flying. How? No, not Mate. You know how:
http://xkcd.com/353/

Gloria

(1) Find related web sites and drop relevant strategic links on those sites without “spamming”.
(2) Create an online social app/blog presence for this company, announcing new products, philanthropic events, etc. for this company.
(3) Follow accounts at Facebook, MySpace, product blogs, etc. Help set up the look and feel of these sites (working alongside a writer, a designer, and a software developer).
(4) Help us build this presence in creative ways: event photo slideshows, podcasting interviews of the owners, the technical aspects of the company, etc.

Please submit a resume and some examples of your work online. Also give me an example of how you would promote such a situation. Creativity is definitely encouraged:

I am handling the system admin and software design/development. Over the next few months, I’ll be taking it in new directions, by bringing in a free Python apprenticeship training group, and using this site as training ground for people new to Python. This will bring it some social exposure from the tecchie direction. How and where would you discuss this unique approach of growing a business while providing a public service?

Please send email to gloriajw_66, at the address yahoo dot com

Thank you, and good luck!
Gloria

PS: Working alongside me means this job _always_ has the opportunity to morph in a more technical direction, if you so choose. This straddles many disciplines, and can turn out to be quite fun if you wish to expand your current knowledge.

I did a tutorial on browser-to-database web development in Python, using components from various packages instead of one framework. I found myself and Mark Ramm giving our audiences a common message about frameworks in general, which was (1) each framework has limitations, (2) know these limitations before running off to use them. It was comforting to know that I am not the only one trying to convey this message.

I wasn’t quite sure how long my tutorial would run, so the PyOhio folks were kind enough to give me a room for an entire afternoon. It took about three hours, and was great fun.

I’ll attach all slides, links, and code. But there’s the summary of it all.

I took weather data from the University of Delaware, air temperatures from around the world ranging from 1900 to 2008. I pulled the data into both SqlAlchemy/Postgres, and MongoDB (a BSON-based key-value object store).

I then used CherryPy to serve up the data. My templates are written in web.py template, generating Google Map data.

The first CherryPy daemon takes longitude and latitude, and allows you to choose between Postgres or Mongo:

http://www.pythonpeople.net/gmaps/squarearea?year=1900&month=0&zoom=7&centerlat=40.90&centerlong=-80.50

http://www.pythonpeople.net/gmaps/squarearea?year=1900&month=0&zoom=7&centerlat=40.90&centerlong=-80.50&mongo=1

The second daemon provided a simple form, accepting zip codes, and referencing a database which maps zip codes to longitude and latitude.

Feel free to play with the links for a bit longer. They will be coming down in the next month or so.

The code and data, including all CSV load code and scripts, exists here:

http://www.pythonpeople.net/pyohio_src

Shoot me an email for the login and password: gloriajw_66 at yahoo dot com

This is an excellent web app example for learning purposes.

The tutorial is also somewhere on BlipTV, I am told.

Enjoy, play, ask questions.

Gloria

“We are in a comparatively irreverent industry. I remember seeing a couple of people swear onstage at the Webbies back in 2005, for example. We tend, as a whole, to lean toward more radical politics, more speaking your mind, and more irreverent humor — across all genders — as compared to other industries. The relative permissiveness in our industry partially accounts for why you might see something that pushes “the line” on stage at a web technologies conference than say, at a professional conference of another type. This needs to be kept in mind when the term “professionalism” is used rhetorically in these conversations.

So one thing that I think is true, is that we will continually be dancing toward “the line”, and not just on issues of gender, but also politics and other areas. And because of this, we do need to continually revisit what the boundaries of “offense” are or might be. Hopefully this will result not in fear-based non-expressive atmospheres, but in a civilized atmosphere where we are sensitive to our audiences, and they are sensitive to us as we express ourselves with whatever level of irreverence or forthrightness we choose. As a part of the inclusive atmosphere, it is critical that that inclusiveness works in all directions, and that all stakeholders keep a good faith attitude of questioning the content and context of their actions, and also the character and motives of their “offense”, or whatever reactions might be invoked.

The uber-goal, with this reflective consideration of expressers and reactors, is that we are able to openly discuss all factors at any time. That we have a safe environment for people to express and feedback. That includes allowing room for people to offend, allowing room for people to express their discomfort, and allowing room for people to apologize, be heard, and agree or disagree. Everything will work out for the best if that is the atmosphere of discourse that we support. We wont always agree, but we must put as much effort as possible into seeing the world from each other’s viewpoint.”

–Carlos Abler

Here’s a link to letters by conference organizer and offensive speaker in response, and discussion.

Let’s start with the Launching Your Own Startup panel. The quote I can’t stop remembering is “Entrepreneurship is like jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down.” Also, that failure has lots of virtues: it makes you smarter, more attractive to funders, can make you fearless and more willing to jump that cliff. They all heartily encouraged anyone interested in starting a business to go for it. On a practical level, they all made sure their ideas had legs before quitting day jobs or abandoning previous businesses. They recommended an iterative business model with some focus on revenue from day one; recommended bootstrapping then going for advisors and then angel funding before going for VC money. They stressed researching VCs very, very thoroughly to make sure they understood your product and market or community, then selecting one you have a viable, personal connection with. They also recommended having business partners, for the value of differing strengths, but also because it makes you more attractive to funders, helps with your power balance with them. They all recommended Steve Blank’s book Four Steps to the Epiphany.

The next panel I attended was called The Feminine Mystique. (See this for the historical context of that title.) Essentially, this one was about the level of satisfaction women are finding in the life of technology work. Issues of work/life balance, of qualities of nurturing being undervalued in the workplace were explored. —There was a nuanced discussion at this point, by the way. We recognized that not all women are nurturing, etc. The value of mentoring was explained thoroughly, however, both in the men-tee experiences of the eminently successful panelists and as an undervalued management tool used to grow workers. We discussed promoting tools for shared parenting and increased time off for fathering, that had been introduced twenty years ago and were succeeding but lost favor in the rabid conservatism of the past decade - job-sharing, for example. We discussed the need to consider ourselves experts with less qualification than studies show we currently do, to create more parity with the way men determine themselves experts, and then act on that accordingly. (Men will see a list of requirements for a job they’re interested in, know they have only two out of twelve, for example, and confidently apply; women won’t unless they have ten, for example.) I feel however, that a little of both is in order on this issue: it’s important to re-define “expert” so that men who may be undeservedly claiming the right to that title are discouraged, just as it’s important for women who aren’t doing so to be encouraged. This translates into behaviors like speaking in meetings, etc.

The Video Activism panel. The panelists were from Youtube’s non-profit program, Witness.org and Free Range Studios. Basically they discussed different methods of persuading people to act, but their relationships to video were very different. I thought the most interesting aspect of the discussion was the striking contrast between Witness’ and Free Range’s work specifically. Witness is a global human rights organization, while Free Range is a San Francisco-based design shop that provides creative services for nonprofits and socially responsible companies. Witness often works with user-uploaded video, it’s often brutal and they don’t necessarily have control over issues of style or sound or pacing, whereas Free Range is in the business of crafting and producing video as part of larger, sophisticated campaigns. Both are very effective organizations, both discussed tactics for targeting people in concentric circles from most passionate and likely to act to least aware and engaged, but with widely differing parameters. Witness gave an example of a very graphic video in which Egyptian police beating a man was produced and released by the police themselves in order to intimidate others, but it reached the notice of human rights bloggers and so has been widely used as a resistance tool. It’s this combination of raw footage used by bloggers that creates the successful activism in Witness’s case. (Witness licenses footage on a sliding scale from their archive of about 3,000 hours of video; it’s frequently used by documentary filmmakers, journalists, grad students, etc.) Whereas the Free Range spokeperson gave an example of using stop-motion video, which is time-consuming and a little expensive to produce, in a campaign called save the bay. It was also very successful: they achieved their targeted number of email signups and their funding goals for an environmental impact study. But they were able to control every aspect of the video and the microsite on which it’s viewed.

I listened to a bit of the Social Media ROI panel, which hit topics like how you measure success depends upon how you frame your criteria, slightly tautological but the example given illustrates the power of the point. Presidential candidate Ron Paul used social media to try to win the Republican party’s nomination but didn’t (obviously). What they proposed, I believe based on interviews with Mr. Paul, is that he didn’t believe or intend to win, though of course he would’ve welcomed that outcome. What he wanted was to make sure certain issues were part of the debate and by using social media, he achieved exactly that. And hence, success. I only listened to a bit, though, because I was getting ready to travel to the after-party, which I attended and thoroughly enjoyed. The bar was laid back, they provided meat, vegan & veggie pizzas, it was a comfortable number of people, the discussions were friendly, and I met a journalist who works for the Huffington Post. On top of meeting five or six women programmers and Deanna Zandt, a prominent feminist organizer and technology consultant in New York who turned out to be one of those really nice, fun, shots-for-all-buyers. Good times, chix. Maybe we should try to get involved with next year’s summit, as an entity. 

Links:

Women Who Tech Podcasts

Witness

That’s Not Cool

Knight News Challenge

RAD Campaign

Now Public

Deanna Zandt

RiseUp

The Story of Stuff

Free Range Studios

Berrett-Koehler Publishing

http://fyi.oreilly.com/2009/05/women-in-tech-rock-join-our-mo.html

The discount code can be found at this link.

Gloria

I was very nervous to begin with but all in all I think it went well. We tried to hit on some things that we feel would help with getting more women into the Rails Community specifically as well as in the development world period. We only gave 5 minutes to the CouchDB talk mostly because we personally (Myself, Sarah and Lori) would like to move on. I did tell David Hanson to please keep his mouth shut next time but I did that in a light-hearted way to try and lighten the mood a bit. I hope he took it that way.

My biggest whoops was that I actually said and believed I didn’t know Matt but after the talk he came over and pointed out that I DID indeed know him. In fact, we have had a very lengthy conversation about women in development in the past (I do remember him and did as soon as I connected his face with his name). Anyway I felt like a jackass.

I want to do a more lengthy recap of the whole panel and the various discussions that took place before and after but for now I would like a reprieve. I am a bit on the drained side and if I tried to cover everything just now, I wouldn’t do a very good job. So give me a day or two to get my write up out.. maybe Sarah and Lori will have more energy to do the post than I do just now.

I do want to say thank you to everyone who came to the panel. Including all the Ruby/Rails big wigs. ;-)

Cheers
Desi