Vantage Rocks PyCon 2015 in Montreal

This past weekend, some of the Vantage crew went to Montreal to attend rock PyCon. PyCon is a conference focused on the programming language that we built Vantage with (Python). This year the conference set the record for the most attendees with nearly 3000!

This is the second year that Pycon was hosted in Montreal, and we were able to experience some of the amenities of Canada’s coolest city (culturally, not climatically). Not only did we enjoy some poutine but, we also went to.. not one, not two, but three brew pubs.

We met some cool people doing neat things:

• Core contributors to the web framework Pylons.
• People who use Python to help manage the computing infrastructure of the University of Toronto.
• The Co-Creator of the Hemingwrite digital typewriter.
• A person who uses Python to manage the data of Spanish astronomers.

We attended some awesome talks and keynotes:

• David Beazley doing concurrency programming live.
• Raymond Hettinger talking about beautiful code beyond formatting.
• Allison Kaptur on the internals of the interpreter and exploring Python’s implementation without fear.
• And many, many, more!

An amazing part of the conference was the sense of community. At the end of the day, Python is just a fancy way to get computers to do things, but the people who gather around this language make it wonderful and inviting.

For me, the best part about PyCon was the attention that was given to the diversity problem that affects all STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) but is particularly prevalent in software. In his first keynote, Guido called for women to join the Core Team (the people who make the language itself), and said that he would mentor them himself if need be. By simply not sweeping this problem under the rug, the Python community has taken what I hope are the first to remedying this problem in our industry.

Next year PyCon is in Portland, Oregon… we’re already getting ready! In preparation, I suggest interested attendees read this Definitive Guide to Portland Brew Pubs.