The Trials, Tribulations and Triumph of PyCon 2013

'Dongle-gate' dominated the news coming from PyCon. However, there was much to celebrate from last week's conference. One intrepid Guardian developer was there and this is his write-up

Nicholas Tollervey

Published on Wednesday, 27 March 2013

Conferences   Feminism   Programming  

PyCon 2013: a US-based conference for discussing the popular programming language Python
PyCon 2013: a US-based conference for discussing the popular programming language Python Photograph: Matt Andrews/guardian.co.uk

I was lucky enough to attend Pycon, in Santa Clara, last week. It’s the world’s largest conference for programmers and users of the popular Python programming language (if you use Google or YouTube, watch Disney/Pixar movies or indeed, visit the Guardian’s website then you are using services written, in part, with Python).

The most widely reported news from the conference related to “dongle-gate”: two male developers made sexually suggestive jokes about “forking” and “dongles” that offended a female attendee sitting close by. She tweeted a complaint along with a photograph of those involved, one of whom subsequently lost his job. She also suffered the same fate in the ensuing backlash.

Despite this unfortunate incident, there was much to celebrate at Pycon:

Perhaps what is most amazing is that Pycon is organised entirely by volunteers and, although the US Pycon is the biggest, there are many other similar Pycons taking place around the world. For example, last year’s PyconUK included a teacher’s track that will be repeated again this year along with a Raspberry Jam for young coders and their parents.

Ultimately, like many other open source groups, the Python community are making vigorous efforts to replace the stereotype of programmers as anti-social, awkward and sometimes mysogynist male nerds with an inclusive movement that celebrates and promotes diversity in software engineering.

It’s a shame this wasn’t the most widely reported story from Pycon.

Continue reading

A day at the Raspberry Jamboree: microcomputing and hardware hacking The Guardian attends Hack the Government 2013 with Rewired State