A Letter for PyCon-2019…
Published: 2023-07-16 08:17:46

---
title: A Letter for PyCon-2019…
published: true
date: 2019-11-24 17:11:10 UTC
tags: 
canonical_url: https://theuigirl.hashnode.dev/a-letter-for-pycon-2019-27f51a322fac
---

#### LIFE IN TECH

#### I got to attend PYCON-2019 as a speaker - My first ever International Conference.

> Dear PyCon,
> 
> I have known you for so long by now but this year I finally got to meet you. Trust me, it was a thrilling experience. You were so fun and I enjoyed your company a lot. I was planning since a long time to apply for talking at your place and the moment my talk proposal got selected, I was overwhelmed. Yeah, I did NOT expect that to happen. I met a bunch of fun loving and brilliant minded people who opened up new ways for my perspectives towards things.
> 
> So thanks a lot for introducing me to your friends who are such awesome people in the python community. Thanks to your organisers who nurtured you and made you so successful. Altogether it was an awesome experience. Wish you 100 more years of success ahead.
> 
> Warm regards,
> 
> One of your fan

![https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwit8PmD1-nlAhWDguYKHfb_AtAQjhx6BAgBEAI&url=https%3](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1688558588580/8ba9e305-2d88-4652-a8c5-521f710f7d59.png)

So **yeah, as per my letter you must have got to know by now that, I GOT TO ATTEND PYCON AS A SPEAKER. Eureka!!!** _So, grab a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy my experience with PyCon._

> **PyCon India is the premier conference in India on using and developing the Python programming language and is conducted annually by the Python developer.**

This year Pycon was organised in Chennai. Chennai, a beautiful city on the Bay of Bengal in eastern India, is the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu. The city is home to Fort St. George, built-in 1644 and now a museum showcasing the citys roots as a British military garrison and East India Company trading outpost, when it was called Madras. Wonderful, isnt it?

I was planning to attend PyCon for a very long time and when the CFP got open for this year, I went for applying it. I wrote down a rough proposal with y co-speaker [Manaswini Das](https://medium.com/u/2a87ac5ba5f6) and sent it to one of my mentors. Honestly, I didnt have much time to brush it up but I did try to answer the questions given by them to exact points. And that worked. After some days, I got an email from [Sharmila Gopirajan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharmilas1wa/?originalSubdomain=in), lead of PyCon Diversity team to present the proposal at [PyLadies](https://www.pyladies.com/) Bhubaneswar meetup. But unfortunately, I had to deny it as I was in Bangalore at that time. So I got to connect with [Abhiram](https://twitter.com/abhicantdraw) from [**Bangpypers** , Bengaluru](https://twitter.com/ __bangpypers__?lang=en) and scheduled for a dry run.

> **PyLadies** is an international mentorship group which focuses on helping more women become active participants in the Python open-source community. It is part of the Python Software Foundation. It was started in Los Angeles in 2011.

### Bangpypers Meetup

> BangPypers, the Bangalore Python Usergroup is one of the largest and oldest Python user groups in India.

On the day of the meetup, I was feeling like I am going to give board exams. Though I had presented before in multiple meetups and sessions you know the anxiety is going to stay with you every time. I got some rice feedback from the experts there and understood some of the major changes that had to be made to the slides.

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1688558590299/21a14750-8bf7-4705-a707-4e4c4940c3fc.png)

Myself Presenting at Bangpypers

#### OCT-11

Finally, the day was there when we had to fly to Chennai. It took around 1.5hrs to reach the airport and in 45 mins or less, we landed in Chennai. But like being down on our luck, it took almost 4hr to get a cab to our hotel, due to the arrival of the Chinese president. However, after reaching the hotel and getting freshen up we prepared and redesigned our slides and had a good night sleep.

#### OCT-12

The first day of the conference was the talk day and our talk was scheduled at 3.45 pm. Because I had got some time in the morning to revise, I decided not to panic more and get myself engaged in booth visit. I visited some of the startups which are doing amazing in their fields.

1. **GUVI:** It is a phase-2 startup providing a platform to students for learning and practising programming languages. Their tie-up with the colleges helps the students get placed in their partner organisations.

2. **Pramiti:** Pramiti is a startup with highly motivated individuals who believe in a comfortable coding environment. They provide their employees with research labs for innovation and new ideas

Some booths were also running interesting quizzes/puzzles and distributing goodies to those who won. To be honest I was very much drawn towards it and won plenty of goodies.

Then came the time for [**PyLadies**](https://www.pyladies.com/) **lunch**. Girls and ladies from all over county joined there irrespective of their background and work domain. [Niharika Krishnan](https://twitter.com/nihaaarika?lang=en), who is Pyladies lead of the Chennai chapter narrated the story of the inception of Pyladies Chennai. Devi A S L, who was one of the keynote speakers, described the evolution of PyLadies in India. Sharmila described her experience with PyCon and some other girls also shared their stories about the PyLadies chapter at their places. It was wondrous to be surrounded by so many strong women and be a part of their story.

Meanwhile, I got a call from the organiser team to be at the conference hall before 1hr for setup testing. So we finished our lunch with the amazing PyLadies and rushed to the conference room. It was a silent conference hall and I became a little nervous again after seeing that. Finally, it was time.

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1688558592132/d2931620-ff41-487f-8bb3-2c76d6247534.jpeg)

Myself sharing the stage with Manaswini

I was going to present the topic, Performance Optimisation with ElasticSearch-Python. I grabbed a bottle of water and climbed the stage. My throat was so dry and I was feeling like I wont be able to utter a word. Manaswini started the talk and I was standing there noticing the expression on the face of the audience and meanwhile putting myself together In Front of the camera. With the progress in the talk, I started to feel more confident and when I got to speak, I could notice people taking notes of what I am saying. That filled me with more energy. With a time limit of 30 mins, we finished the talk in 28 mins and left 2mins for Q/A. After the presentation, there were multiple questions asked by both students and professionals (from Merit, PayPal, individual researchers) regarding their struggle with Elasticsearch setup and how to deal with complex data structures. It was great interacting with them and the conversation went on for a longer time than expected.

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1688558594731/099e5c26-9038-487b-b7f7-cfddfdd4a647.jpeg)

The Red Hatters at PyCon

After that, I came back and attended talk my Devi ASL, who was a keynote speaker. Devi is an independent software consultant, based in Bangalore. She is a long term Pythonista and her work spans diverse domains ranging from developing high-performance math libraries and cryptography to architecting complex web applications. She talked about the importance of diversity in tech and gave a broad picture of empowered women in tech.

After a long day of so much fun and enjoyment, I finally returned dead tired and slept peacefully with satisfaction in my heart.

#### OCT-13

It was day 2 of PyCon and today I could go to the venue without the pressure of delivering a talk, just like a free bird. Just after entering I saw a huge crowd in front of the [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/asia) booth which was running a quiz. I solved some puzzles and won some goodies. I also had a brief fun conversation about their opensource technologies which was quite fun.

Then, there came **PyLadies Speed Mentoring,** where I got an invitation to participate as a mentor. There were a total of 9 mentors with expertise in various fields, including open source, data science, remote jobs, entrepreneurship, big data, etc and I got to mentor in the field of Open Source and RedHat Technologies. I connected with some students, some professionals and some beginners as well, who were curious about getting started with open source and various other tech domains. Interacting with them was just like interacting with me 4 year younger version of myself, a curious kid trying to understand and grasp every bit of technology. As they say, stay hungry, stay foolish not matter where you are, I couldnt stop the kid inside me from asking for mentorship there. I also interacted with some of the mentors about the masters program abroad and entrepreneurship ventures etc. Though it was a few hours event I felt overwhelmed to be a part of it and this left me with a feeling of motivation and enthusiasm.

After coming back from the mentoring session, I interacted with a few more people about my talk and tried my best to satisfy their curiosity.

Then, I visited the Red Hat booth and it felt like coming back home. I met some people from RedHat, Pune office and we exchanged our stories of being at Red Hat. The place filled up with laughter and a feeling of belonging.

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1688558596232/1498d1dc-1b6a-48d7-91e8-7e911bcf3abc.jpeg)

The Red Hat booth

Next moment, I headed over to a side to talk to **Ines Montani** , a passionate individual, about her journey with SpaCy, Python and the whereabouts of technology. She stated her strong opinion on how it is important to keep pace with changing tech and how confident you should feel about presenting your personality etc. She is indeed a fun person to talk to. Make sure to connect with her in any future conferences or social platform.

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1688558599802/0f5748ba-5bc5-4e90-bba7-01b966b93d6b.jpeg)

Sharing the frame with Ines

As the 2nd day was edging closer to an end, I met some more people and managed to click some beautiful moments to preserve those memories.

When I talk about being on the journey of technology, I remember my family. This family of highly motivated and hardworking individuals, who always backed me up. This family is [Zairza Cetb](https://medium.com/u/a9c306e657d0), the technical society of CET, Bhubaneswar.

![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1688558602436/a2246b6a-8c6e-42a3-b5f4-7e61fc1662cc.jpeg)

Zaira Family

In the end, I also attended David Beazleys closing keynote on A talk near the future of Python where he live-coded a web assembly interpreter. The appreciation of the audience could be felt from the great round of applause and cheering which continued for more than 1 minute.

After two long tiring days, I was found admiring at the soothing atmosphere of Chennai Beach.

> No wonder we all have very packed up schedule on daily basis. We all have busy lives and a lot to achieve. But a short event like this fills us with so much positive energy and motivation which can push us towards our dream more and more closer. I think, that is called, the power of community.

If you can any queries or thoughts or suggestions regarding the article please let me know in the comment section and If you liked my story please give the plenty of high-fives(claps) for the article. See you next time.

> Let us me your thoughts about the article in the comment section below and if you want to connect with me, here I am -> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/anishaswain) or [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anisha1234) or [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/anisha_swain_/)