Are you tired of hearing how "simple" it is to deploy apps with Docker Compose, because your experience is more one of frustration? Have you read countless blog posts and forum threads that promised to teach you how to deploy apps with Docker Compose, only for one or more essential steps to be missing, outdated, or broken?
Over the years, I've attended a number of software development conferences (not that I'm a massive conference-type person). For example, I've attended PHP UK in London, DPC (Dutch PHP Conference) in Amsterdam, ZendCon in Las Vegas, and now PyCon in Australia. Of all of them, this year's PyCon AU would have to be the most impressive and memorable.
To be fair, I didn't get into the talks, so my feedback on the conference is going to be somewhat limited in that respect. This is because I was helping out at the Twilio booth over the two days that I was there. However, I did get a bit of a glimpse of the talks from where I was standing.
That said, there were several things that stood out for me. These were:
- The diversity of the attendees
- The excellent quality of the website
- The quality of the location
- The sheer thoughtfulness and dedication of the organising team; I'm biased in this regard, as I know one of the organisers
The diversity of the attendees made the conference for me
This grabbed my attention the most, without a doubt! There were so many female attendees, so many people who are openly neuro-divergent, and a number of groups supporting and promoting women in tech. What's more, it was great to see so many students in attendance as well! What better way to ensure the future of the craft, than to help mentor and grow the next generation.
Perhaps I'm a little out of touch, as I haven't attended conferences in some years. And perhaps there was a solid representation of women and neuro-divergent people at the other conferences that I've attended over the years. I'm not sure, though. But, it seemed like there was a significantly higher representation at this conference than at any other that I've been to.
Watching and interacting with them, I was a little bit overwhelmed at just how welcoming a place that it must be. I say this as a middle-aged white male who's been around tech for over 30 years. Given that, it's often been the case where rooms where filled with only males, and likely white males, perhaps with a single woman in attendance. I've also heard women share with me just how unwelcoming tech can be. As a matter of fact, I shared how diverse the crowd was with a couple of people after the event, and they were surprised, as, for them, they still see tech and software development as a male-dominated field.
So to see a much more balanced crowd left me with an extremely positive opinion of the Python community in Australia, which I hope is reflected in the Python community globally. Perhaps that's why Python is going as strong as it is after all this time; having been originally create it in 1989.
I'm still a bit concerned for the future of software development
As I was working the booth, I had the opportunity to have numerous conversations with attendees. One such conversation was with a third-year University student, studying in Sydney. She shared with me a number of her frustrations at the composition of the University's course syllabus, mainly around the holes in the course and how said holes are not serving her well for getting a good career start when she leaves university later in the year.