PyLadies

Tutorials and How-tos

2013-04-21T00:50:00Z

Learn Python The Hard Way
How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
Introduction to Twisted: A thorough introduction to Twisted and Asynchronous programming in Python.
tryGit: Learn Git with GitHub& Codeschool's new tutorial.
Model, View, Controller explained.
Basic Python Syntax Tutorial. (Helpful for both new to programming in general, and new to Python with prior programming experience).
Online Python Tutor: Learn & Practice programming in your browser.

Community

2013-04-19T00:50:00Z

Workshops for Women

Are you interested in doing a women's Python workshop of your own in your city? Email any of the organizers and we'll help you get the word out. Here are some resources:

Community-building

Workshops are just one part of PyLadies' effort to increase the female count in the Python world. PyLadies is a community of female developers who care about helping other women get into Python.

We plan to put together a package of materials to help you build your own local women's Python community. We'll be posting a "PyLadies Kit" here soon.

Web Development

2013-04-19T00:50:00Z

Django is one of the most popular web frameworks. It's a great option if you want to use Python to build web apps. Start with the official Django poll tutorial. Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices For Django 1.5 was co-written by a PyLady - don't hesitate to ask for a free copy if you can't afford it.

Some popular Django hosting options:

Webfaction
Heroku and Getting Started with Django from Heroku: A tutorial using Django and deploying with Heroku. Assumes some knowledge of virtual environments.
OpenShift
Google App Engine

Other web frameworks

Experiment with all of them! Here are a few links to get you started.

Pyramid (merger of Pylons and repoze.bfg)
Flask
A huge list of Python web frameworks

Libraries

2013-04-19T00:50:00Z

Code checking using PEP-8 + PyFlakes: Are you writing code according to the standard Python guidelines? Have no idea? Try out this library
Logr: Simple Python blogger
Git Legit: Git for Humans

Newsletters

2013-04-19T00:50:00Z

Python Weekly is a free weekly newsletter all about Python (articles, news, jobs, etc).
Pycoders Weekly is a free weekly python newsletter for Python developers by Python developers (Project, Articles, News, and Jobs).

Speaking at PyCon, DjangoCon, etc

2013-04-19T00:50:00Z

Speaking at conferences about Python is a great way to give back to the community with your own knowledge.

We Are All Awesome: hosts IRC office hours to help women speakers.
Protips on Conference Talks: Thinking about giving a talk at a conference? Here is some great advice on how to rock it!
SpeakUp.io

Tools

2013-04-19T00:50:00Z

Text Editors

gEdit (Linux & Mac OS X)
Notepad++ (Windows)
Sublime (Windows, Max OS X, and Linux)
Sublime for Python and Web Developers: How to squeeze more power out of one of the most popular, light weight text editors for Python.
Sublime Short cuts: Learn to get more out of the latest text editor.
More "advanced" editors are emacs, vim (although @audreyr knows how to use both of those pretty well and still swears by gEdit for everything)

IDEs

PyCharm
Eclipse with PyDev plugin
Wingware

Highly recommended Python package tools

pip: better installation of packages.
virtualenv: create isolated Python environments
virtualenvwrapper: make virtualenv easier to use.

User Groups

2013-04-19T00:50:00Z

A great way to continue learning Python is to work on your own, then attend presentations and ask questions at local user groups. Attend as many as you can!

Python groups on Meetup.com
Python.org list of local user groups

Intro to Python, April 6 - Recap

2013-04-10T01:00:00Z

This past weekend, I helped a bright group of Austin women take their initial steps into the Python world. Austin PyLadies' first women's 'Intro to Python' class took place on Saturday, April 6th. Our classroom space was generously donated by by Erica Douglass of Opportunity Space. We also had the help of several terrific volunteers: Sara Safavi, Cassidy Santaguida and Andrew Dupont.

This one-day workshop covered some computing and programming concepts, then launched straight into the basics of the Python programming language. We worked with an open-ended curriculum: starting with simple math and strings operations, working up to logic and functions, then writing and running scripts. This meant that we were able drop some things off at the end when we ran out of time (which we did - objects/classes did not make the final cut).

The entire program was very hands-on - almost every section contained examples or exercises that could be run in the Python interpreter.

One recurring problem that comes up when teaching Python, though, is showing beginning students how to save and execute scripts. I like students to understand as closely as possible what it will be like to work with Python in a real working environment, but introducing beginners to scripting can be difficult for a number of mundane reasons:

many beginners don't have a clear understanding of their file system, how to navigate it or where things are located
when students bring their own laptops, there will be a variety of different operating systems and text editors at play

With enough time and volunteers, it's certainly possible to teach everyone the basics of file systems and walk every student through working with different text editors, saving and navigating to files, etc. But in our case we didn't have enough time or bodies, so we used Appsoma.com for writing/running scripts. Appsoma is a relatively new browser-based app development platform, but it also makes a terrific free tool for practice and learning. (To get an idea of its capabilities, head to the Code tab where you can create, save and run a script.)

Some of the other key things we did to facilitate learning included:

Arranging students in small work groups. Our students came from a variety of backgrounds, some with experience in other programming languages and some with no programming experience at all. Seating them in groups of 5-6 allowed them to get to know each other and made it easier for them to help each other. We also encouraged group collaboration on some of the more difficult exercises. This student bonding led to some great friendships by the end of the class. Some students have already made plans to get together and practice, and it's my belief that these students, now that they know each other, are more likely to continue learning because they'll be motivating and helping each other.
Plan for follow-up. It was a happy scheduling accident that the next Coursera Python class starts just about a week after this one, so we encouraged students to sign up and then come back to our next scheduled hack night to get help. We also emphasized the hack nights on their own as a place to come back and participate with some guidance.

My slides from this class can be found here: https://github.com/pyladiesatx/pyladiesatx/tree/master/resources/IntroToPython

Feel free to fork and remix these slides for your own classes. The repository includes:

a PDF of the setup instructions (how to install Python and get to a prompt for Windows, Linux and OS X)
a Keynote source file of the main slide deck
a PowerPoint export of the Keynote slides (there may be some errors)
a PDF of the main slide deck

Some things I'd like to add for the next class:

An introduction to code blocks and more discussion of indentation (and possibly how code blocks are handled in other languages), before introducing topics like if/else, loops, and functions
More discussion of objects and classes - we skipped it entirely this time because of time constraints, but I'd like to find a way to work them in
More structured exercises (not every section had them this time) so that students can also get a little more experience with problem-solving

Workshop Photos

Code of Conduct

2013-04-10T00:50:00Z

Pyladies is dedicated to providing a respectful, harassment-free community for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment or bullying of any community member in any form. This does not only extend to members to local PyLadies communities, but to anyone who chooses to become involved in the larger PyLadies community of users, developers and integrators through events or interactions.

Harassment includes offensive verbal/electronic comments related to personal characteristics or choices, sexual images or comments in public or online spaces, deliberate intimidation, bullying, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks, IRC chats, electronic meetings, physical meetings or other events, inappropriate physical contact, or unwelcome sexual attention. Participants asked to stop any harassing or bullying behavior are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, representatives of the community may take reasonable action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender, expulsion from any PyLadies event, or expulsion from mailing lists, IRC chats, discussion boards and other electronic communications channels to resolve the issue. This may include expulsion from PyLadies Meetup group membership.

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please act to intercede or ask for help from any member of the PyLadies community, IRC chat admins, website admins, or organizers/representatives of any physical events put on under the auspices of PyLadies.

This Code of Conduct has been adapted from the Plone Foundation and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

How to hook people on CS through Magic

2013-04-04T02:10:00Z

Computer Science Outreach Magic

Thanks to Katie Cunningham of Tucson for letting us copy this post from her blog!

For several months, I always carried a deck of cards in my backpack. I like playing gin rummy as much as anyone, but that's not the reason why. I carried them because I had discovered Computer Science Outreach Magic.

I learned a Computer Science magic trick from cs4fn.org/magic, and I've been hooked ever since. I've performed this trick to much success when manning booths at outreach events and teacher visiting days. It lets you engage people while illustrating a bit of computer science. At the PyLadies' lunch at PyCon '13, Esther Nam convinced me to write a blog post about this card trick I was so excited about. "Lots of people want to know how to demonstrate computer science without a computer!" she said.

That's exactly why I love this trick. It's portable, it's easy, and it doesn't use a computer. It allows people to see an easily digestible example of the logic, discrete math, and information that is at the core of Computer Science. For people who aren't impressed by physical computers or cryptic terminal windows, this can really be a draw.

"[Computer science] is not really about computers -- and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes.... Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use." - Hal Abelson (1986)

Here's how I do it:

You need three people: The magician, the assistant, and the learner.
The magician closes her eyes and keeps them closed until the end of the trick.
The learner is given the deck and told to make a four by four matrix of cards with some face up and some face down, randomly distributed.

The assistant takes the deck back and whispers to the learner: "I'm going to make it harder for her and add another row and column". The magician might groan at this point and say "Nooo it's so hard already!!!" The new row and column are added.

The assistant tells the learner to flip one card, and that the magician will tell him which card he flipped. The learner flips one card.

The magician opens her eyes, hovers her hands over the cards, and identifies the flipped card!
The learner is very impressed. While the amazement hasn't worn off, the magician and assistant tell the learner that this method is used to identify errors in computer data. Face up and face down cards are just like the way a computer stores information in 1s and 0s. Perhaps the information is being sent from one computer to another and one of the bits -- one of the 1s or 0s -- gets changed to the other (flipped!). Computer Scientists invented this technique so computers could discover where the error took place. If the learner is still interested, explain how the trick worked.

How does the trick work??!!??

When the assistant adds the extra row and column, he is actually adding parity bits. For non-CS people, that means that the assistant adds another card to each row and column so the sum of face up cards in that row or column is now even. If there are an even number of face up cards in the row or column, the assistant adds a face down. If there are an odd number of face down cards in the row or column, he adds a face up.

The cards need to be put down seemingly without thought, like the assistant is just adding the extra row and column randomly. Here's a walkthrough:

Add a parity bit to the end of each of the columns

Add a parity bit to all of the rows, including the row you just added. (Notice that the column you are adding has parity automatically.)

Now when the learner flips a card, the row and column of the card that was flipped have an odd number of face up cards! You can quickly find the flipped card, even though you've never seen the grid before.

It works just as well when the flipped card is in the parity row or column.

The kids at the CSUnplugged show figured it out on their own, I was very impressed. The presenters used this trick as their opening act, and then explained it at the very end, so the kids had some time to think about it. If you want to see their explanation, check out this video

Optional Follow-up

Make sure the learner really understands by putting the cards back into their parity'd state and asking him to close his eyes and guess which card his friend flipped. This is demoed in the video above. If you have more time for more than a quick wow moment, you can ask the learner:

Does it matter if the error is in the parity bits?
Is it possible to detect two errors, and if so, can they be corrected?
How about three errors?

Practice!

I'm sure you are excited now to show this trick to all your friends. With this trick in your pocket, every person becomes someone you can impress with computer science! You'll live for the stunned look on people's faces when you pick the right card!

But to make it go smoothly, you'll need to practice practice practice practice! The trick might sound simple enough, but every time I or someone else has attempted the trick without recent practice, it has been a major fail.

Practice with your cat! And people.

Alternate versions

I like doing this trick with cards because cards are easy to get my hands on when I'm inspired to perform. Usually I have limited table space, so it's hard to squeeze in more cards than I have described. In the CSUnplugged version, they start with a larger grid and black and white squares. (Note that it doesn't matter how big your grid is -- the trick works the same.) They also had the nifty idea to make them magnetic so the trick can be performed on a whiteboard.

CSUnplugged has the magician add the extra row, eliminating the assistant. I like having the assistant better, because the magician's reveal is more impressive, since clearly no memorization is done -- the magician hasn't seen the cards at all! Also, when a little kid is the learner, the assistant is necessary to make sure he or she puts down the cards correctly and flips only one card. But for a demonstration in front of a classroom or when you're alone, it's worth thinking about.

Find the original cs4fn version of the trick on page 25 here: http://www.cs4fn.org/magic/downloads/cs4fnmagicbook1.pdf. They add the extra row based on face down cards instead of face up cards. It doesn't matter really of course -- do what's easier to see quickly. Or if you change the size of the grid to have an even number of rows and columns at the end of the trick, it doesn't matter! Face up and face down will both have to be even or odd.

P.s. Now that you are using this trick, you have to watch out for Magnita Makov, world's greatest magician.

Good luck! Go forth and impress all your friends!!!

A big thanks to Daniel Harms for helping me improve this trick :)

PyLadies @ PyCon - Join Us!

2013-03-07T22:08:00Z

PyCon's Opening Reception is less than a week away, are you excited?

PyLadies Booth

Come check out PyLadies at our booth in the Expo Hall! We'll have information on starting your own local PyLadies group, stickers, and candy! We'll also raffle off some PyLadies t-shirts!

Check out a previous blog post on the list of talks from PyLadies!

And be sure to check out the booths of our friends:

Ada Initiative's Feminist Hacker Lounge
Women Who Code
CodeChix
LadyCoders

Where to find us

Here is a run-down of where you can find your PyLady friends and where to sign up:

Tutorials

The women of Python are ruling the tutorial schedule:

WEDNESDAY MORNING

Digital signal processing through speech, hearing, and Python - Mel Chua
Python for Programmers: A Project-Based Tutorial - Alexandra Strong, Katharine Jarmul, Christine Cheung
A hands-on introduction to Python for beginning programmers - Jessica McKellar
Going from web pages to web apps with Python - Karen Rustad and Asheesh Laroia
SPECIAL The Young Coder - Barbara Shaurette, Katie Cunningham

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

Analyzing Social Networks with Python - Maksim Tsvetovat, Alex Kouznetsov, Jacqueline Kazil

THURSDAY MORNING

A Gentle Introduction to Computer Vision - Katherine Scott, Anthony Oliver
SPECIAL The Young Coder - Barbara Shaurette, Katie Cunningham

THURSDAY MORNING

Contribute with me! Getting started with open source development - Jessica McKellar
Wiring up Django Packages - Daniel Greenfeld, Kenneth Love, Audrey M. Roy

Thursday, March 14th

PyLadies Booth @ the Opening Reception @ 6pm - 8pm in the Expo Hall
Women's Open Tech Office Hours @ 6pm - 3am in the Hyatt in room 1332

Friday, March 15th

PyLadies Lunch for Women of Python @ 12:30pm - 1:30pm in rooms 209/210 in the Convention center. Currently all sold out but we have a short wait list!
Taste of Py: Afterparty @ 7pm - 10pm in the Hyatt Hotel with New Relic, Loggly, PyLadies, Rackspace, Raspberry Pi, and Solano Labs. Network with your Python community peers over drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Enjoy entertainment and win great prizes in our Python Trivia Contest. We'll even have some tasty pie on hand for dessert!
Women's Open Tech Office Hours @ 6pm - 3am in the Hyatt in room 1332

Saturday, March 16th

BoF Mani Party!! @ 5pm - 6pm in room 202 - What started as a cute joke snowballed into an actual thing, as many of the best things often do! Hosted by Katie Cunningham.
Charity Auction for PyLadies @ 6:30pm - 8:30pm - come laugh at the PyLadies as we try our hands as auctioneers! Dinner included.
Women's Open Tech Office Hours @ 6pm - 3am in the Hyatt in room 1332

Sunday, March 17th

Women's Open Tech Office Hours @ 6pm - 3am in the Hyatt in room 1332

Get Your Mac Ready for Python Programming

2013-03-06T01:07:00Z

As an absolute beginner to programming, you can very quickly learn to do lots of cool things using just your Python interpreter and simple Python scripts. However, you're going to want a few more tools eventually to help you expand to more complex projects. Why not start getting familiar with them now?

For me, the hardest thing about branching out was figuring out what tools I really needed and how to interpret their install instructions. Here's a list of tools you will need and a list of easy steps to follow to get set up on a Mac. I'll explain what each line of code is doing so you can learn a little bit about working with a command line interface in the process. All of this should work on Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8.

1. Install Xcode

Xcode is Apple's Integrated Development Environment (IDE), and there are some tools that come with it that we'll need later. You can get Xcode in the Apple appstore. It's a pretty big download, but this is the easiest way to get these tools on your machine. If you get bored while you're waiting, you could skip ahead and do steps 2, 5, and 6 now. If you want an alternative way to just get the tools you need, without the whole IDE, look here.

Once Xcode is installed, you still need to install the Apple command line tools! They're easy to get, though. Under the Xcode menu, click preferences. On the window that pops up, go to the Downloads tab. Find "command lines tools" and click the install button.

2. Open Terminal. Get Comfy.

If you've never used Terminal or some kind of command line interface before, it's a good idea to take a minute to familiarize yourself with how they work. Here's a quick intro. Later you you can learn a bit more with the free online book, Learn Command Line Interface the Hard Way.

I like to have a central place to store all of my programming projects, so I have a folder in my home directory called Code. To make a new folder called Code, open up Terminal. You should be in your home directory. Just to make sure you could type the following in your Terminal window. Don't type the $, though.

$ cd

Command line instructions usually start with $, which represents the end of your prompt. The prompt is the string of characters Terminal prints out to let you know it's ready to accept commands. The cd means change directory. If you don't specify where to go, it sends you to your home directory. Now, to make a folder called Code, you would type:

$ mkdir Code

The mkdir part means 'make directory'. A directory is analogous to what Finder calls folders. If you make a directory through your command line, it will show up as a folder in Finder. The Code part is an argument for this command. mkdir needs us to specify a string that will be the name of the new directory, so we pass it the Code argument. Unlike cd, mkdir will give us an error if we don't also provide a name. As shown below, the error message (second line) tells us that we used mkdir wrong and gives us some guidance on how to use it. Anything in brackets is optional, but the directory name is not!

$ mkdir
usage: mkdir [-pv] [-m mode] directory ...

3. Install Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for OS X. A package is a collection of code files that work together. Installing them usually means running a script (a bit of code) that puts certain files in the various directories. A lot of the packages you will want are going to have dependencies. That means they require you to have other packages already installed on your computer. Homebrew will find and install dependencies for you AND it will keep them organized in one location AND it can tell you when updates are available for them. On top of all of that it gives super helpful instructions when everything doesn't go smoothly. You can read more about it at Homebrew's website. For now, install Homebrew using the following line of code:

 $ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

So what's going on here? The last bit is obviously a URL. If you were to open this URL in your browser, you would just see code. This is a Ruby script that tells your computer what to do to install Homebrew. The curl part is a command line tool that transfers files using URLs. The -fsSL part is a combination of four option flags for curl that specify how to handle the file at the url. If you want to know more about what these flags do, type man curl at your command prompt. (You can use man in front of most commands to open up a manual page for that command.) We also need to actually execute this Ruby script, so we used the command ruby at the beginning. The -e is an option flag for ruby that executes a string as one line of code, in this case, the "$(curl … /go)" part. You may need to follow a few more instructions to finish the install, but Homebrew will help you do so.

4. Install Python

Python comes with OS X, so you can probably don't need to do this step. You can check this by typing python --version into Terminal. If you get an error message, you need to install Python. If Terminal prints something like Python 2.7.3 where the exact numbers you see may be different, you're all set to move on to step #5.

If for some reason you don't have Python or if you want to get the current version, you can now do this easily with Homebrew! Anytime you use Homebrew, you will start your command with brew followed by the Homebrew command you want to use. To install the latest version of python 2, simply type:

$ brew install python

If you'd rather install the latest version of python 3, replace python with python3.

5. Install pip

There are a few package managers that are specific to Python, and pip is the preferred one. The name pip stands for "pip installs packages". pip has one dependeny--distribute, but Homebrew doesn't know how to install either one. Luckily, both distribute and pip can be easily installed with python scripts that are available on the web. We can use curl, just like we did to get Homebrew.

$ curl -O http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py
$ python distribute_setup.py
$ curl -O https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py
$ python get-pip.py

This time we are getting and executing each script in two commands, where we did it all in one command before. Remember that you can look up what -O does with $ man curl, if you're curious.

It's possible that you will run into a permission issue here. Every file on your computer stores information about who can access and modify it. The get-pip.py script is going to try to write files to some of your system directories and it's possible that your user account doesn't have the right permissions. You can get around that though. If you get an error for one of these Python commands about permissions, type sudo before the rest of the command. Sudo stands for "superuser do". The superuser does have permission to modify system files and when you say sudo, you are acting as the superuser. You will need the admin password to do this.

For more information about using pip, you can go here.

6. Install virtualenv

A virtual environment is useful when you start to get invovled with projects that have different or conflicting dependencies that you dont want to install globally on your machine. For example, you might use a library that requires Python 3 and have another project that is only compatible with Python 2.

To install virtualenv, simply:

$ pip install virtualenv

Here is virtualenv's documentation.

7. Install Git and make a Github account

Git is a version control system. It keeps track of the revisions you make to your code and other files associated with a project, without storing multiple copies of each file. It will also help you merge your work with that of other programmers if you're working on a collaborative project. To install Git, type the following at your command prompt.

$ brew install git

Github is a website that uses git and is the most common way people share their code. You can use it just to back up your own projects or to have a centralized repository for a collaborative project, but it's also sort of a social media website for programmers. You can look at other people's code, follow projects you're interested in, submit bugs, and even contibute code to open source projects. If you want to get involved with an open source project or find good sample code, Github is the best way to do it. Go to github.com and follow the instructions to make your account.

If you're a little confused about this step, or want to know why and how you should use Github, you might want to read this.

8. What now?

You have a lot of powerful tools on your machine, now and it may be a little overwhelming. That's okay, you don't have to learn them all at once, but at least you have them set up now. but there are also plenty of resources freely available on the web to help you learn. Try browsing the Pyladies Resources page, or just using Google to find what you need. Talking with a more experienced programmer is always helpful as well. Have fun!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rebase

2013-02-26T17:50:00Z

Rebase is a downright scary concept. When the best way to explain how it works I've heard starts with thinking that you're time-traveling back to before certain changes were ever introduced to a project, you probably should be afraid. We've all read enough science fiction to know what happens if you go back to the Age of the Dinosaurs and step on an ugly-looking bug.

But while rebase is a responsibility to take seriously - especially if you're working on a team and you could wipe out every commit people have added since last Sunday - perhaps we're in less danger from time travel paradoxes than I previously assumed.

A Quick Example of Rebase

Just so we all are on the same page, let's go through a quick example of how you might use rebase:

Let's assume that you have a git repository with a file in it and that you've branched that file and made some changes. Meanwhile, someone else has modified that same file on the master branch. In order to get everything put back together again, you may consider using git rebase. To do so, you would need to do the following:

$ git rebase master

That's it. There might be some conflicts that you'd need to go in and clean up if your co-coder has been up to some serious business since you've last merged in your changes, but the command itself is simple. Now it looks like your changes started from the current master rather than from the original branch point.

If you want to now add your up-to-date changes back into the master, you'll still need to merge it in.

$ git checkout master
$ git merge branchname

How is this whole process different from just using git merge in the first place? It's just prettier: someone going through the code's history would see straight forward progress along the master branch.

A Better Metaphor for Rebase

Rebase is generally considered a slightly-nuclear option. It's possible to be careful about rebasing code, say by duplicating the master branch and rebasing your code on that new version to see if you accidentally destroy the world before trying to rebase within the actual master. Somehow, though, we still see it as something dangerous.

Perhaps a new metaphor may be more useful here. I'm the type to go out and read a bunch about a particular command before I'll get comfortable with using it. I've gone over this section from ProGit a couple of times and something finally became clear: when you rebase, you can reorder a whole bunch of different things!

For me, this is like sewing. When I was little, I would help my grandmother with her sewing projects. She grew up in the Great Depression and not one bit of material would ever go to waste in her sewing room. A piece of clothing didn't fit right? She'd tailor it. A seam wound up in the wrong place? She'd rip it out and go again. A project went horribly, horribly wrong? She'd take it apart and put it together again in a different way.

Rebase is a seam ripper and a bowl full of pins, all in one. You've got a bunch of concrete pieces of code that you've committed over time and you can rip them apart with rebase. In the same action, you can pin them back together and run them through the sewing machine again. As a result, you're not just limited to what you might do with the master branch and whatever branch you've been working on seperately.

Just like in sewing, though, there are some rules that you absolutely need to follow. The "don't accidentally sew your fingers to the garment" rule of rebasing is that you should never rebase commits that you have pushed to a public repository. It's not out of the question to fix such a problem (and there's probably less blood than the sewing machine-finger combo), but it requires some serious clean up.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

In fact, as long as you're taking proper precautions, it's possible to come back from most rebase screw ups (though this opinion is based on my own, admittedly limited, experience). The precautions seems a little tedious, just like measuring fabric twice and double-checking that you know what to do with your pattern can be. But that tedium can help you avoid big screw-ups, even if you never notice the accident you avoided.

The moment that I realized that rebase isn't so much a bomb as a seam ripper, it was a lot less worrying to type in that command and hit 'enter.'

Written by our own PDX PyLady, @thursdayb and regularly writes for her blog.

Why PyLadies?

2013-02-23T21:04:00Z

PyLadies is a group of women working on welcoming, encouraging and directly inviting women to join the Python community and to learn from each other.

I started a PyLadies chapter in Portland, OR last September (2012). We started out with weekly meetings to do homework from a Coursera class to make games with Python. That turned into weekly meetings -- plus homework meetups on Saturdays at a local coffee shop, and IRC hangout time to test homework. And that turned into me giving mini-lessons at each Coursera meetup about the material from the class. People seemed really excited.

Before we knew it, it was December, we had over 60 women subscribed to the Meetup, 30 of which had attended a meeting. Today, we've got 85 subscribers, 50 people have attended a meeting, and more have signed up to attend events in the future than ever before. And, it's done by women. Using open source. Teaching classes. Learning developer tools. And writing software.

Since September, I've met even more women involved in running PyLadies chapters across the country. Much like the way the PostgreSQL community is organized, we've got a loosely connected group of people working independently. We offer support to each other, but don't have hard and fast rules about what each chapter does. We encourage teaching and workshops, but don't require them. We share our resources and are quick to put git repos out there of our materials. We send lots of pull requests. And we're constantly looking for ways for women to get more involved in open source and Python.

I'm completely energized by the positive feedback we've gotten for every meeting. More recently, I've heard from people that they feel confident and sure of their knowledge because they've spent time in our meetups talking and learning from other women.

My goal is to make every get together like that - by having great lessons, a shared understanding of coaching and peer-based education and presentations from our members. Building these groups takes time, and I'm impatient to get to the part where I feel like every interaction with the group is rewarding for every member.

And I can't do it alone. We've got four meetup organizers (although one is about to relocate to the Bay Area!). I work closely with Flora Worley, a kickass developer who chose programming as a career path after working on a PhD, on topic details and planning for the meetings. I'm so looking forward to meeting in person with the many members of the PyLadies community at PyCon next month.

This post was originally posted on Selena Deckleman's blog and reposted with her permission. Thanks Selena!

PyLadies Lunch @ PyCon

2013-01-28T16:31:00Z

This year, there is such an amazing line up of talks, tutorials, events, and sponsors at PyCon that we're sure you don't have enough planned. Us PyLadies have organized to host a lunch for women attending the conference who love Python, or who want to learn more about Python or PyLadies.

What's this all about?

PyLadies is a mentorship group for women in the Python community. Come join us for an opportunity to chat with your fellow female Pythonistas while taking a break from the jam-packed PyCon schedule.

Who: Women who love coding in Python

When: Saturday, March 16th, 12:30pm - 1:30pm

Where: Second floor, Rooms 209/210

We invite any woman conference-goer to lunch at an informal, friendly meet & greet to form connections, and share Python programming stories.

RSVP!

Be sure to reserve your spot as space is limited!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Lynn Root.

PyLadies Speak at PyCon!

2013-01-13T16:31:00Z

PyCon talks were announced last week, and this year a record number of them are being given by women in the Python community, many of whom are PyLadies contributors! Congratulations to all the smart, accomplished women in the Python community who are helping to change the ratio at PyCon!

Here's the run-down - be sure to add these to your schedule when PyCon comes to Santa Clara, CA in March of 2013:

How to Except When You're Excepting: An introduction to the practice of exception handling (Esther Nam - Los Angeles)
What teachers really need from us: What teachers say about what they need and what the Python community has to offer K-12 classrooms. (Selena Deckelmann - Portland, OR)
Using Python To Generate Art And Sound: Navigating the Python audio/imaging landscape (Audrey M. Roy - Los Angeles)
Lessons Learned in Teaching Python (Alexandra Strong and Christine Cheung - Los Angeles)
Location, Location, Location: Building a Django application that needs to handle geographic location data (Julia Grace - San Francisco)
Who are we? A sociological analysis of the indigenous Python tribe (Jacqueline Kazil - Washington, DC)
Sink or swim: 5 life jackets to throw to New Coders (Lynn Root - San Francisco)
Visualizing Github, Part I: Data to Information: Practical data visualization with Python and web technologies (Dana Bauer, with Idan Gazit - Philadelphia)
Twisted Logic: Endpoints and Why You Shouldn't Be Scared of Twisted (Ashwini Oruganti - India)
Designers + Developers: Collaborating on your Python project: Working in developer/designer teams (Julia Elman, with Mark Lavin - North Carolina)

Prior to the conference are a number of tutorials for those of all skill levels, from Jessica McKellar's Introduction to Python for Beginners to Mel Chua's Digital Signal Processing workshop.

PyCon 2013 takes place from March 13-21, 2013 in Santa Clara, California. For more information, or to register, check out the web site: https://us.pycon.org/2013/.

PyCon Proposal Brainstorm Session Aug 27th

2012-08-25T16:31:00Z

[Thanks Lynn for putting this together!]

Ever thought about speaking? Want to give speaking at PyCon a shot, but not sure what to talk about? Even if you have a tiny inkling that you’d want to speak, beginner level or advanced, come to our workshop to get help brainstorming ideas & learn what makes a good proposal!

Join the PyLadies hangout, open to PyLadies and PyLaddies, with help from PyLadies’ leaders, previous years PyCon speakers & current Program Committee members (e.g. the folks that review proposals) to ideate, write, and submit your proposal to speak, give a tutorial, or a poster session at PyCon 2013.

Space is limited by the Google Hangout technology. An invite link will be sent out about 15 minutes prior to the start time.

For those in the Bay Area, be sure to check out the PyLadies San Francisco meetup, Workshop: Talk Proposal Writing for PyCon, on Tuesday, August 28th.

By Esther Nam

DjangoCon 2012: Pro Tips for those new to D.C.

2012-08-09T16:31:00Z

[This guest post is lifted straight from D.C. PyLady Katie's wonderful blog! She will be writing a series of posts to help Djangonauts from all over feel at home in the U.S. capital come early September!]

Coming to DjangoCon in September? Let's have a chat about DC.

by Katie Cunningham (with mad props to Jackie Kazil, who helped write this post!)

The location

DjangoCon DC is actually in Northern Virginia, not in the heart of the Capitol. Specifically, it's being held in Crystal City at the Hyatt Regency, which is close to the Crystal City Metro Station (the yellow and blue metro lines) and one stop away from Reagan National Airport (DCA).

I worked in the area for many years, and while it doesn't have as much of the DC grit and history, it makes up for in being a great nexus between convenience and cost. As someone who's been to several conferences in DC, I can tell you this is a good thing. It is a safe, clean, affordable, and transportation-accessible part of the DC metro area that is littered with Django developers.

If, for some reason, you aren't going to be staying at the conference's hotel, you're in luck. DC has a LOT of hotels. In general, the closer they are to a metro stop, the more expensive they are, but it's still possible to find no-frills hotels very close to a metro stop. If you want to remain close to the main action, I would get a hotel at L'Enfant (which is close to the Mall), Crystal City, or National Airport. Franconia/Springfield may look convenient, but it's actually not close to anything.

Getting to DC

Flying

View DC airports in a larger map

There are three airports in the D.C. region. Travel sites like Hipmunk and Kayak try to make all our local airports equivalent, as if it's just a short jaunt from each to DC. This is a dirty, nasty lie.

The airport visible from the hotel is Reagan National. It is only one metro stop from the hotel (or just under a mile walk if you are crazy). The other airports, Dulles and BWI, are inconvenient but usually cheaper if you are on a budget and willing to spend an extra hour to two hours using a combination of shuttle services, Amtrak, buses, metro. If you choose to stomach one of the other options, then add about $15 to your trip. If you take a taxi, you could end up spending more than the cost of your savings.

If you're coming in on an international flight, it may be worth looking for a flight that lands at some other international airport like Atlanta or New York, then catch a flight into Reagan. Trust me, you will not regret this.

Train

The train station is located at Union Station. It can be nice way to travel if you are on the Eastern Seaboard. The commute from Union Station to the conference isn't bad, since Union Station is also a metro stop.

Chinatown buses and other bus services
For those on a budget or looking for adventure and located on the Eastern Seaboard you might check look into the Chinatown buses. Various companies in Chinatown shuttle to Baltimore, Philideplia, New York, and Boston. D.C. to New York is between three and five hours (depending on your driver aherance to the speed limit) and costs around $20 each way. They will drop you off in Chinatown near the metro, which is the same metro line that you would need to get to the conference. Sometimes you can find a service that offers wifi and plugs and sometimes there are live animals and sketchy late night stops. Adventure!

Other buses services will drop you off in other parts, but they are usually close to a metro stop. Bolt Bus is probably one of the nicest.

Driving

Don't. It's not worth it unless you are car pooling. You won't need your car while visiting. If you do though, you can park you car at the Hotel (expect to pay a pretty hefty amount per night, though). If you want to bring your car, bring a GPS and some antacids. I've been told we're pretty bad drivers around here.

Transportation

DC's metro is stupidly simple and is probably going to all the places you want to go. DC metro area cabs are priced pretty well as a back up. I wouldn't bother to rent a car.

However, if you want to rent a bike, I have good news! There's a Revolution Cycles in Crystal City that rents bikes by the week. I spoke with the owners, and they have about 100 bikes available. Given how many people are going to be in town, they recommended reserving one ahead of time.

I'm no bike enthusiast (I still think my green Huffy was pretty rad), but I have been informed by bike geeks that these are good bikes.

There is also BikeShare, which is like Zipcars for bikes, through DC and in the conference hotel neighbor. Bring your own helmet, though. Don't be one of those guys. But there are only 10 spots at the hotel, so don't count on easily finding a bike at the conference. This is a better option used to tool around D.C. for a couple hours.

At the moment, I don't have much information regarding bike parking at the hotel. Hotels in the region are starting to have bike parking sections available, but if you're renting a bike for the week, keep in mind that you might be keeping it in your room (I hope I'm wrong).

More soon!
I'm going to post something about our tourist scene, if anyone is interested in seeing the sites while you're here.

By Esther Nam

Government Fellowship Opportunity

2012-07-10T16:31:00Z

The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is hiring a group of 30 designers and developers (Python- and Wordpress-friendly) to improve internal operations and the way that we interact with the public. The CFPB is a US government agency.

They are offering a Design+Technology Fellowship: a two-year program for developers, graphic designers, and UX pros to help build a new government agency almost from the ground up.

Join us, and you will be given an opportunity to help create a dream technology environment for a new organization. In the process, you’ll improve the lives of millions of Americans. Maybe you’re just out of college and you are looking to sharpen your skills. Or maybe you want a break from building widgets and want to spend some time making things that really matter.

Sounds like a fantastic way for a few good (or even a whole lot of) Pythonistas to make a big difference in many citizens' lives!

You'd better hop to it, though - the deadline for applying to the Fellowship is this Friday, July 13th. Email info@pyladies.com if you have any questions and we'll direct you to the contact person for this opportunity.

By Esther Nam

SF PyLadies First Workshop

2012-06-06T16:31:00Z

Ed. note: This post about the first San Francisco PyLadies chapter's workshop is copied straight from Lynn's personal blog (with Lynn's generous permission -- thanks!)]

What a blast I had on Saturday! It was a great learning experience for both the attendees and for us PyLadies org board! Good lessons learned, such as virtualenv is a beast to install depending on one’s operating system. Next time, we’ll have a pre-workshop session for installation of dependencies and such.

We went through how to build a blog using Django and its class-based views. We also went over Model-View-Controller concepts, and how they apply to Django. We wrapped up with a quick overview of how easy it is to deploy an application on Heroku (way too easy!).

I’ve made a GitHub repo for people to fork & contribute. I didn’t find an easily accessible tutorial for building a blog, or for building a simple app using Django’s class views, so hopefully this will grow to something useful in the Django community. Til next time!

By Esther Nam

SF PyLadies First Workshop

2012-05-21T16:31:00Z

Ed. note: This post about the first San Francisco PyLadies chapter's workshop is copied straight from Lynn's personal blog (with Lynn's generous permission -- thanks!)]

By Esther Nam

Jessica McKellar to be Keynte speaker at DjangoCon Europe!

2012-05-17T16:31:00Z

[Originally posted on the DjangoCon Europe blog. Thanks Jonas for letting us repost here! DjangoCon Europe 2012 will go from June 4-June 8 in Zurich, Switzerland.]

By Jonas Obrist

I am really excited to announce our second keynote speaker for DjangoCon Europe 2012 - Jessica McKellar.

Jessica is a kernel engineer from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She's a maintainer of several open source Python projects, most notably Twisted and OpenHatch. She's also working on a new edition of Twisted Networking Essentials for O'Reilly.

On top of her open source contributions, she is also a Python Software Foundation board member and a crucial part in the Boston Python User Group, the largest Python user group in the world. With that group she runs the Boston Python Workshop, an introductory programming pipeline that has brought hundreds of women into the local Python community and is being replicated in cities across the US.

By Esther Nam

SF Study Group

2012-05-12T16:31:00Z

Udacity is offering a free online intro to programming course starting Monday April 16th. Each week, videos will be posted online at the start of the week and homework will be due on the Tuesday of the following week.

Let's meet every Wednesday evening; exact time & place will be coordinated with soon, but will be in the SF city area.

Please watch the videos beforehand so we can work on homework together. There are multiple courses, no need to all do the same. We can help each other!

Also - this event is for women, those who identify as women, and their friends (of either gender). Emphatically queer & trans friendly.

See PyLadies SF event page

By Esther Nam

Workshop Planning Session

2012-05-10T16:31:00Z

On May 8, 2011, six of the PyLadies got together at Intelligentsia Coffee in Pasadena. It was really great to see everyone! Sadly Jess was out of town attending Google I/O, otherwise we would have had seven of us.

This was mostly a planning session for the workshop, where we divided up the remaining tasks among us:

Send out a pre-workshop email to attendees. Invite anyone who has setup problems to come early for extra help - Audrey
Show up on Sunday at 8:30am to help people who need extra setup help. Make sure tables/chairs are properly arranged - Katharine, Sandy, Sophia
Show up on Sunday by 9am to greet attendees: check in, ask if vegetarian/vegan - Esther, Christine, Jess, Audrey
Follow up with KPCC about the venue. Check whether they have whiteboards - Audrey
Bring backup whiteboards from home - Sandy, Esther
Bring large paper from home - Sophia, Audrey
(If needed - tbd) pick up 2 large easels from office supply store - Sandy
Bring bagels/spread, cups, plates. Bring projector, 2 24" LCD monitors, power strips, printer, label paper for nametags - Audrey
Bring extra laptops - Katharine, Audrey
Print 3 signs (on 8.5x11 paper) for each breakout session: Debugging, Django, Web Scraping - Sandy
Put together 10-20 min Why Python overview talk for the start of the workshop - Christine
Put together 2 hr Web Scraping breakout session material - Katharine, Esther
Review Django poll tutorial https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/intro/tutorial01/ for 2 hr Django breakout session - Christine, Sophia
Review How to Think Like a Computer Scientist http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/ for 2 hr Debugging breakout session - Sandy, Audrey
Be available as a "floater" to whichever breakout session needs help most during the event - Jess
Put together 5 min lightning talks. Katharine: web frameworks. Sophia: Java/Python code sample case study showing differences. Sandy: generators. Esther: generating docs (Sphinx?). Christine: tbd (possibly showing how to set up pyladies.com or other cms). Audrey: tbd (possibly PIL/PyCairo drawing). Jess: tbd.
Move organizer discussions to private Google Group - Audrey
Create Mailchimp announce list and Google Group discussion list for attendees, potential members, friends - Audrey
Create a Google Forms survey that gets sent out on Sunday at 3:30pm to attendees - Katharine
Send out a Thank You email after the event - Audrey
Email other user groups about co-hosting an afternoon/evening hack session in mid/late June - Audrey
Ask Danny and Grant for help with picking up lunch and ice cream - Sophia, Audrey
Bring nice camera - Jess
Ask photographer friends for photo or video help (even if just stopping by for 30 min) - Sophia, Sandy
Get organizer t-shirts printed - Audrey

Wow, that's a lot of tasks! If you're reading this and want to help, email me at audreyr@cartwheelweb.com and let me know what you can help with, whether it's on this list or not. We can always use more help.

Also, we talked about some of the fun things we want to do together in the future:

More ladies' nights for just us :)
Follow-up hack session where people bring laptops and code together - afternoon/evening of June 18?
Get a PyLadies car or two full of people and drive to LayerOne security conference in Anaheim on May 28-29, 2011 (\$100 online; $140 at door) http://www.layerone.org/
Road trip to Las Vegas for DEF CON August 4-7, 2011 ($150, paid at door) http://www.defcon.org/
Take a train to Portland for DjangoCon, Sept 6-8, 2011. Hopefully all the Django ladies will submit talks!
Go "on tour" for a weekend and do a San Diego women's workshop
Set up the PyCon 2012 PyLadies bus to Santa Clara, March 7-15, 2012, with wifi, snacks, drinks http://us.pycon.org/2012/

By Audrey Roy

Welcome to mynt

2012-04-12T16:31:00Z

For a quick overview of what mynt has to offer, give the quickstart guide a read. You can also find API reference style documentation on the docs page. If you run into any problems open an issue on GitHub. Lastly, if you have any questions or just want to chat, you can hop into our IRC channel on freenode, #mynt.

Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner

2012-03-29T16:31:00Z

Ed. note The most recent Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner was Python-themed, and hosted by Yelp. Many thanks to Lynn for letting us repost this article from her blog! Lynn is starting up the SF Chapter of PyLadies, so drop her a line if you're interested in joining!

I had the pleasure of attending last night’s Girl Geek dinner at Yelp’s headquarters. The event was about empowering women by hearing their success stories.

Three of the speakers were not strangers to me, odd enough! Christine from PyLadies in LA spoke about increasing involvement of women in the Python community. And of course, spreading the Pyladies ingenuity to San Francisco with the help of yours truly!

Kaitlyn Trigger of lovestagram.com, a valentine overlay to instagram photos, spoke as well. I had the fortunate opportunity to invite her to one of my Women Who Code python workshop nights. I loved her message that one can not learn how to code by herself; it takes a village!

Lastly, Sasha of Women Who Code gave a great talk on how she starting the group, and her motivation behind it. Too bad she’s now in NYC :-/

I would highly recommend attending a Girl Geek dinner in the future!

By Lynn Root

PyLadies in the News

2012-02-24T16:31:00Z

The LA Weekly blog featured a few of the LA PyLadies in a recent post. The Open Hatchery highlights a nice example of the power of community collaboration and outreach (we can't wait to meet Pam at PyCon!)

We've even stirred a bit of discussion on Reddit -- care to join the fray? =)

By Esther Nam

Get the Most out of your Conference-going Experience

2012-01-22T16:31:00Z

As seen in our last newsletter: @kjam and @sandymahalo are pro conference attendees (and speakers!). Here they present advice for those who may be new to the world of tech conferences and other neck-beard-laden gatherings like SCALE10x, which is happening this entire weekend in Los Angeles.

1. Don't be intimidated by intense topics or talks. Part of attending a conference is exposing yourself to new content and learning from it. If you don't get it all, you may be reminded of it years later when you come across something similar.

2.It's okay to walk out. If you aren't sure about a talk, it's *totally* okay to sit in the back and dip out if it's not what you expected or if you don't feel like it's going to be interesting or helpful to you.

3. Do talk to people. One of the best things about conferences is meeting folks you enjoy or who challenge and inspire you. Don't fill your entire calendar with talks, spend some of the time just chatting with folks who are there and making new friends.

By Esther Nam

Call for PyCon Applications and Sponsors

2011-12-15T16:31:00Z

As previously mentioned, the PyLadies are working with the PSF to ensure that PyLadies who want to attend PyCon 2012 can do so. To that end,we are accepting applications for grants to attend PyCon in Santa Clara, CA from March 7-15.

Let's make PyCon as diverse as the Python Community as a whole -- if not more! Many thanks to the PSF for partnering with us on this initiative.

Attendees: If you are a female Python developer who wants to attend but needs financial assistance in order to do so, please fill out this form as soon as possible.

The application period for this year has ended. If you have not received a reply from us about the status of your application, please email esther @ pyladies com immediately.

Sponsors: If you are interested in providing financial assistance to a budding Python developer in need, please contact esther @ pyladies.com

We did something similar this past year for DjangoCon, and plan to continue this program for as long as we can sustain it. If you can help us, you will helping to change the community, and maybe even a couple of lives!

How grant recipients will be chosen

Priority will be based on the following factors:

Genuine financial need
Talk proposal acceptance (those invited to speak at PyCon will have higher priority)
Level of experience in programming
Contributions to open-source
Contributions to Python diversity advocacy efforts
Desire to attend
Impact that attendance will have on her life, especially for first-time attendees

Sponsors will receive:

an email report from us about the person you're sponsoring, and why you made the right decision
your link listed on a page that we'll be putting up for sponsors
your logo displayed on that page, if you donate substantially more than others (amount TBD) and/or better placement
a personal guarantee from me that the PyLadies and I will mentor the person you sponsored. We will help them through their Python career and put friendly pressure on them to contribute to open-source =)

By Esther Nam

PyLadies at PyCon 2012

2011-12-12T16:31:00Z

We're happy to announce that with the help of the Python Software Foundation, PyLadies will be making an appearance at PyCon 2012! We will be exhibiting during the main portion of conference and will be on hand to help any other interested PyLadies in joining or starting up their own chapter. We will soon have details about grants to attend this upcoming PyCon, so stay tuned!

By C Cheung

Recaps: October Hackathon, November Beginner's Workshop

2011-11-29T16:31:00Z

Idealab in Pasadena played host to a PyLadies hackathon this past October. Our very own Sophia has posted some great photos of the event over at her own site, backCODE -- check them out!

Lightning talks at that hackathon were given by:

Ray T. on Unit Testing

Randall D. on easy Django deployment with Heroku

PyDanny on Painless Authentication and Registration

Emma S.: Hello world! A beginner's Django App

Leo C.: Google App Engine

Ryan: Know your Time Complexities

Muchas gracias to Idealab, and especially to Joven Matias for their excellent hospitality. Extra thanks to our wonderful volunteer corps, who came early, helped set up the rooms, and delivered lightning talks!

USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism hosted a beginner's Python workshop that was even bigger than the first one we held back in May. 50-odd geeks, nerds, and similar fought their way through some unexpected downtown traffic to attend this tutorial, taught by PyLadies kjam, Sandy, and xtine.

It was a bright crowd, with most people Learning Python the Hard Way at a fairly rapid clip. They were impatient to learn about web scraping from kjam, and eager to follow along with the code samples presented at the end-of-day lightning talks.

Photos from this event are up on our Flickr page! BIG thanks to Geneva Oh of USC Annenberg and Prof. Robert Hernandezfor proposing, organizing and promoting this workshop for USC students and journalists (including one intrepid nerd-to-be who flew in from Arizona solely for this event!), as well as sponsoring the venue and food.

Lightning talks from

xtine: scraping data from a music website for fun!

Michael: Why Documentation Matters

Robin: Python List Comprensions [.ppt]

Emma: "Hello world!" (an encore by popular demand)

Leo: I can't remember at the moment but I'm sure it was fabulous!

Cars.com generously hosted a post-workshop PyLadies social hour, plying us with beer and delicious appetizers from the campus bar. Thanks to Michael and Robin from Cars for giving up their Saturday for us! Likewise to our brilliant volunteer corps -- the event would not have been as successful without your participation and we are grateful! =)

We hope to follow up with some Intermediate Python workshops in the coming months for those who want to level-up some more, so stay tuned -- subscribe to our newsletter (use the form at right) and follow us on the Twitter!

By Esther Nam

Djangsta Shirts - Extra Print Run!

2011-09-19T16:31:00Z

If you were at DjangoCon you probably saw people wearing these, standing out magnificently amongst the sea of bright green. They were the cool people -- the Djangstas, if you will.

We were originally going to sell these only at DjangoCon, but demand was so high we've decided to do one more print run. If you hesitated the first time around (and are now full of regret), or were shortsighted enough to give DjangoCon a miss altogether this year (and are now SO full of regret), here's your chance to redeem yourself and join the ranks of the Djangstas!

Shirts will now cost $25, to cover shipping and/or PayPal fees.

Please pre-order by October 1, by filling out the form below. We'll email you to confirm so you can pay us (via check or Paypal) before we print and mail you your shirt.

Update

[The pre-order period has ended: Thanks to everyone who placed their orders! We will be contacting you shortly to collect payments and mailing addresses, so dig up that checkbook or dust off your Paypal account! :)]

By Esther Nam

Recap: PyLadies at DjangoCon 2011

2011-09-14T16:31:00Z

Last week the PyLadies took Portland, Oregon by storm: after months of planning, brainstorming, planning, rehearsing, and even a bit of planning, we flew in en masse to DjangoCon 2011 for six action-packed days of tutorials, talks, code sprints, and raucous socializing with Django developers from all over the world.

Tutorials, talks, and sprints

Most of the talks from DjangoCon will be available online soon (we hope!) - lots of slides and other docs are available via Lanyrd. Here's a brief recap of how the PyLadies represented last week:

On Monday we labored through a pre-conference day of tutorials to help PyDanny lead the Ultimate Django Tutorial, all proceeds from which went directly to the PyLadies. We had invaluable assistance from other great mentors like DSF president Russell Keith-Magee and Gabriel Grant of DotCloud, to name just two.

The conference began in earnest on Tuesday, with Tracy delivering an inspiring talk about launching her own startup in six weeks by teaching herself Django. That afternoon, Sandy wowed even the most experienced developers in the room with her excellent talk on best practices in testing. Audrey and Christine picked up the PyLadies baton the following day, with talks about Django packages and Django for the Front-End, respectively. Katharine spoke on Wednesday afternoon about web-scraping methods.

I'm singling out the PyLadies-driven sessions specially here, but of course there were numerous other great technical talks on topics ranging from design (Idan Gazit), to security issues (Paul McMillan), to pouring out some good-natured haterade for our favorite framework and language (Glyph Lefkowitz's memorable keynote was entitled: "Why does Django Hate Python"?).

Most of us were heavily sleep-deprived by Friday -- thank heaven for Stumptown Roasters and Voodoo Doughnuts! Still, inspired by Steve Holden's and James Bennett's respective talks about Django's documentation, a few PyLadies delegates got together with a number of other devs at Urban Airship for code sprints, to try and rework the official Django tutorial so that it would be more friendly to beginners and casual Djangologists. Nate Aune started a git repo for the project and we hope to continue to plug away at it even though the conference is over. Still, while coding remotely has its pros, it was pretty awesome to be able to sit in the same room with dozens of talented folks to plug away at the same open-source project!

Off the program

It wasn't all work for us, of course -- there was plenty of extra-curricular fun to be had in Portland, from printing and selling out our Djangsta shirts (conceived by Katharine and designed by Christine); to sneaking multiple trips to Powell's Books and Portland's famous food carts (deep fried pie FTW!!); to hosting a meetup for DjangoCon PyLadies/friends-of-PyLadies at McMeanamin's Pub on night 2 of the conference. Emma Email Marketing pitched in for generous quantities of beer for us, and we are indebted to Portland PyLady Michelle for organizing this hugely successful get-together!

The best part about the conference, of course, was meeting, coding, and carousing with Django devs from all over the world, many of whom we'd first conversed with online, via IRC or Twitter. There seemed to be a fair amount of conference buzz circulating about the PyLadies even before we arrived; what an odd feeling it was to have strangers recognize me by my Twitter avatar -- not to mention how odd it felt to introduce myself to others whom I'd recognized in the same manner!

Speaking of which: the background tweet-chatter and retweeting of points from sessions we were missing out on was great to follow, sure, but Twitter was also awesome for things like helping out PyLady Dana when she was having some trouble getting PostgreSQL running on her MacBook Pro, or for reserving Djangsta shirts before they sold out.

Special props go to Shinji and Emily, who used Twitter to reach out to us and find their way into the conference after I tweeted a call for applicants. We're so excited that people like them are taking the initiative to start PyLadies (or similar) groups all over the country!

Help from our friends

Most of this would have been inconceivable without the incredible amount of support we received from a few great people and their companies -- and all we had to do was ask! You can read the full report of the results of our DjangoCon sponsorship program, but suffice it to say here that we were overwhelmed by the response.

We also have to acknowledge the exceptional hospitality of the conference organizers, including Steve, Sean O'Connor, and Nancy Asche, who lavished the PyLadies with care & attention, using every possible opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to seeing diversity flourish in the Python community. It was especially awesome of them to have arranged the weather in Portland to be unseasonably pleasant for us out-of-towners ;)

Big hugs to everyone who came up to us offering support, tips, or twenties (for the shirts!). It's really exciting to connect with others who want to join us in our efforts to promote Python and open source, and do their part to increase the overall diversity of our community!

We plan to put the money we earned from the tutorials and T-shirt sales toward establishing the PyLadies as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization so that we can continue to do the things we've been doing for a long time to come.

All in all, I left Portland feeling inspired by the openness, intelligence, and big-heartedness of the Django community, and I know I'm not the only one.

By Esther Nam

Djangsta Shirts on Sale at DjangoCon

2011-09-06T16:31:00Z

These "Djangsta" shirts premiered at DjangoCon to a rousing success and are selling out quickly! If you are coming to DjangoCon this year, find a PyLady and get one! Proceeds help PyLadies outreach efforts. Shirt logo was designed by xtine.

Available: Womens L, Mens S/L

A pre-order form will be available for a reprint run!

Model: Jeff Schenck

By C Cheung

DjangoCon Sponsorship Program

2011-09-05T16:31:00Z

Announcing the results of the PyLadies' DjangoCon Sponsorship Program.

$4250 was raised, with 100% of it going to making it possible for female Django developers to attend DjangoCon. Specifically, excited and passionate developers who would not otherwise have attended (who happen
to be women).

Here is a breakdown of how the money was used. For more details about this, see our PyLadies / DjangoCon US 2011 Sponsorship Program financial report (PDF download).

Thank you to the individuals and companies who sponsored the program:

Gold ($3000+)

Mozilla

Silver ($500+)

Cars.com

Steve Holden / The Open Bastion

Bronze ($150+)

Douglas Philips

Supporter ($50+)

Justin and Kristy Fields

Shawn Milochik

By Audrey Roy

PyLadies Meetup at DjangoCon

2011-09-05T16:31:00Z

All women at DjangoCon are invited to the PyLadies meetup, Wed night at DjangoCon US! Thanks to Michelle Rowley and Eric Holscher (both of PDX Python) for organizing and planning the party.

Gents who participate in IRC channel #pyladies and guests of women are invited too.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011 8pm onward Location: Ringlers Annex of McMenamins

(Note: this is the Annex a block east of Ringlers, not Ringlers itself) 1223 S.W. Stark Portland, OR 97205 (503) 384-2700

http://www.mcmenamins.com/250-ringlers-annex-home

By Audrey Roy

Mid-August News Bites

2011-08-16T16:31:00Z

Mid-August -- in France we'd be halfway through our nationally recognized four weeks of vacation, but here in Los Angeles we PyLadies have been as busy as ever, working hard to plan some big, big things!

Also:

Sophia and I wrote up a short narrative about our little group for Women 2.0
Katharine submitted a panel proposal for SXSW Interactive next March -- please vote it up on the SXSW Panel Picker!
Audrey is delivering keynote speeches at PyCon Australia AND Kiwi PyCon in Wellington, New Zealand! There will also be a women in Python breakfast at PyCon Australia before the keynote, so if you're in that other hemisphere and would like to attend, shoot Audrey an email.

And we do it all for YOU =)

UPCOMING EVENTS

Those who subscribe to the PyLadies newsletter should already know about the following events, but if you've been dilly-dallying about signing up for any, get thee quickly to those registration pages so we can be ready for you! (If you *don't* subscribe to our newsletter -- why not?? There's a handly little form for you on our sidebar RIGHT THERE --> - The LA PyLadies have created a Meetup Group where we will post all our events -- join us! - It's not too late to register for this weekend's Hacks/Hackers hackathon, held under the auspices of #PubCampWest at KPCC in Pasadena. The theme is "Hacking online audio" - Monday is another PyLadies hack night -- an informal event where people can get together to work on code or just hang out on IRC to do the same. Actually, we're always around on IRC, so if you're busy Monday, you can still hang out with us virtually on any other day you want! - Saturday, August 27th is the official August PyLadies mini-conference/hackathon at Cars.com. This all-day event will begin with a morning session of talks about Django and other cool Python tools, followed by a hackathon.

By Esther Nam

Intro to Django at Mahalo

2011-07-25T16:31:00Z

Last Saturday the PyLadies and the LA Django meetup group held an introductory Django Workshop, with generous amounts of support by Mahalo and Cars.com Guided by Sandy and Katharine, two of the PyLadies' Djangologists extraordinaires, the morning tutorial covered the basics of setting up a Django web application, from database configuration to navigating the built-in admin interface.

As you can see, mentors circulated the room throughout the workshop; Michael of Cars.com brought party hats for us to wear so that people knew who to ask for help as they set up their first Django web app. To maintain the party-like atmosphere we also had slides of Python-trivia questions, and threw candy at participants who got answered them correctly! Do YOU know what BDFL stands for?

For lunch we dined on pizza donated by Cars.com, while soaking in some much-needed vitamin D, and spent some time getting to know our fellow hackers a bit better.

Introducing ourselves, we discovered that we came from a wide range of backgrounds, from meditation experts to bioengineers, united by our eagerness to learn this awesome Python-based framework, and our willingness to spend a whole Saturday doing so!

These folks came all the way from Texas!!!

In the afternoon, most attendees chose to push on through the Django tutorial with Sandy, where they delved deeper into Django views and templating. Others hacked away happily on their own Python projects, and later we all learned how to set deploy our apps on DjangoZoom, for which the DjangoZoom folks were generous enough to give us trial accounts. There was, of course, time for a short outdoor break (PyLadies are all about promoting well-rounded, healthy hacking habits!), led by Python dev/capoeira enthusiast PyDanny.

The hackday finished with another fine set of lightning talks:

Katharine gave an awesome talk on how to keep up with the PyLadies
Randall gave a presentation on the awesome Django-Twilio API, for adding telephony features to web apps
Michael gave tips on applying for programming jobs, aimed at n00bs but containing good advice for any job-seeker.
Laura showed us how to use the Python wrapper for the Twitter API
The indomitable Sandy found it in her to give another talk, this time on Django testing

Since no PyLadies event is complete without a social hour, we walked over to Warszawa for a round of drinking and relaxation (i.e., we began formulating plans for tattoos, future PyLadies events, continued world domination, etc).

Thanks again to our wonderful hosts at Mahalo, particularly CTO Jeff; and also to the crew of Cars.com, most notably Michael, who helped out enormously with every aspect of the event, from tweaking the tutorial to handing out candy for trivia. Also, the hats!

Finally, and as always, thanks to the PSF for their continued support. We were able to fit twice as many people into our hack space using the tables and chairs they paid for. We'll also be thanking them in the near future when we announce a few other exciting new developments...

Stay on our mailing list to hear more! Or, if that's not enough PyLadies for you, you know where else to find us!

By Esther Nam

Django Workshop and Hackathon

2011-07-12T16:31:00Z

The PyLadies are continuing their summer series of hackathons with a Django-themed day on July 23rd, hosted by venue sponsor
Mahalo in Santa Monica. This time, we're teaming up with the awesome LA Django Meetup Group, who have valiantly supported our efforts to increase diversity by providing mentors like Jacob and Jeff.

|image2|

|image3|

The Django web framework is a
great way to dive into Python while quickly building and deploying a
simple and useful web application (like this blog, or even a whole startup!),
which is why beginners are highly encouraged to attend.

Participants will begin by going through the Django Tutorial under
the expert tutelage of PyLadies developers. In the afternoon,
attendees are encouraged to hack away on their own projects.

As at the previous hackathon in Hollywood, mentors will be available throughout the day to help people on their individual projects and to answer any questions or resolve issues.

Like always, there will be a final hour of lightning talks (if you've attended our previous events, now might be a good time to consider presenting something yourself!). And of course there will a social hour following the event which is open to the whole Python community and its extended circles. You know how we love to party!

To register for this low-cost workshop (which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner), visit http://pyladies-django-july.eventbrite.com. For more information, email esther @ pyladies dot com.

P.S. Many thanks to the Python Software Foundation for their generous support!

By Esther Nam

Call for Sponsorship

2011-06-30T16:31:00Z

PyLadies needs your help getting women to DjangoCon. There are women who could really benefit from the experience.

Help us get more women to DjangoCon

What happens when you encourage a talented female Django developer to attend DjangoCon and then give her a free ticket? First she gets really excited:

|Why is @estherbester going to DjangoCon?|

Then she discovers a world of new opportunities. She gains the confidence to start open-sourcing reusable Django apps. She contributes to open-source Django projects, maybe even Django itself.

She proposes a talk the following year. PyLadies mentors her to help get her talk accepted. She gets accepted and presents on one of her open-source projects.

Her Django app turns out to be so useful that she gets asked to integrate her project into Django core during the sprints ;)

I counted about 5 women at DjangoCon last year. Let's make this year different. Let's aim to have 25 women. If there are 250 attendees, that's 10% women.

How you can help

1. Email audreyr {at} pyladies.com. Say "I pledge to donate X amount to helping women get to DjangoCon."

She'll use this info to let a woman know ASAP that she should get her speaker proposal in before the deadline. Or to let a potential attendee start making plans.

2. We'll send you an email with instructions about how to get the funds to us (probably PayPal or check). Plus background info from me about the woman whom you're sponsoring, so that you know that this is for real.

How we decide who gets to go

Priority will be based on the following factors:

Genuine financial need
Desire to speak at DjangoCon, combined with Django expertise and speaking ability. Talented potential speakers get extra priority.
Contributions to open-source
Contributions to Python women's advocacy efforts
Desire to attend
Impact that attendance will have on her life, especially for first-time attendees

You'll receive:

an email report from us about the person you're sponsoring, and why you made the right decision
a personal thank-you at DjangoCon from that person
your link listed on a page that we'll be putting up for sponsors
your logo displayed on that page, if you donate substantially more than others (amount TBD) and/or better placement
a personal guarantee from me that the PyLadies and I will mentor the person you sponsored. We will help them through their Django career and put friendly pressure on them to contribute to open-source

In cases of extreme financial need, we'll give the woman not just a ticket but help with travel, lodging, and/or food.

If you're a woman reading this and could use assistance, email audreyr {at} pyladies {dot} com. We'll do our best to help as many women as possible.

By Audrey Roy

Recap: Hollywood Hackathon at Border Stylo

2011-06-24T16:31:00Z

Last Saturday we held our first hackathon of the summer at the offices of Border Stylo in Hollywood, in partnership with the SoCal Python Interest Group (“SoCal Piggies”). We invited not only newcomers to Python programming, like those who attended the May Beginner’s Workshop, but also seasoned developers who came to hack away on their own projects -- and who happily volunteered themselves to be mentors to those aforementioned n00bs.

Roughly 60% of the day’s 55 in-person participants and 90% of the 30 remote participants were female, well beyond the PyLadies’ goal of having a 1:1 male-female ratio at Pythonista events.

OSS Bounty

A few days before the hackathon, Audrey put out the call for hackers to contribute to open source projects, offering these freshly printed PyLadies shirts as a reward for anyone who committed code to a FOSS project (Audrey's wearing the new one!):

Some of the PyLadies continued to work their way through Zed Shaw’s “Learn Python the Hard Way,” the book we used at the Beginner’s Workshop. @ardaniel was the first person to earn a PyLadies shirt, by committing to GitHub the exercises she’d done and notes she'd written up from LPTHW. A group of folks had driven down from NorCal to help the SoCal Piggies work on a new website using the Pyramid web framework. After traveling all that way, it’s no surprise that they opted for the comfy couches:

Even people who couldn’t attend the hackathon in person, citing lame excuses such as not being located in California, were nevertheless invited to join in the fun -- Audrey will be shipping free shirts to everyone who participated remotely and contributed to open-source, including one PyLady who committed code from across the Atlantic:

What time was it in Poland???

During the hackathon we threw the #pyladies IRC chatroom up on the big screen so people could follow online discussions no matter where they were sitting -- without straining their thumbs from alt-tabbing. (PS If you want to join us on IRC anytime, we are in #pyladies on freenode.net!)

The Future of Python

After 4 hours of intensive hacking, it was time to take a break! Audrey herded us outside for a group photo. As PyDanny notes, it's a glimpse of the Python community of the future:

Pretty grand!

After Dark

Though the Hollywood sky was outside was warm and bright, we soon drifted back indoors to chow down on Crispy Crust pizza and wings while listening to the end-of-day lightning talks:

Dirk gave a demo of his Opani platform, which leverages the cloud for social supercomputing.
Michael introduced the Pyramid web framework and Jenkins CI.
Sandy shared some amazing demos of Python-Xbox Kinect hacking
Jacob gave a PEP8 talk on best practices
Jeff admonished us to leave no Windows developers behind
Katharine and Danny proffered some words of encouragement for developers of all skill levels.

After the lightning talks, it was time to clean up, load out, and head over to the Melgard Public House for some well-earned beer and socializing time! This part was originally supposed to be Python Ladies’ Night 4, but once we found that the PyDudes weren’t so bad to hang out with, we gladly invited them along. Fun was had by all!

Big Thank-Yous

Gabriel, who played the part of event host on behalf of Border Stylo, said that of all the events his company has held (which is a lot!), ours was by far the smoothest and most awesome. Hope this means you’ll have us back, Gabe!

We of course have to thank the Python Software Foundation for giving us two grants to support this hackathon. Thanks to them, we were able to purchase enough tables and chairs to keep 55 hackers coding happily away in the same room, which led to much mingling and mentoring. They also helped foot the bill for drinks, snacks and dinner, so that we could fortify our hardworking brains with glucose-heavy treats and sodas all day long. And let's not forget the wonderful T-shirts for open source contributors!

Coming up....

We really want to keep the momentum going for opening up the Python community to people of all stripes, and to provide a non-threatening environment where everyone feels welcome to work on their projects and learn to become a better developer without having to worry about whether they fit in or feeling stupid for trying.

To that end, we’ve got at least a few more hackathons and other cool outings in the works, so don’t forget to sign up for our mailing list, and follow us on Twitter so you'll be the first to know when and where and what the PyLadies will be doing next! Thanks to all who attended, whether virtually or in-person -- and sorry to those on the waitlist who couldn't: we hope you'll catch us earlier next time, or connect with us online!

By Esther Nam

Great turnout at the Python Ladies Night 3

2011-06-07T16:31:00Z

We had around 14 people come and go throughout the night. It was a blast! We talked Python but also other things. Did you know that there are enough of us who ride scooters/motorcycles that we could have our very own PyLadies rally club?

Attendees were mostly Python developer ladies, but also a few gentlemen of the Python community and possibly one guy who doesn't know Python (yet ;) Here are some of us:

Sad that you missed it? Come for the next one! It'll be right after the PyLadies Hack Session. Even if you can't make it to the event, you can still join us for drinks afterward.

SAVE THE DATE

Python Ladies' Night 4 will be on Saturday, June 18 from 8pm onward, at Hollywood Canteen, 1006 Seward St, Los Angeles, CA 90038.

By Audrey Roy

Thank you, Python Software Foundation!

2011-06-07T16:31:00Z

It's true:

We are so incredibly grateful to the PSF for taking a chance and stepping up to help us in a big way. We have more to say about this and how it has impacted us, so stay tuned.

By Audrey Roy

Python Ladies' Night 3

2011-06-02T16:31:00Z

We're looking forward to the upcoming Python Ladies' Night 3 tomorrow, starting at 9pm.

All female Python developers are invited to meet up for a night of fun in downtown LA. Significant others and friends are welcome, so don't leave them at home!

Find us at Seven Grand bar in downtown LA:

http://www.sevengrand.la 515 W 7th St, 2nd floor, Los Angeles, CA 90014

Meet us there at 9pm. We may move the group to other nearby bars as the night goes on.

If you think you'll be late, email audreyr@pyladies.com with your cell phone number, so she can text/call you if the group moves.

How will you find us? Some of us will be wearing PyLadies t-shirts. See you soon!

By Audrey Roy

PyLadies Intro to Python Workshop

2011-05-22T16:31:00Z

On Sunday, May 15, 2011, the PyLadies held an Intro to Python workshop at KPCC's Crawford Family Forum in Pasadena.

The goal was to create a safe, comfortable space for women to learn Python programming and be able to ask questions openly. Men were welcome as volunteers or as the +1 guests of women.

It was clear that this was a gathering of educated, sharp, successful women. Our female attendees included:

Grad students from UCLA and CalTech, and over-educated women with multiple degrees and Ph.Ds.
Senior marketers and community managers with over 10,000 Twitter followers, working on prominent tech projects
UX (user experience) professionals working for top companies
Research scientists currently using other languages in their labs for numerical analysis
Co-founders of startups, with 1 or more funded and/or successful companies under their belt
Experienced software engineers with Java, C++, .NET, PHP backgrounds
Product managers at top companies
Talented Linux sysadmins
Hardware hackers involved with the various LA area hackerspaces

I could go on and on. Many were happily employed, but some were looking for technical jobs. I'm hoping some of the job seekers apply to work at KPCC, our venue sponsor!

In the morning, Katharine and I did a walkthrough of the popular Learn Python the Hard Way tutorial by Zed Shaw. Attendees typed along with each exercise. At the end of each exercise, we reviewed the new concepts covered.

During lunch, KPCC's senior web producer Jason Georges took everyone on a tour behind the scenes of the radio station. KPCC is full of cool things like soundproof glass cube recording rooms.

Then we were greeted by former NFL player and pastry chef George Wrighster with a surprise tray of cupcakes from his bakery, Violet's Cakes. Yummy!

In the afternoon, we split up into smaller breakout sessions:

craping the Web with Python, or How I Automatically Get Happy Hour Specials Delivered to my Inbox
Intro to Django with the Django Poll Tutorial
Learn Python The Hard Way, Part 2

Then the PyLadies volunteer organizers gave lightning talks:

Equality: Equivalence in Python by Jess Stanton
Project Euler Demo by Christine Cheung
Python Web Frameworks by Katharine Jarmul
Generators by Sandy Strong
Ergonomics by Esther Nam
The Code Behind PyLadies.com by Audrey Roy
Inequality: Stories from the Python & Developer Communities by Jess Stanton

At the end, we celebrated over root beer floats. It was interesting and exciting to see that no one wanted to leave at the end! I was thrilled and floating on a cloud, and so were all the other organizers and volunteers.

Thank you to our special out-of-town guests! If there's anything we can do to help you in any way with your local women's developer communities, let us know.

Angie Chang, co-founder of Women 2.0 Bay Area Girl Geek dinners & product manager at Zinch from SF, who flew into LA just for our event
Heather Payne, senior marketing coordinator for a global staffing/HR firm from Toronto, who flew home eager to start a local women's Python coding group

Congratulations to all 25 ladies and 2 men who completed our intro workshop, and special thanks to all the men who attended and volunteered for braving the crowd of ladies.

By Audrey Roy

First Python Ladies' Night Recap

2011-04-19T16:31:00Z

On April 16, 2011, a group of 5 local female Python developers got together for the first ever Python ladies' night.

We had wine, sparkling elderflower and ginger waters, vegetable spaghetti, savory meat pies from Porto's bakery, Caesar salad, homemade garlic bread, tea, and tiramisu.

We talked about:

Python women's advocacy (mostly!)
virtualenv
the mod_wsgi documentation
Django-based content management systems
how we each got into Python development

And we started plans for a women's Python workshop on May 15, 2011. Details about how to get tickets will be announced this week.

It was an exciting meeting with a lot of positive energy. Everyone present was passionate about Python women's advocacy and wanted to help increase diversity in the local Python community.

At the end, we went up to the rooftop lounge, where we had a spectacular view of downtown LA. Some of us relaxed in the jacuzzi, while others hung out and chatted poolside.

Our next ladies' night is scheduled for May 6, 2011. If you'd like to come and get involved, please contact me at audreyr@cartwheelweb.com for more details.

By Audrey Roy