#python pytn2017

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Jon Banafato and TEDxNashville

Speaker Profile: Jon Banafato (@jonafato)

Jon Banafato is a Python developer and event organizer living in NYC. He would love to see you attend PyGotham.

Jon will be presenting “What’s in your pip toolbox?” at 11:00AM Saturday (2/4) in the Auditorium. pip is a great tool, but dependency management doesn't stop there. Jon will explore several tools that work with pip to make managing your dependencies easier, faster, and safer. They’ll cover generating dependencies in a better way, maintaining your requirements.txt for the long-term, and exploring existing Python environments. Afterward, you'll never want to pip freeze > requirements.txt again.

Sponsor Profile: TEDxNashville (@TEDxNashville)

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED Talks has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events in Nashville that bring people together to share a TEDTalks-like experience. Our event is called TEDxNashville, where x = independently organized TED Talks event in Nashville. At our TEDxNashville event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events in Nashville are self-organized.

[jasonamyers-blog]

PyTN Profiles: Adrienne Lowe and Meeple Mountain

Speaker Profile: Adrienne Lowe (@adriennefriend)

Adrienne Lowe is a former personal chef from Atlanta who documents her experience learning Python & teaching others to cook at Coding With Knives "Coding with Knives"). Her project marries her lifelong passion for culinary arts with her experience with programming and open source software. She has given talks at PyTennessee, DjangoCon Europe, DjangoCon US, PyCon, ELAConf, and her local Python user groups PyATL and PyLadiesATL, which she co-organizes. She is the organizer of Django Girls Atlanta. Adrienne works as Director of Advancement for the Django Software Foundation and is the Chair of Corporate Sponsorship for Write the Docs Conferences. She is the tech editor for the second edition of O'Reilly's Head First Python. Adrienne works as a Software Engineer at Emma, Inc.

Adrienne will be presenting “From Support to Engineering: Bridging the gap and growing together” at 11:00AM Saturday (2/4) in the Room 100. How to land your first engineering job when you’re self-taught is one of the biggest mysteries in tech, but it doesn’t have to be. Let’s explore an option that’s not often discussed, but that has great success: starting in customer support! Learn how the experience of providing technical support & training helps aspiring engineers develop powerful empathy, communication, & troubleshooting skills.

Sponsor Profile: Meeple Mountain (@meeplemountain)

The coordinators of your PyTN Saturday night gaming party! Meeple Mountain delivers board game reviews, board game news, editorial content and other articles relating to tabletop board games that are fun for adults and children alike. We also host a monthly board game night in Nashville with nearly 80 attendees.

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Jurnell Cockhren

Speaker Profile:  Jurnell Cockhren (@jcockhren)

Jurnell Cockhren is an avid open-source contributor and owner of Sophicware, a Nashville Tech Firm.

With over a decade of experience in creating and contributing to open source software, Jurnell has worked in various fields such as Neuroscience, Physics and Astronomy. It should be no surprise that when he graduated from the University of the South in 2007, it was with a double major in Math & Physics.

Jurnell’s professional progression allowed him to learn numerous programming languages such as ruby, perl, python, C/C++/C#, LISP and various SQL implementations. He now specializes in expressing cloud infrastructure as code and tackling the world of managing cloud-based services.

Jurnell will be presenting “Key to the City: A Thought Experiment on Writing Code to Induce Social Change.”

At this point in our human existence, we are witnesses to the problem set of Inequality in Society. Empathy drives us to want to recognize these bugs in our society. At times our personal biases, tribalism, individual circumstances and experiences distort the inequalities in this society from our view. What we know is that everyone is not afforded the same experiences, that this world treats everyone differently. Our empathy speaks, informing us that there are others living with persistent challenges crafted by history and by the actions of all citizens in aggregate. Those whose unfair treatment is left unaddressed by society serve as our verifiers for measuring how far we are from the goal post of equality in all social contexts. My hypothesis: There exists a surface area of influence that software development has on social justice that makes inequality in society solvable as an NP-Hard problem where any solutions to instances of inequality can be verified in polynomial time. Our hypothesis, empathy, source code, networking, resources and data, can help us build a model to minimize inequality. Our oppressed populations, act as the verifiers of our proposed solutions fully capable of responding in polynomial time.

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Jason Orendorff and MemPy

Speaker Profile:  Jason Orendorff (@jorendorff)

Jason Orendorff hacks on the Firefox JavaScript engine for Mozilla.

Jason will be presenting “A simple search engine in Python” at 2:00PM Sunday (2/5) in the Auditorium. Let's write a search engine from scratch in Python! We'll see how search engines work. We'll use Python dictionaries and lists in combination, work with text and binary files, even do a touch of math. And we'll learn what makes a data store fast.

Sponsor Profile: MemPy (@memphispython)

We want to promote the use of the Python programming language in the Mid-South. Our primary purpose is to share knowlege and to nurture a community of Python professionals and enthusiasts. Each meeting is open to the public and aims to provide useful content for both novices and professionals.

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Daniel Pritchett and TechFed Nashville

Speaker Profile: Daniel Pritchett 

Hailing from Memphis, Tennessee, Daniel is a longtime consulting developer with a fondness for dynamic languages and the Unix command line. Daniel's production experiences range from Rails eCommerce to Zebra thermal label printers to SAP data warehousing to .Net financial product sales and integrations. Please ask him about weight lifting, ukuleles, shell scripts, or dogs. Daniel works with ClearFunction in Germantown, TN.

Daniel will be presenting “Deploy an SSL-secured Flask microservice with a free certificate from Let's Encrypt” at 11:00AM Sunday (2/5) in the Room 300. In this session you'll see how you can quickly easily deploy your own free SSL certificate using the Caddy HTTP server. We'll be securing a simple web app — a dice-rolling microservice written in Python with the lightweight Flask web framework. If you've been curious about Let's Encrypt, Flask, or microservices, come on by!

Sponsor Profile: TechFed Nashville (@techfednash)

TechFed Nashville is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and growing the grassroots tech talent in Middle Tennessee, including software developers, designers, product managers, marketers, entrepreneurs and anyone else whose work involves building tech. Technologists can join for free to stay up-to-date on events and community happenings.

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Russ Anderson and FusionBox

Speaker Profile: Russ Anderson (@realrealruss)

Russ Anderson is a Front-End Developer at SimplyAgree, and has been developing client-side apps for about 5 years. He's worked with several applications and APIs built in Python (Django and Flask) and PHP. Regardless of the technology he loves building intuitive practical interfaces, and heavily commented pull requests. Also, he cries at sporting events sometimes.

Russ lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and two boys.

Russ will be presenting “"This Code Sucks" and other tales of developer hubris” at 2:00PM Saturday (2/4) in Room 200. I just inherited an old codebase. Ugh, this framework? These dependencies are way out of date. I am going to have to rewrite this whole thing.Wait, stop. Just because I didn’t write it, doesn’t mean it sucks. Let’s think about the right way to refactor.

Sponsor Profile: FusionBox (@fusionbox)

Fusionbox is a software development agency out of Denver, Colorado. We use Python and Django exclusively and we're committed to that community. 

We hope everyone has a great time and learns a lot at the conference!

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Neem Serra and Revolution Systems

Speaker Profile: Neem Serra (@TeamNeem)

Neem Serra is a Ruby and iOS developer in the St. Louis area. She teaches and mentors at a variety of non-profit organizations such as Software Carpentry and the Roy Clay Senior Tech Impact web development workshop. As the lead of the Google Women Techmakers group in St. Louis, she started the St. Louis Techies Project to highlight the diversity of technical people in St. Louis, and she started Technigals Anonymous to help women create a board of directors for their professional lives. Neem loves to bake, read comics, and host craft nights.

Neem will be presenting “Battling Unconscious Bias” at 2:00PM Saturday (2/4) in Room 100. Unconscious biases affect our perceptions, decisions, and interactions every day. How do we address biases if we don't know about them? Even the most enlightened person will learn about some biases they didn't know they had and how to counter them.

Sponsor Profile: Revolution Systems (@revsys)

We are perfor­mance tuners, Django and PostgreSQL experts, infrastructure and scaling architects.

From needing a little bit of expert help to embedding with your team for months we help get you over and through the obstacles you face.

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Keynoter Sophie Rapoport

Speaker Profile:  Sophie Rapoport 

Sophie Rapoport is a software engineer at Eventbrite, where she builds and maintains the software infrastructure for Eventbrite's financial systems. She studied math at MIT and dabbled in computer science while there. She spent a number of years teaching, then made her way back into programming. She spent the summer of 2015 at the Recurse Center in New York, an amazing programming community where she learned to love systems programming and became much less afraid of breaking her computer. She's been working at Eventbrite for a bit over a year. She also had her first child in July, and thinks a lot about how the challenges of operating system scheduling compare to the challenges of parenthood.

Sophie will be presenting “WTFork?

How can I influence the order in which the operating system runs processes? What happens when I create processes in a loop?  What happens when I spawn too many processes?

Operating systems can seem scary, but small-scale, low-risk programming experiments can teach us a lot about how they work!

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Jason Bynum and DerbyPy

Speaker Profile:  Jason Bynum (@jasonbynum)

Jason works on things at Emma

Jason will be presenting “Alexa Doesn't Even Have Any Skillz” at 3:00PM Saturday (2/4) in room 300. We’ll cover the following:

Overview of Alexa Skills

Build a sample skill in Python

Deploy skill to an AWS Lambda

Test skill in the Alexa Developer Portal

Test instructor skill live with an Echo Dot.

Sponsor Profile: DerbyPy (@DerbyPy)

A meetup in the Louisville area for anyone interested in the Python programming language. All skill levels are welcome. :)

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: John Berryman and Emma

Speaker Profile:  John Berryman (@JnBrymn)

John Berryman started out in the field of Aerospace Engineering but soon found that he was more interested in math and software than in satellites and aircraft. He soon made the leap into software development specializing in search and recommendation technologies. John is now a Senior Software Engineer at Eventbrite, where he is helping build Eventbrite's event discovery application. He also recently coauthored a tech book, Relevant Search, published by Manning. John does yet not own a personal yacht. See John's old blog posts here.

John will be presenting “Elasticsearch in an Afternoon” at 3:00PM Saturday (2/4) in room 200. This talk covers the ins and outs, ups and downs of Elasticsearch and search technology in general. Attendees will leave with another useful tool that can be applied to their own problems.

Sponsor Profile: Emma (@emmaemail)

Emma is a provider of best-in-class email marketing software and services that help organizations of all sizes get more from their marketing. Through tailored editions of its platform for businesses, franchises, retailers, universities and agencies, Emma aims to offer enterprise-level capabilities in a team-friendly experience that's simple and enjoyable. Key features include mobile-ready design templates, email automation, audience segmenting and dynamic content, plus integration with top CRM solutions, ecommerce platforms and social networks. Headquartered in Nashville, and with offices in Portland, New York and Melbourne, Emma powers the emails of more than 50,000 organizations worldwide, including Mario Batali, Bridgestone and Sylvan Learning Center. To learn more, visit myemma.com, follow Emma on Twitter or find us on Facebook.

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Cindy Sridharan and the Python Software Foundation

Speaker Profile:  Cindy Sridharan (@copyconstruct)

I'm a developer based out of San Francisco with a passion for Python, Go, Rust, operations, systems programming and infrastructure. I've been writing Python for the last 6 years. I've spoken at conferences like OSCON, PyBay, GothamGo as well as at local meetups in San Francisco, I organize the SF Python Twisted meetups.

Cindy will be presenting “The Python Deployment Albatross” at 3:00PM Saturday (2/4) in room 100. The Python packaging ecosystem has evolved a lot in the recent years, with better packaging formats and tools available to us that didn't exist 5 years ago. In fact, it's a bit of an embarrassment of riches compared to what we had 5 years ago.Distutils, setuptools, pip, virtualenv, eggs, wheels, pex ... there's absolutely no shortage of tools available to package and distribute Python artifacts. Furthermore, the advent of Docker in the recent years has brought a renewed focus on containerization and how Docker and other technologies in the ecosystem can be best leveraged to package and ship Python applications. Most Python deployments in the wild use pip with virtualenv or more recently Docker, but there appears to be a lot of misconceptions around swapping out one for the other. There's even talk about how Docker is well-suited to replace existing tools in the ecosystem like virtualenv.

Sponsor Profile: Python Software Foundation (@thepsf)

The mission of the Python Software Foundation is to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers. The majority of the PSF's work is focused on empowering and supporting people within the Python community. The PSF has active grant programs that support sprints, conferences, meetups, user groups, and Python development efforts all over the world. In addition, the PSF underwrites and runs PyCon US, the primary Python community conference. Being part of the PSF means being part of the Python community. Recently we changed the PSF to an open membership organization, so that everyone who uses and supports Python can join. To learn more, visit https://www.python.org/psf/membership.

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Randy Syring and Nashville Software School

Speaker Profile:  Randy Syring (@RandySyring)

Randy Syring is the Chief Executive Developer at Level 12, a software craftsmanship firm specializing in web and data(base) projects tailor made for their customers.

Randy has been involved in software development for over 15 years and has been working directly with customers to build custom software for 12 of those years. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics, a M.A. in Biblical Counseling, and has done work towards an MBA. He is passionate about the Python programming language, good development practices (Agile), automated testing, and engaging the next generation of developers.

He also has street creds:

Founder of and regular speaker at DerbyPy

Mentor for the Velocity Indiana accelerator program

Presenter at MoSSCon, PyOhio, PyTexas, Code PaLOUsa, and varied tech meetups in the Louisville area.

Creator and contributor to a number of open source projects that can be found on GitHub and Bitbucket.

Randy will be presenting “Continuous Integration For The Win!” at 3:00PM Saturday (2/4) in the auditorium. Learn how to increase the quality of your code and improve team productivity by leveraging a CI pipeline to run tests, lint, and measure code coverage. Then, integrate all that knowledge right into a GitHub pull request for easy team review & verification before deployment. Finally, discuss the cultural challenges that can be met by those that want to integrate CI into their team.

Sponsor Profile: Nashville Software School (@nashsoftware)

Nashville Software School is a career accelerator for people who want a career developing web sites, web applications and/or mobile apps. We offer an intensive six-month training program designed to qualify graduates for jobs as junior software developers. Many of our wonderful volunteers are current or formers members of the software school!

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: James Dozier and PyOhio

Speaker Profile:  James Dozier (@thinkcodemake)

James is a Data Analyst for RePublic Schools in Nashville, TN and a self-taught Python Developer. Before moving to Nashville this year, he ran a monthly programming meetup in Jackson, TN, where he shared his love of Python and other programming languages.

James will be presenting “Robot Fight: A Study of Genetic Algorithms” at 2:00PM Sunday (2/5) in room 200. Gronk is a master Goblin Robot Builder. His bot, ZapPow, is the undefeated champion of Robot Fight!, the ongoing Goblin robot tournament. (Goblins aren't great at naming things.) Where Gronk is a master builder, the Dorklings aren't that great. When they first build their bots, they just throw random pieces together. But they have a scheme, a way to work together to eventually overthrow Gronk.

Sponsor Profile: PyOhio (@PyOhio)

PyOhio is a free annual conference for Python programmers in and around Ohio and the entire Midwest. The Tenth Annual PyOhio will be July 29-30, 2017! They’re model, advice and guidance are the reason we are here.

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Pat Viafore and NashJS

Speaker Profile:  Pat Viafore (@patviaforever)

Pat is a Software Engineer at ADTRAN in Huntsville, Alabama. He's game for coding up anything, and always happy to learn something new. Professionally, he has worked in a few different fields, from coding up lightning mapping/detection software to building up the architecture for fiber optic telecommunication networks.

At home, you can find him trying to build board game engines or automating what's around him in Python. Automation has a special place in his heart (or maybe it's actually a way to be lazier), and he always is working to try to make things awesome around him.

Pat will be presenting “BDD To the Bone: Using Behave and Selenium to Test-Drive Web Applications” at 2:00PM Sunday (2/5) in room 100. Have you ever felt that unit tests just weren’t enough? It feels like something always still goes wrong when your customers start to use your application. All your unit tests pass, so what's going on? In this talk, we’re going to look how to use the behave library to explore behavior driven development as well as the selenium library to control your web application through a browser.

Sponsor Profile: NashJS (@nash_js)

A group for people interested in software development using Javascript. http://nashjs.org

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Trey Hunner and Smile Direct Club

Speaker Profile:  Trey Hunner (@treyhunner)

Trey Hunner is a Python trainer and technical consultant based in San Diego, CA. Trey co-organizes the San Diego Python and JavaScript meetups and has co-organized a number of volunteer-run programming workshops in Southern California.

Trey will be presenting a tutorial on “Readable Regular Expressions” at 1:00PM Sunday (2/5) in Room 300. What are regular expressions, what are they useful for, and why are they so hard to read? We'll learn what regular expressions are good for, how to make our own regular expressions, and how to make our regular expressions friendly and readable (yes it's possible, sort of).

Sponsor Profile: Smile Direct Club (@smiledirectclub)

SmileDirectClub is changing the world of orthodontics. We feel everyone deserves a beautiful smile, so we made it affordable! Join a team that is redefining an industry, and making a difference in people’s lives.

[pytennessee]

PyTN Profiles: Jason Greathouse and Stratasan

Speaker Profile:  Jason Greathouse (@usrbinjgreat)

During the week it's Linux, Docker, Cloud Infrastructure and Automate All The Things!

Fun Facts:

Linux Operations since Kernel 2.0.36

Cloud and Container Hipster (Solaris Zones, Virtualization and Horizontal Scaling - Before it was cool!)

I did not get rich in the dot-com boom.

Lots of Datacenter experience, but love the fact I should never have to rackmount a server again.

Companies I have worked for:

Mp3.com

Intuit

Cingular Wireless/AT&T

Moontoast

LeanKit

On the weekends, Knight, Motorcycles and Making stuff

Jason will be presenting “Speedy Delivery - Docker based Application Deployment Pipeline” at 1:00PM Sunday (2/5) in Room 200. How LeanKit uses Docker to build, test, deploy, promote and sanely manage our Microservices. Live demo/walkthrough of our application pipeline and tools we use.

Sponsor Profile: Stratasan (@stratasan)

Their software and services provide market intelligence to hospitals and health systems, equipping them to make better decisions and maximize strategic growth.