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PyGotham 2016 : Journey to the West II


This post is the second in the series of my Journey to the West. It describes my experience of attending PyGotham 2016 in New York City in July 2016. The conference started on 16th July, we (Sartaj and I) were at SciPy at Austin on 15th July, We took the flight on 16th morning and reached at the conference place in the afternoon. We had to skip sprints at SciPy. Interestingly the venue for the conference was United Nations Conference building in Manhattan. We stayed at Astoria in Queens at an Airbnb apartment. 
I missed a major portion of Day 1 as I reached late, though fortunately I was able to attend Keynote which was schedule at the end of the day, thanks to the organisers! for such smart scheduling, which makes a lot of sense. I met a lot people there, mostly from New York, from various domains. I also met James Powell there, whom I met at SciPy. as well, he introduced me to a lot of people at PyGotham. The keynote was given by Ewa Jodlowska, She is a Director of Operations for the Python Software Foundation. Ewa, talked about the role of PSF in financially supporting the Python community. I was glad to see the kind of transparency PSF have. She showed a lot of insights of the expenditure of Python Software Foundation. A lot of financial aid for the conferences I attend comes from PSF itself! Thanks to the people who run Python Software Foundation. 
I had my talk on Day 2, after lunch. The talk was scheduled for 25 minutes and the helper told me about various signals he would make based on the time left. I was afraid that I may take longer than time alloted, but I spoke like a house on fire and finished my talk in just about 15 minutes, it was the first time, when I was asked no question! It seems I need to work on my speaking speed. It was an important lesson to learn though. :P The Keynote for Day 2 was given by Katie Cunningham who is an excellent speaker or rather teacher! She talked about how a good teacher should look like. James Powell volunteered for being her student during the keynote. She taught the art of teaching by Empathy, by taking an example of teaching someone how to knit. It was one of the best keynotes I have ever seen. Later in the evening James took me to the Dinner with Katie and all the volunteers of PyGotham 2016. It was great to see their enthusiasm towards contributing back to the community. It was an amazing evening spent with those awesome people. I am looking forward to attend PyGotham again.

