Tech talks and PyCon Startup Row Pitches

On 3/11, experience a 'local edition' PyCon and help select one deserving startup to go to PyCon Montreal 2015. Pizza and Beer provided by our generous sponsor Yelp!

Melanie Warrick will give a lightning talk on How to Get Started with Machine Learning.

Christine Spang will use real-world examples and show you strategies for deciding when and where to use an ORM, when to be cautious, and how to tell that you're doing the right thing.

Then 6 start ups using Python in their stack will pitch their company to you and a panel of judges. One of them will win a FREE EXPO BOOTH at Startup Row (https://us.pycon.org/2015/events/startup_row/) in PyCon Montreal 2015 and 2 of their company representatives will get to attend the conference.

Agenda:

6:00p - Check-in and mingle, with Pizza and Beer provided by our generous sponsor Yelp!

7:00p - Welcome

7:05p - Lightning Talk

7:15p - Main Talk & Q&A

7:45p - Announcements while Startup row panel set up

7:50p - Startup Row Pitches and Q&A

9:00p - More mingling

9:30p - Doors close

Main Speaker's Bio:

Christine Spang went to MIT, dropped out of an operating systems graduate program to be an early engineer at Ksplice, and most recently cofounded Inbox, a startup building the next-generation email platform. When she's not building rock-solid infrastructure for the Internet or speaking around the world at conferences like DebConf and PyCon, rumour has it she can be found on cliff walls, remote trails, and contact improv dance floors. She lives in Oakland, California.

Abstract:

Every web framework out there comes with an ORM, but should you actually use it? An ORM makes it super easy to get up and running really quickly, but maintainers of growing database-backed applications almost always run into performance problems down the road.

When this happens, what do you do? This talk's goal is to show you what actually happens under the hood when you make a query in an ORM like SQLAlchemy, and, by giving you the power to de-mask which SQL queries are being executed, build your intuition for when to use caution with an ORM. Sometimes, like in schema migrations, you may even want to just hand-craft the raw SQL yourself.

This talk is based off of real-world examples learned while building Inbox (https://github.com/inboxapp/inbox), which is available free and open source, so you'll be able to take a look at the results of these lessons and how the codebase has evolved to become more performant.

Companies pitching for a booth on Startup Row at PyCon:

Dendrio is a video distribution network that leverages the peer to peer WebRTC protocol to transfer website content between browsers. Our technology is geared towards streaming video and we support a multitude of different video formats and players. Dendrio makes downloads faster for users without an installation overhead for content owners.

DjaoDjin is an open source Software-as-a-Service framework. It implements 80% of the code required to run a subscription business online so you only have to focus on the 20% that makes your product so unique. We productized it as an HTTP firewall for people that want to focus on their software, not the accounting code to monetize it.

MonkeyLearn is a SaaS cloud platform that allows every company to use machine learning to extract relevant data from unstructured text.

Roomstorm is a B2B marketplace for hotel rooms. WalkSource helps hotels when overbooked or airlines when a flight is cancelled to find rooms for displaced customers quickly.

Vitruvian Science provides deep learning as a service for developers to make their applications smarter. We are developing an easy to use, 'drag-and-drop' interface so that anyone can get up and running quickly with the same technologies that Google and Facebook use on a daily basis.

Zana helps startups fail less with the go-to guide for Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurship success. Users access advice from experts and innovators on demand with just a click of the mouse. Zana includes 10-step video lessons, resource lists, and community forums for entrepreneurs all over the world.

Please take note of the important check-in details at Yelp

1. Doors open at 6:00pm to allow enough time for the check-in process. Before 6:00pm, please wait outside without blocking the building entrance. Wait list will be admitted beginning at 6:45pm. Doors close at 7:30pm.

2. Please update the name on your account to reflect your FIRST NAME and LAST NAME. Yelp security will be checking IDs downstairs. If your name on Meetup.com is not the name on your ID, then please enter your full name here (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1d_oPoxjcAQzOJqozHIzVuFNnOYi7CDrzouywq4U9SUo/edit).

3. Since alcohol will be served at the event, we ask that any underage attendees RSVP directly to the meet up host.

4. Waiting list folks will be allowed into the event AFTER we admit all confirmed attendees.

Yelp is generously providing food, drinks, and beer in addition to their venue space.