Best of PyCon U.S. 2021 + 🌼 Summer Social 🌼

Hello PyLadies!

PyCon U.S. 2021 was last month, and for those of you who didn’t get to go (and for those who’d like to relive the experience) we’re hosting a special event where we air two amazing talks from the conference. We'll even have both speakers do a live Q&A at our event, so you can get your questions answered!

But there's more!

We’re also having our first social event in over a year! 🥳

As we all get ready to enjoy summer now that Ontario is re-opening, we missed our fellow PyLadies. And we weren’t going to let the restrictions stop us. So our social is going virtual! We’ll be using the fun Kumospace platform to host this event! And PyLadies from around the world are invited too. 🌍

🗓 AGENDA
• 6:00: The event space opens. Move around and explore! Strike up a conversation with someone near you!
• 6:15: Welcome
• 6:20: Talk #1: Oops! I Became an Open Source Maintainer! 😱
• 6:45: Live Q&A with Mariatta
• 6:55: Talk #2: Narrative-focused video games development with Ren'Py, an open source engine
• 7:20: Live Q&A with Susan
• 7:30: 🌞🌻 Social 🌻🌞

🎙 TALKS

Talk #1: Mariatta Wijaya: Oops! I Became an Open Source Maintainer! 😱

About the talk: I consider myself relatively new to the open source world; my first open source contribution was in 2016. Since then, I’ve continued to actively contribute to open source and specifically to core Python and Python libraries. Pretty soon I found myself being given commit rights to other people’s open source projects. It’s been quite a journey. Being a new open source contributor has its own challenges, and being a new open source maintainer brings another set of unique challenges. In this talk, I will share my journey and the things I’ve learned along the way, and some advice for other aspiring open source maintainers and contributors.

About Mariatta: Mariatta is a Python Core Developer, Staff Software Engineer at Uplight, and the Vancouver PyLadies co-organizer, and one of the founding members of the PyCascades conference. She moved to Canada almost two decades ago, and now lives in Vancouver with her husband and two children. In her free time, she contributes to open source, builds GitHub bots, and fixes typos.

Talk #2: Susan Shu Chang: Narrative-focused video games development with Ren'Py, an open source engine

About the talk: The game engine, Ren'Py, is an open source engine used to make countless interactive fiction games, also known as visual novels (VNs). The talk will dig into its source code covering how it takes care of OS level stuff for game developers, memory optimization, cross platform game saves, etc. The audience will understand the independent gaming industry and how they can use Python to break into the industry, as I share my journey. There will also be components of source code walkthrough, but will be more of an overview than a step by step tutorial.

About Susan: Susan is an independent game developer at Quill Game Studios. In the day time she is a Principal data scientist in fintech. She works with Python for both!

🤔 What is Kumospace?

Kumospace is a “spatial audio” in-browser platform that simulates real-life movement and mingling. Just like you would in real life, you’ll enter an event space, and can only hear the people close to you. You may find yourself “standing” next to other people, and can start a conversation with whoever’s around you. You can also move around the space, exploring fun features and overhearing different conversations happening around you. If a conversation sounds interesting, just move closer, and you’re now part of the group!

You will need a name and email to enter the space, and will have to enable your camera and microphone so that other attendees can see and hear you.

Your data is encrypted in transit and Kumospace does not record any video. For more, see https://help.kumospace.com/common-data-privacy-questions