PyCon preview: The Exceptions We Don't Catch in Technical Conversations

We write try/except blocks. We write unit tests. We handle edge cases. But what about the exceptions we throw at each other in technical conversations? Emin Martinian is here to debug that.

Join us for a preview and rehearsal of Emin's upcoming PyCon US 2026 talk, "The Exceptions We Don't Catch in Technical Conversations". He digs into the sociological bugs hiding in our supposedly objective feedback, our technically correct but totally unconvincing arguments, and our well-meaning teams that somehow end up talking past each other.

Emin opens with a provocation from the book Peopleware: "The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological." Emin will walk though a number of insidious patterns: Hidden judgments! Defensive triggers! Lack of ownership! It's communication failures all the way down, and it's going to be a great time.

Come ready to watch a great talk, eat some pizza 🍕, and give Emin your sharpest (and kindest) feedback to help him shine at PyCon.

Doors open at 6:00 PM: come hang, grab a slice, mingle, say hi! Talk starts at 7:00 PM. We won't be recording, but the official PyCon video will be up after the conference.

For more details of the talk, see the full abstract: https://us.pycon.org/2026/schedule/presentation/40/