Talk Night: Engineer's choice

Join us for an evening of talks, food, and refreshments!

The State of Python in Africa
Lorena Mesa
10 minutes

Abstract: Lorena recently returned from the inaugural PyCon Africa held in Accra Ghana. Besides being the first pan-African Python conference, Africa is exploding in Python talent. In West Africa alone, Nigeria at approximately 200 million people has a population with 52% less than 15 and is aimed to create, "1 million new AI jobs". How will Python factor into this mission? What does Python look like in the African community? How can we better support our African Pythonistas? Let's chat about Python in Africa!

Bio: Political scientist turned coder, Lorena Mesa is a data engineer on GitHub's software intelligence systems team, Director and Vice-Chair, Elect on the Python Software Foundation, and PyLadies Chicago co-organizer. Lorena's time at Obama for America and her subsequent graduate research required her to learn how to transform messy, incomplete data into intelligible analysis on topics like predicting Latinx voter behavior. It's this unique background in research and applied mathematics that drove Lorena to pursue a career in engineering and data science. One part activist, one part Star Wars fanatic, and another part Trekkie, Lorena abides by the motto to "live long and prosper".
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Efficient Computing Overnight: Dask and Numba
By Ani Krishnan
30 mintues

Abstract: Dask and Numba are libraries that significantly enhance the performance of computation within the python ecosystem. This talk will explore the implemention and extensibility of the libraries by exploring a large set of data.

Bio: Anirrudh Krishnan is currently a Scientific Software Engineer at Quansight, and a Free and Open Source Software Advocate. Previously, he was a Data Scientist at Strata Decision Technology. He earned degrees in Physics and Computer Science from Loyola University Chicago.
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Busy Beaver: Idea to Execution
By Aly Sivji
30 minutes

Abstract: The Chicago Python Users Group (ChiPy) is one of the largest tech-focused communities in the United States. We use Slack to continue conversations and develop relationships in-between our group's weekly events. ChiPy developed an open-source community engagement Slack bot, codename: Busy Beaver, that integrates with various third-party APIs to better serve members of our hyperlocal, niche workspace. Users can find information about upcoming events; view feeds from our social media channels; and gain insights into other members' side projects. An open-source community has developed around Busy Beaver with developers from around the world making contributions to our Slack integration. This talk will introduce Busy Beaver; dig into architecture and code; examine the future roadmap of the project; and discuss the challenges of building a project in public.

Bio: Aly Sivji is a Canadian expat living in Chicago. By day, he builds backend systems at Numerator. By night, he is a co-organizer of the Chicago Python Users Group (ChiPy). Aly is an active participant in ChiPy’s Mentorship Program and he loves helping intermediate developers become experts. Outside of Python, Aly enjoys cycling, reading, and rewatching old TV shows.