Django ORM Predicates & Anatomy of Open edX

Talk #1 - Django ORM Predicates

Django has a flexible and easy to use system for building ORM predicates. When evaluated, these get translated into SQL queries. Unfortunately, this frequently means translating logic from django ORM into python list comprehensions, or dealing with slow database roundtrips to maintain DRY business logic.

This talk explores some OSS development I did on the django-predicate library, which allows seamlessly switching between in-memory evaluation and querying the database. I'll discuss some of the oddities of how Django ORM queries are executed and discuss some worked examples of using in-memory predicate evaluation to make more flexible user interfaces and backend code here at Counsyl.

Lucas's Bio:

Lucas is a senior software engineer on the genomics team at Counsyl. He has been doing web development with Django for 4 years at Counsyl, and has an MS in mathematics from UIUC. Outside of Django, his interests include logic programming, software testing and formal languages.

Talk #2 - Anatomy of Open edX: a modern online learning platform serving over 22 million users

You may have heard of edX.org, the MOOC site created by Harvard and MIT, but did you know that the software powering this site is open source and written in Python? We’ll do a technical deep dive and explore how this software is built in a scalable way to serve millions of concurrent learners, and also show you how you can create your own Open edX site to deliver online courses at scale.

Nate's Bio:

Nate's first exposure to Python was in 2003 when he began using the Plone CMS, which is based on Zope. This ignited a lifelong love affair with Python. In 2004, he founded Jazkarta, a Boston-based web consultancy to build websites for organizations like Harvard, Oxfam and Smithsonian. Back when PaaS’es were sexy, he founded DjangoZoom to make it easy to get your Django apps running in the cloud. Now he's leading the 20 person distributed team at Appsembler, whose mission is to empower trainers and educators to create delightful online learning experiences.

Schedule:

6:00pm - Check in and socialize. There will be food and drinks provided by Counsyl!

6:30pm - Lightning Talks (if there are any)

6:45pm - Lucas's Talk

7:15pm - Nate's Talk

8:00pm - Time to head home!

Notes:

• Okta is generously providing us with their venue space. Let's make sure we treat it with respect and clean up after ourselves.