Python 1st Unconference was a success
Vicky Lee
Hi All,
The 1st Python Unconference in UCD on Saturday was a success. 10 people turned up for it (I expected between 5-15 people) and we didn't finish till 6pm!
Special thanks to:-
- UCD, for letting us use their fantastic lab for the Unconference (we didn't need the other 2 rooms after all)
- Sean Murphy, who helped organised and setting up the rooms (and pointing out the important location of the nearest cafe)
- Brian Brazil, who got us in contact with Sean re. room for our Unconference
~~ http://irishbornchinese.com ~~
~~ http://www.python.ie ~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tim Kersten
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Sean Murphy
We said we might provide some small comment on the day
so others on the list could learn a little abt what went on and
what value there was. Here are some of my thoughts.
The day had a simple structure: we started by drawing up
some list of topics that people were interested in
discussing - this was a v open process and we ended up
consolidating the list a little into separate topcis. Then we
went through each of these topics pretty much one by one,
moving on to the next when we felt we had exhausted
discussion on a topic.
From my pov, the day was of great value - I learnt lots from
the others; indeed, I was not able to absorb it all. It's prob
fair to note that some of the guys were great contributors and
had a lot of knowledge and experience to share - I had little
to share, to be honest.
I did think that there might be more emphasis on playing
with stuff, rather than discussion; however, that was prob
my misunderstanding. One thing that I thought did not happen
so much was argument, which is always good for showing
pluses and minuses of technologies/solutions. I don't know
how to make this happen. Another point is that it was hard to
point at any concrete outputs or conclusions - perhaps that's
not the point, but it does make me feel a little uneasy - perhaps
I just need to relax a bit!
Overall, I had a v enjoyable day and very much hope to
attend the next.
Thanks to Vicky, Mike and Brian for having the initiative to
give this a go.
BR,
Seán.
On Feb 7, 10:08 pm, Vicky Lee <why...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All, The 1st Python Unconference in UCD on Saturday was a success. 10
> people turned up for it (I expected between 5-15 people) and we didn't
> finish till 6pm! Special thanks to:-
>
> - UCD, for letting us use their fantastic lab for the Unconference (we
> didn't need the other 2 rooms after all)
> - Sean Murphy, who helped organised and setting up the rooms (and
> pointing out the important location of the nearest cafe)
> - Brian Brazil, who got us in contact with Sean re. room for our
> Unconference
>
> And finally, big shout out to the folks who turned up to make our first
> Unconference work.
>
> And here is an anonymous feedback form (even if you didn't attend the
> unconference) on how we can improve the next Python Unconference event.http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dC0xWElFeFNLenV...
>
> Much was discussed about that day, I've created a google page giving very
> brief highlights of what was discussed. The page is open for people who
> attended to add their own notes to the relevant sections.http://groups.google.com/group/pythonireland/web/python-irelands-1st-...
>
> Cheers,
>
> /// Vicky
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> ~~http://irishbornchinese.com ~~
kevin gill
I really enjoyed the unconference. It was great to meet everyone and to
have six hours of Python, Python related and completely unrelated stuff.
Thanks to Vicky, Mick, Sean and Brian for organising it.
Here is some feedback for the list.
The venue
---------
The venue was brilliant. UCD had a huge room. We didn't need to split into
other rooms. Thanks for organising that Sean.
The unconference format
------------------------
The format worked really well. There was lots of discussion and everyone
contributed.
The start was a little awkward. We were putting topics up on the board,
but my mind was initially on big topics e.g. IDEs. However, I took the
lead from some other people and posted more specific questions instead -
what I really wanted to know e.g. 'HTML5 - is anyone using it?'.
The day involved long amicable discussions, mostly just information
sharing e.g. on the no-sql section 'who has used mdb, bigtable, mongo,
zodb or whatever'. On the IDEs which is preferred 'eclipse, vim, textmate
etc'. We were shared experience and interest. None of us prepared a topic,
so the conversations were very balanced.
Vicky listed the topics discussed on the python.ie website. See her post
for comprehensive coverage.
For me, the value of the unconference is in the ideas picked up. Below are
some of the things that I took away. They will not be meaningful to you
and it is not a summary of the discussion. I am including them to
highlight the diversity of the discussion. I am sure that everyone came
away with their own points.
Finally, I want to highlight that an output of these sessions is a
motivation to explore other things (preferably Python related). Day to day
I keep very focussed, and avoid the distraction of new technologies. These
events are great way to look around and see where everyone else is.
Regards,
Kevin
-----------------------------------------
Some things I learnt or found interesting
* no-sql / graph dbs
- I wasn't in the market for one, but redis looks
interesting for storing my session data.
- Michael explained that he migrated from ZODB to mongo
because it was much easier index with mongo.
- Deployments and the Cloud were covered in this session.
(I started today to create an AWS replica of my server)
* Clojure
- I didn't go to Kevins tutorial. The information I
got highlighted the fact that it doesn't work in my
thread-per-session model.
* Web related stuff and HTML 5
- There is a continuum of architectures of html client server,
from html only, to javascript applications with very thin server.
My code is in a very standard place of HTML with improvements via
jquery. This is a popular architecture.
- Application and document models are different. - Kevin
- Alan challenged my prejudices against javascript, and I will
look more closely at javascript application development tools
such as ExtJS.
- I was relieved to find that HTML5 is something that people have
still to work out, rather than I being alone.
- Mick demo'ed an offline app for HTML 5 on the iPhone. Jquery
documentation. I was not familiar with the concept.
- No one has used the HTML Canvas feature yet, but we all believe
it is important.
- Mick gave some pointers for video tag. I will use that for the
iPad. Will look at vimeo to lift code.
- We discussed other interesting HTML5 stuff - offline storage,
web sockets - these are bi-directional, worker threads,
webgl
* IDEs and Tools
- Nobody has got a super-ide that I should switch to immediately.
- I will checkout pyCharm for refactoring
- buildbot is widely used for testing.
- Trunk versus branch - no single approach
* Performance
- I should start using named tuples instead of dicts in a number
of my standard idioms. The will work the same and apparently
have less overhead.
- Only unladen swallow looks likely to deliver improvements
in the near future.
> Hi All, The 1st Python Unconference in UCD on Saturday was a success. 10
> people turned up for it (I expected between 5-15 people) and we didn't
> finish till 6pm! Special thanks to:-
>
> - UCD, for letting us use their fantastic lab for the Unconference (we
> didn't need the other 2 rooms after all)
> - Sean Murphy, who helped organised and setting up the rooms (and
> pointing out the important location of the nearest cafe)
> - Brian Brazil, who got us in contact with Sean re. room for our
> Unconference
>
> And finally, big shout out to the folks who turned up to make our first
> Unconference work.
>
> And here is an anonymous feedback form (even if you didn't attend the
> unconference) on how we can improve the next Python Unconference event.
> http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dC0xWElFeFNLenVfSFpZVVVpTDFjOUE6MA
>
>
> Much was discussed about that day, I've created a google page giving very
> brief highlights of what was discussed. The page is open for people who
> attended to add their own notes to the relevant sections.
> http://groups.google.com/group/pythonireland/web/python-irelands-1st-unconference-2010
>
> Cheers,
>
> /// Vicky
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> ~~ http://irishbornchinese.com ~~
> ~~ http://www.python.ie ~~
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
David Wilson
>
> * Performance
> - I should start using named tuples instead of dicts in a number
> of my standard idioms. The will work the same and apparently
> have less overhead.
Just wanted to note that dictionaries are almost certainly faster to
create, and possibly faster to access. The main advantage of
namedtuples is that they use __slots__, which (always?) results in
lower memory usage, but (based on some measurements I did a while ago)
are generally slower to access then attribute/item lookup.
kevin gill
>> � � � - I should start using named tuples instead of dicts in a number
>> � � � � of my standard idioms. The will work the same and apparently
>> � � � � have less overhead.
>
> create, and possibly faster to access. The main advantage of
> namedtuples is that they use __slots__, which (always?) results in
> lower memory usage, but (based on some measurements I did a while ago)
> are generally slower to access then attribute/item lookup.
>
Thanks for the clarification. Not for the high performance code sections
then.
>
>> � � � - Only unladen swallow looks likely to deliver improvements
Daniel Kersten
I see there was some things I'm interested in discussed (Clojure,
HTML5, NoSQL).. pity I couldn't make it. Perhaps next time!
--
Daniel Kersten.
Leveraging dynamic paradigms since the synergies of 1985.