Pycon UK 2014 Coventry

Our whole team went to the Python conference in Coventry, UK. It was a great weekend to meet like minded people, hear about other’s challenges and solutions and discuss current matters. Also we got a really nice personalised mug. 🙂

Venue

The venue was the TechnoCentre of  the University of Coventry which is a nice place for the event but I believe as community is getting bigger a new place needs to be found since it was already a bit crowded and the keynotes had to be streamed to one of the secondary rooms because the main hall just couldn’t hold that many people. This shows by the way how python becomes more and more popular. Awesome.

Talks

One of keynotes from Jessica McKellar about Python’s past, present and future pointed out some great things to focus on where python needs to improve and gave some directions. It’s incredible how PSF works together with teachers to help aspiring programmers to learn python in school. I believe they have a great vision about the future of python while at the same time also they are down to earth and see current issues.

There were quite a few interesting talk. I specifically enjoyed the “Matching fashion products with image similarity” by Eddie Bell (Lyst) which was about a very impressing solution for product deduplication based on images. A simple idea an great implementation.

The presentation about Juju (by Michael Foord & Simon Davy) which is in many aspects built around similar ideas like our current provisioning tool at Booking.com and definitely made me think on how to improve it further.

The “Python on the RaspberryPi” session was so inspiring that a colleague of mine went to buy one next day.

Finally what I would like to mention is the “Oompah.py ~ Big Data meets Big Brass” entertaining story about using footsteps data to generate the rythm of a city. You can find more info here.

What could have been better?

The sponsors were placed in the corridors and wasn’t really possible to stand at their desk because of the constant flow of participants. At the first day coffee and tea was only available at the kitchen where the doors proved to be a significant bottleneck during the breaks but it was fixed on the coming days by placing more desks with coffee and hot water in common areas.

Conclusion

We really enjoyed these 4 days. Always good to see how a certain technology is growing, where it goes and how the industry and individuals stand behind it and supports it. Big thanks to the organisers who made this happen!

It was also a great team bonding experience for us.

One more thing…

If you’re in Coventry don’t miss out the best steak in the city at the Artisan where service is great and people are friendly.