Come on in, the Water’s Fine: Making Python More Approachable

Speaker 1: Okay, okay, cool, cool, cool.

Speaker 2: It's time. To welcome you to the very first talk of Django Con twenty twenty-two. Welcome

Speaker 1: And we hope it's going to be a fun one because uh we have this super awesome swimming themed keynote brought to you by yours truly.

Speaker 2: These two.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And you might be wondering, do I want to go to talks the rest of the day? I don't know. Is there anything I want to learn? I don't know. Do I even like people 's faces and their noise holes anymore. It's been a while.

Speaker 1: Luckily you only see half of it though.

Speaker 2: That's true. There we go. So But at least at the very least we can do is give you a heads up for what you're gonna see right now.

Speaker 1: So the first thing is awesome stuff because I mean they let us get on stage and talk, which I mean Might be crazy stuff, but also awesome stuff.

Speaker 2: Yes, and feel free to clap whenever you hear something awesome Like a very big pause. There we go.

Speaker 1: Didn't even have to prompt you. I love it.

Speaker 2: I know. I love this low bar. That's what works for me. And then we're gonna do scary stuff. But yes, someone likes scary stuff. That's great. But there's gonna be fun drawing, so it's fine. Just you know.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And by the way, just a c quick content warning, uh we're gonna be talking about the history of swimming as well, which often comes with a little bit of death. If that's something that you're not comfortable with, we wanted to make sure you have plenty of time to take quickly that out. And then we're going to talk about some things that matter because I mean yeah, awesome, less awesome, but also important. This QR code here is going to take you to a Twitter thread where we have some amazing friends. that are going to be sending all of the resources that we're gonna talk about, all of our references, all the things that we encourage you to go and do some more, you know, digging on your own, uh whether it's about animals or swimming and other things. Oops, I said animals. What else is happening?

Speaker 2: What? We're gonna have cute pictures. I know, because why not? And when we get into the some of your some of the heavier stuff, we're gonna try to soften the blow with a little something rather. So, you know, hang on. Oh, like look

Speaker 1: like this little critter. Hey, look look at this one. This is a axolotl and I have a a really awesome fact about axolotl. Um did you know that they are one of the first like species that can stop their like growth adaptation and just start living from there. Like a full grown axolotl actually looks more like a salamander instead of this little gild frilly thing. But because they spent most of their time in the water, they just say, you know what, I'm I'm good like this. Uh you can also find these in our neighbors to the south in Mexico. And there's actually like this one little spot where all of them in the wild still live So yeah, you're gonna get more news like that from me because more than Python, I love learning things about all the little awesome animals out there.

Speaker 2: This is true. It's the real truth. So um the last thing we want to talk about, I think, is the official guide to being nice. We want to ensure that everyone has fun in our big Python pool. And to kind of think about what it might be for ourselves to be lifeguards of that community. So like Jay said, we've done a lot of research. that you can see on Twitter. And so we're going to have all that research about where we are now and where we might want to be in the future. So You also might be wondering, who are we? I mean, we got a little bit of an intro, so you know, but just to revisit in case you forgot, who is that? Who is Jay? Who are you?

Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm Jay Miller. I am a senior cloud advocate at Microsoft. I'm also the host of the Python Community News, which is actually a community sponsor for DjangoCon this year. I'm super happy to do that. Oh, thank you. And I mean the one thing I would say most people need to know about me is like I love, you know, building communities, talking about them, learning from other people, learning from people in a diverse group. What about you? Uh

Speaker 2: I'm Melanie, Melanie Arbor. I am a software developer at O'Reilly Media, where I do a lot of Django-y stuff with cool people. Um before that I made a little cute service called FiveUp that sends happy texts. Shocker, I like happy things. Um, and I also like fitting and crochet and buying kitchen gadgets even though I almost cut part of my thingy off the other day and I'm still gonna keep buying them. Just try to stop me So Jay and I have a lot in common, which you can tell by looking at us.

Speaker 1: Yes, we have ears, mouth, nose. I'm sorry, I have a four-year-old, so we do a lot of these songs. But uh I mean you can also kind of look at us too and tell we're a little different. But yeah, we still have a we do have a lot in common. Like we're both community taught. Um, you know, I learned all of my stuff from people, some of the people I see in this room, so that's awesome. In fact, this person next to me was the first person to show me Django.

Speaker 2: So fun.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah We um you're very good at clapping, I'm excited. So we both have kind of challenging brains. Um I have major depressive disorder, um I have chronic migraine, uh I also have epilepsy, but that's really the least of my problems. actually.

Speaker 1: We both have anxiety, so the more you clap, the happier we'll feel. Uh there we go. I love it. I'm I'm I'm getting I'm feeling it right now. Uh also I have ADHD and PTSD from serving in the Marine Corps.

Speaker 2: So we're also like we've been talking about a product of the San Diego Python community. And because we receive that stuff, that's kind of why we're we're real invested in community as well. Well.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So there you go. That's us. And now you can trust us. So here we go.

Speaker 1: I I mean you can kinda trust us. Like we're we're like most people here, we have a few blind spots, and I don't just mean like in our car windows. Like Yeah, it's kind of weird.

Speaker 2: We don't know what it's like to be a woman of color in tech.

Speaker 1: We don't know what it's like to be not black or white. Or to be a part of the LGBTQIA plus community.

Speaker 2: Yep, exactly. We don't know what tech is like uh outside of the United States, um, and we don't know what it's like to have disabilities outside of our own.

Speaker 1: And I don't know what it's like to be a cisgendered white man.

Speaker 2: Me neither. Yep. So this is us talking about our experiences in tech with the good stuff and the bad stuff and the stuff that could be better.

Speaker 1: Alright, now we can go. Okay, let's go.

Speaker 2: Oh, that's the wrong button. Buttons are hard.

Speaker 1: So like you saw the title, you know, jump on in the water's fine. And when we talk about water, I mean we mean w water because we're in San Diego, right? Even though neither one of us are really that much of a fan of water. But we also kind of mean tech as well because I don't know if you've ever jumped in water for the first time or if you can remember that moment. It was super scary. Like jumping in, you're like, whoa, bad things might happen in there, but also fun things might happen in there. And that's what we're talking about when we go into like, you know, the water is fine. Tech is fine. Python is fine. Django is fine. But we also have to recognize that for those people jumping in for the first time, it's probably a little scary too.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so um raise your hand really quick if you were a little bit nervous about getting into tech. had maybe a hard time, some of you. Yeah, exactly. Lots of you in the room actually. Um and sometimes, yeah, we have some anxiety around that and feel like maybe we don't belong if you're raising your hand at home. I see you. I don't can't see that far. But yes.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, we can advance. So for all of you that were raising your hands here and at home or nodding your heads about feeling nervous. So that is one group of people that we want to speak to and about today.

Speaker 1: And the other group are the people that are already in the water. You know, you're sitting on a floaty, you've got a Mai Tai. And you're just like living the dream, whatever that means. Um, you know, no matter where you're at in this journey, whether you've been in the industry for, you know, two days, two years, twenty years. You know, we hope that there's going to be something that you can pull from this talk.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. So you may have been thinking to yourselves, Jay and Melanie, how did you come up with this amazing analogy of swimming and tech? How did you do it? How did we do it?

Speaker 1: I mean I went to uh Waterworld. I'm kidding now. We we were sitting down and talking about this a lot and and really we were just amazed at how much the Python community has grown. grown in the last like few years. Even like I've only been in the Python community about seven or eight years now. And like you just see like this like exponential growth and the number of people that have gotten into the water and it it kind of looks like this swimming pool or this like lazy pool in China um right now where there's a lot of people in there.

Speaker 2: Yes. Additionally, we are so so smart. And if you're wondering if we will use this analogy very extensively, we will. You're welcome. Really, really extensively. A lot of it. Here we go. No.

Speaker 1: But we also realized that they have so much in common and I kind of talked about this earlier, that like first time jumping in, uh when I was in the Marine Corps, one of the things that we had to do was a thirty foot jump into the water. So like hey, this is it's to simulate you're in a helicopter, helicopter bad things are happening. You got to get into the water right now. Super scary. Same thing about getting into tech. The first time I ever showed somebody my code Some of the people in here super scared my voice was like seven notes higher and I was like this and I didn't know what was gonna do But after I did it and I got the warm welcome and you know, even when I jumped into that water, you had this rush. And that was that same rush that I still get to this day when I'm solving like a super complex problem that I'm trying to figure out. And I've had to talk to

Speaker 1: people in this room. I've had to talk to people online and figure out like, how am I going to do this? And once I figure it out, I'm like, that was awesome. I want to do it again. And yeah, like Doing backflips off the high dive and stuff like that. Super scary. You do it. Now you can't stop doing it. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: And even if you're not into the 30-foot jumping of the things like no thank you hard pass for me um tech is still fun it's like solving puzzles and just kind of splashing around like I I'm seeing some nodding out there because it is fun and you have those little aha moments and those little like oh that was rad so very similar see and also Additionally, after that fun, we all know that tech and swimming can be, well, we'll teach you about the swimming part if you don't already know, but tech can be life-changing. Yeah.

Speaker 1: I mean of course we know that like swimming and anaerobic exercises and things are like super good for your health and they you know they keep you healthy, keep you strong. But did you know that the CDC says that swimming actually is the best exercise anaerobically for people who have chronic pain issues or joint issues? Um a little bit easier on you and allows you to still live that healthy life.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. And Tech can also be good for your brain. There was a study of adults 70 and older, and they found that if you if they engaged in things like games and crafts and computer use and social activities, it actually had a protective effect against a like a lower risk of mild cognitive impairment.

Speaker 1: And I mean, some of us in here are professionals, so we can't afford that pay thing. You know, we say that money can't buy happiness, but uh I mean it kind of does a little bit. Uh you know, research has showed that among all of the industries, tech is actually one of the highest paying And unlike some of the other industries around it, like the medical field and the legal field, it actually requires the least amount of you know secondary education. So super accessible way to create life-changing moments for people and their families.

Speaker 2: And there's also some studies around income satiation. Which is the point where you're kind of like, okay, I can chill out. I feel good. I can take care of myself. I have food on the table, that sort of thing. And it's about $95 ,000, which uh in the United States that is, which is very close to an average tech salary. Um I listened to this podcast recently with the person who's on the screen, the Bitwise uh co-founder Irma Olwyn, and she was talking about that moment where she was like, check is really going to change my life. And it was when she didn't have to count the change to give the pizza delivery guy their tip. Um, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about pizza tip money.

Speaker 2: It's kind of a big deal. So you can see they're basically the same thing, right? We just saw that. Jay and Melanie's analogy for the win. So Now

Speaker 1: I'm gonna break it up with a fun fact. This little critter right here is a green sea turtle. And obviously we know that sea turtles are some of like the you know they live a long time, but did you know they're also like Super super chill. Like this critter can sit underwater for up to five hours. And the way that he does it is he actually just lowers his heart rate down to where it like beats once every eight minutes. And that's what I'm trying to do now because there's a lot of people here. So this was more a reminder to myself, yo, just just be chill. You got this.

Speaker 2: You gotta turtle it out, man. So but Not everything that tech and swimming have in common is awesome. So the first thing we're going to talk about is actually just availability, where tech is available and where swimming is available.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're gonna talk about this idea of like a country club, and I'm sure a lot of people have seen these, these private clubs that have fancy swimming pools and like the food and stuff. Did you know that a lot of these actually came into existence after the Civil Rights Act were were passed? And what they wanted to do is they wanted to create a space that could still be segregated without breaking the law. And that's where when all the suburbs started popping up, all the country clubs started going out around them. And what we saw was after all that happened. Basically everyone just kind of kept the public pools as they were. They didn't keep updating them and things and things started to get really bad for people. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: So and we can see something like the influence of this on tech as well, just where tech is available. And we can see it in our own community. Now the PyCon has a pretty good track record of making sure that we are in places where there are minorities. So on this little graphic, we've given a thumbs up. to places where the municipality is under 65 % white according to census data. So you can see Santa Clara, Atlanta, Chicago, DC doing pretty good. gets a little rocky after twenty thirteen. So

Speaker 1: Yeah the last two last ten years kind of took a little dip and you know we're not here to tell people like, hey, shame on you. You've you know you're intentionally doing this to exclude us. But we have to understand that like when a community grows, one of the things that starts to happen are, you know, logistics get more complex. You know, when you have you know, 15,000 people that are all trying to go to one conference, you have to have a space that's big enough, but you also have to go to a place where they have that space and it's not an arm and a leg. And just due to the natural history of the US population expansion, most of the most diverse cities are also some of the largest ones, which means they have the most expensive costs. But that doesn't say that like we can't try to do a little bit better and think about these things as we're planning things like our next conference.

Speaker 1: And then I mentioned before things got worse for those people that remained at the public pool in the inner cities. They also lost a lot of training. Um uh un kind of a sad did you know that most of the drowning victims in terms of children are actually children from underrepresented groups. Um and I mean I don't really have a a a nice thing to say after that, so I'm just gonna kinda stop it there. And you know, after that happens, you're you're you're kind of just sad because when I say like a higher risk It's like seven times higher for a black child to drown than it is for a white child. And most of that's just due to lack of training. And when we think about that from the tech side as well, a quarter of black people in technology come from historically black colleges and universities.

Speaker 1: We actually got to meet uh HBCU just the other day before this event. Um there was, what was it, Presbyterian? Yeah, Presbyterian University came in and they had a football game going. And sadly, up until the last couple of years, HPCUs have been some of the least funded colleges in the U. S.

Speaker 2: Those things are a bummer. Yeah. Oh my gosh, an otter.

Speaker 1: Okay, so this is Rosa. Rosa lives in Monterey Bay at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. She is 23 years old, which means she is one of the oldest otters in existence, and she is the oldest otter in captivity. And she was rescued not once, but twice. And uh I think you got a fun fact too.

Speaker 2: Yeah, did you know that otters hold hands? so they don't drift away from each other. It's like the cutest thing. I'm gonna die of cute. They hold their little hands, their little tiny otter hands. Let's talk about discrimination. Boo, but also important.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh this actually happened a few years ago. There was an end-of-school party where some kids were invited and a group of black kids had to go into the suburbs to attend this party. in which they had the cops called on them and they were immediately harassed. And, you know, the author of this article had a a great line where she said it's Kind of the historical systemic racism that brought everybody out to the suburbs, that created that isolation and that that legal segregation that made it so easy for people to be pointed out And being and have been told, hey, you don't belong here. Uh

Speaker 2: in tech, we can look at DICE's equality in tech report from last year. And what we'll see is that The perception of discrimination against black folks from black technologists, that perception has actually increased. And the perception of gender discrimination that women experience has also increased. So if we have six out of ten black technologists feeling like they have racial discrimination and women technologists feeling like they are discriminated against for their gender, it's very clear that we have a long way to go.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And we have to talk about laws and policies because you know these are important. Um I'm sure anyone here that owns a a private pool in their home knows that they have to have a fence around it now, especially like in the state of California. It has to be gated. Sadly, this only affects a small number of drown victims in the U. S. because most of the drown victims, as I mentioned before, are people of color. And eighty percent of those people actually die in public swimming pools and open bodies of water. So I don't like talking about the phrase like white guilt and things like that, but what happens is you get these moments where you know it starts affecting you and you do something thinking that it's going to affect everybody, but at the end of the day it only really affected

Speaker 1: you and people that are like you. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: And we can see this in the continually depressing Stack Overflow Developer Survey. This is the same type of thing where when we look at this survey, there are companies that look at it and say, oh, this is what our community is like. And then policies are made around that. And additionally, those of us who go to Stack Overflow for our answers and questions, like many of us do, if you are not part of this core demographic, it can be a very unwelcoming space. In fact, when I was uh organizing Pie Ladies, I would tell people, this is a read-only service. You come, you get your stuff, you bounce, because otherwise it's not going to feel nice. And I've heard that from more than one person.

Speaker 2: So let's look at the the data to be sad, I guess. Um 91% of the respondents uh identify as a man. Um 95 % are cisgender. Let's see that number, 84% of respondents are straight, and the largest group of respondents identify as either white or European.

Speaker 1: I can't even find black people on this chart, honestly.

Speaker 2: Yep, absolutely. So when you're excluded by geography You're not taught relevant skills and you are harassed or discriminated against, the result is pretty predictable. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah, like I mean growing up I was taught black people don't swim. Not because we don't know how. It's because we don't. It's dangerous. It could lead to you being harassed. It could lead to you being Severely harmed. And the sad thing is, is when I when we were preparing this talk and we were talking to other people about it, all the people of color that I asked just kind of nodded their head and said, Yeah, I was kind of told that too. I don't understand like where that comes from. I was also told by several people that like, hey, this tech thing, like, I mean, are you sure you want to do that? Are you sure you don't want to go and like get certifications and do all this other stuff and like Work your way in. So as you can tell, there's a lot of trepidation when historically everyone that's tried to get in before hasn't really had a great time.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. And I can't even recall how many Twitter threads I've seen, primarily from women saying that they're going to leave tech because they just can't handle it anymore. It's not what I want for our community.

Speaker 1: So we need to come up with a plan. We need to figure out how we can protect those that are both in the water having fun and around the water wondering if it's even okay for them to jump in. So

Speaker 2: lifeguard training. That's what people do. Right? When there are bodies of water with people in and out, they have lifeguards. So, and because Python has grown so much, we're gonna probably need those lifeguards too. Yeah.

Speaker 1: But first we need to ask you what does What does a mermaid look like? Because that's because that's what People in tech, we often have this idea of what a person in tech looks like, what a person in tech acts like and things like this. So these are mermaids, also known as manatees. Um and when we wonder why that happened, well two things. One, did you know that a manatee can actually stand like on its tail like out of water and it can like use that to get onto rocks? That's kind of cool. But also if you've ever seen a skeleton of one of these little creatures, that's not so cute. Like they've got like a tail, they've got a rib cage, then they got a skull, and then they got arms with elbows and fingers, and that gets kind of weird.

Speaker 1: So I'm pretty sure when you see like, you know, Columbus or somebody saying, Oh, I saw a mermaid skeleton over there, you're like, uh, probably not, but

Speaker 2: probably a manatee. Columbus. So did you also know that at one time we thought that princess fish had to have white skin and red hair? We totally did. And then when we found out that they can have black skin and black hair, the internet freaked out. So, you know.

Speaker 1: So we want people to feel like anyone can jump in the water. In fact, I got that first-time experience this year in 2022. When I went to Refactor Tech and I got to not only see like a group of developers of color that were all congregating, I got to see like senior engineers, directors, and everybody in that picture. works at Microsoft and I get to I get to interact with them now and I have a little more sense of belonging at the company that I work for because I got to actually go to a place and see hey There are people swimming that that look like me. Maybe I can learn something from them.

Speaker 2: Yep. There are all kinds of developers. There are women developers like those in PyLadies, Django Girls, Black Girls Coat There's also formerly incarcerated people learning like those at underdog deaths, and there are people from historically excluded or disenfranchised communities like those learning at bitwise industry. But but even this, these awesome communities, like it's not enough. Because just like if you were trying to swim but only had access to a pool like once a year or in certain places, like that's not enough support. This is awesome and we can do better.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So everybody ready to do some lifeguard training? Yeah. Okay, cool. Cool cool cool. I I almost had the like red trunks on. I was like I'll just wear a red shirt instead. Um so the first thing that you need to know is where your equipment is and how to properly maintain it. And when we say like equipment, what is that? Well, I'm talking about the things that you actually put in your code that tell people this is inviting, this is safe. and that ultimately you'll be protected. And as Kojo mentioned at the beginning, and I believe also as Logan mentioned as well, we have codes of conduct for that exact reason. And you know, it's it's kind of great, but you don't just take a template, maybe one that I provided, and then like slap it on there and be like

Speaker 1: job well done. No, you have to maintain this thing.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and we need to also think about as lifeguards all of the different bodies of water like we're talking about that different types of technologists experience different things. So when we go to all of the different waters, we'll find out these are the risks, these are the supports, these are the tools. And from kind of like a personal icky story. Um there was a time where I was hosting a PyLadies event and because my name was listed as the host, there was a guy that looked up my phone number and my home address. where my children live and started texting me upsetting things. Um and then when that person showed up at the at the meetup, I didn't actually ask them to leave because I didn't want to be rude.

Speaker 2: So You know, it helps us all to know these things, to believe, listen, and develop strategies to support people based on what they experience.

Speaker 1: And then you need to start figuring out who is a shark in the water and who is just a little kid with the shark fin on their back.

Speaker 2: I do that.

Speaker 1: And When we when we think about some of these policies and these rules that we put in place, we might be in the water thinking that it's a shark when actually it's literally just a kid with a shark phenotype. Like when someone tells you, oh, well, to get in tech, you need to get a comp sci degree or you need to go, you know, I was told I need to get a C CNA degree to be a programmer, and I was like, wait, what? That doesn't even make sense. But like when you hear that stuff, is that a shark or is that a kid in the water?

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. I was recently privy to to a bug that was introduced because we forgot the order of operations in math, like the please excuse my dear Aunt Sally, right? Parentheses. Uh-huh. Anyway, so something like that. So, you know, you may not need like calculus, but you can put that order of operations right in your back pocket. Pocket might help you out.

Speaker 1: Middle school math for the win.

Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. So and and then we have things like this. This code must be perfect and we can't make mistakes type of idea. And we see that in people that use words like clean code or elegant code and these other kind of gatekeepy words. And the reason I don't Like them. There we go. The reason I don't like them is they have a binary nature to them, right? Your coat is either clean or it's dirty. It's elegant or it's junky. And this kind of linguistic limitation gets people paralyzed so that they don't know what to do, you know? They feel stuck and intimidated by every line of code that they write. And so if you were just learning

Speaker 2: or at the beginning of your career career, please write ugly code. Just make it work. It doesn't matter really. Eventually you will write code that you find more readable and that you find um more pleasant You know, I guarantee, no matter what you're doing right now, if you are trying, you're already doing awesome. And for those of us already in the pool, please do not pretend that we're doing awesome stuff all the time. I did this like tweak that like asked people how they took down prod and they were like, Well, I forgot a semicolon. Well I forgot like right that Oops, I accidentally had a line in my settings file that wasn't right. Like it's little stuff like that. And do not tell me that you have never read some code and been like, what even is this? And then saw your name on the flame.

Speaker 2: Right? We do this stuff all the time. So please also check out the hashtag

Speaker 1: dropping production. Dropping prod.

Speaker 2: It is dropping prod.

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: Once you find it, it'll be there anyway. It's really great for both some humility and both some encouragement. It's called encouragement

Speaker 1: And I talked about this earlier of like knowing how to use the COC and like enforcing it. Um this I can't say that enough. It's so important. Like Imagine there was a sign that said don't feed the animals and then over time the word don't got faded. Imagine how bad that could end up. And this is what happens with codes of conduct. We like throw stuff in there and we just kind of let them sit there and then things start to fade. And then as our community starts to grow, some of those policies start to erode a little bit and we're like, well, that's just how it's always been. And you're like, well, no, it wasn't always like that because we actually created a policy that said don't be like that, but since no one's ever cared to look at it. Revise it and say, hey, we have some new complex problems here.

Speaker 1: Maybe we should also revise our our complex code of conduct. Then hey, what happens? You get someone missing a finger. And the last part of that is simple. Good job. You're a lifeguard now.

Speaker 2: Yay. You can clap for yourselves. That is fine. Yeah, you're a lifeguard. You got it.

Speaker 1: You sat through the training and and I've I've learned this as a volunteer lifeguard. It actually is about that much training. So um Yeah, you can you can do it.

Speaker 2: That makes me uncomfortable. So but the best thing you can do in tech is to bring someone new into tech and hopefully you're a little bit more equipped.

Speaker 1: So now I wanted to take a moment to say like obviously we have our blind spots. So we talked to some people online and asked if we could give them a shout-out. Uh the first one is my friend Marlene Magami, who is the diversity chair of the PSF. I've had so many conversations with Marlene, and you would think, oh, two black people, they probably talk about what it's like to be two black people, but here's the problem. I'm from the US. Marlene's from Zimbabwe. We have a very, very different culture in how people are taught and how people are trained and how we can ultimately help these individuals. So I wanted to just thank her personally and also I heard that PyCon Africa is coming back next year. So if you if you want an experience where you get to go be a lifeguard in someone else's body of water, that's probably a good opportunity.

Speaker 2: Next up, we want to talk about uh Naomi. Sorry, I have a niece named Naomi, and so now it trips up. Naomi Cedar, recently awarded with the PSF Distinguished Service Award. She's a co-founder of TransCode, which is a great opportunity for people, like it's an international hack event that's open to lots of different types of people. But in general also, Naomi does so much work to protect our community in lots of different ways. So thank you, thank you, thank you for that.

Speaker 1: The neck per the next person is Iqbal Abdullah, who is an organizer in Southeast Asia. He helps run a lot of the PyCon APAC uh communities that are around there. And interesting story about him, he's actually Malaysian but lives in Japan and has been living there for several years. So he has first hand experience of what it's like to be an outsider in a place that is very homogeneous. And he actually used a lot of that knowledge to help create this very diverse community in Southeast Asia for Python developers. All of the PyCon APAC groups are basically they take turns every year of where PyCon APAC is supposed to be. And it they do that to celebrate the individual cultures while also giving other people an opportunity to learn and grow and get to see what it's like to be, you know, in someone else's space for a little bit.

Speaker 1: And we talked to all these people as I mentioned before. They also said that if you want to reach out to them on Twitter, you feel free to. They also have some resources that maybe they can help you with. And they're looking forward to hearing from some of you. So, it wouldn't be a pool party if we didn't have some fun pool games. So let's wrap this up with some great and awesome pool games for you to use when you're at communities. The first one is called Great Work and it's a lot like Marco Polo. So someone's gonna say, hey, I did a thing.

Speaker 2: I did it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's try this. Hey, I wrote Hello World for the first time.

Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, great work

Speaker 1: Perfect, perfect

Speaker 2: great work.

Speaker 1: Perfect.

Speaker 2: Now make it pythonic. Oh no That's gross, don't do that. And then we have people that are like, I did this thing, and then someone's like, I wish I could do that thing. And you can be like, let me show you. And this is really important for like Women who see job descriptions and they don't fit 100% of the job descriptions and so then they just don't apply, which is a bummer. That's a thing. I do. So if you're someone that is like, I don't know, I just supply. That's fine. You just tell them. Go ahead and just it's there's lots of us. Just do it. Just try Try it, you know? But you know, yay! Like that. Happy kind.

Speaker 1: And there's a lot of like people that don't understand like that requirement of have you done this You can get that knowledge in a throwaway repo on GitHub. Like, clearly. I've I've that is how I've made my entire career, and now my job is to make throwaway repos. So like we're You can clearly do it. The last one is called transparency, which is like understanding what it took to get there. So like this is like doing a backflip off the high dive and landing perfectly and people being like, whoa, that was scary. And you're like Nah, here's what you do. Just tuck in, curl up a little bit, and then flay out really hard at the end, and like and then you got it. Give it a shot. I know you can do it. And what that's gonna do is when you take those things that sound super complicated and you break them down into words that I can understand, it makes me feel like, hey, I could do that too.

Speaker 2: I could do that

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah you can.

Speaker 2: Oh okay. Yeah I gotta do that later. So you can always um lift people up

Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mentioned before I'm a dad. Uh my daughter learned how to swim uh pretty early and one of her favorite things to do is to have me like pick her up in the water and then like throw her in the air and she's like and she lands and hits the water and has a great time. That uplifting experience that she has She always gives me this weird like southern accent, like again, like do it again. So this is what we should be doing with people. We should be like lifting them up and encouraging them to try and do more things. So that they can give you that same Southern again like kind of feeling of like, I want to go to this user group again. I want to go to this conference again. Maybe next time I'll speak. And you go, yes, you can do it. Let me show you how to do a CFP and stuff

Speaker 2: Yeep.

Speaker 1: Oh yeah. And also make sure when you are throwing kids in the water that they stay in the water, that's that's safe too.

Speaker 2: So there's also people that are just kind of struggling to stay afloat. You might be one of those people. And that is okay. This isn't a call to say everyone has to give all the energy all the time. We get it. So the little bits you can keep in mind is that diverse companies and projects just do better. They make more money, money keeps us employed. And we also want to make sure that we are not keeping afloat by keeping other people. So I think that's something that we can do, even if we're struggling right now. It's like those otters. You just hold hands and make sure that we stay afloat.

Speaker 1: So to wrap this all up, we just tell you like we want you to jump in.

Speaker 2: We absolutely do.

Speaker 1: We want you to jump in.

Speaker 2: These two.

Speaker 1: The Python community actually does want you to jump in. I have the privilege of working with Guido and like Every conversation I've had with Guido has always been this like, we can do more. How do we do more? He literally went to a a sprint for like core developers one day and said like The next sprint we have will have more women core developers. And then he did it. Like he actually got more core developers going that were women. So Yeah, the Python community wants you there.

Speaker 2: Yes, and the mission of the PSF, the Python Software Foundation, is to promote, protect. advance the Python programming language and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international group of Python programmers. You are wanted here, my friends.

Speaker 1: And of course, we're at Django Con, so we can say like the DSF also wants you to jump in. And they do that by example. By I mean, one look at these beautiful faces. Like a beautiful diverse cast of people that are just like, hey, we're thinking about how we can make Django more accessible to everyone, but also technically advancing the project.

Speaker 2: And the thing that we're at right now, DjangoCon 2022, we know We have seen the COC many times. This is how we care for each other as a community. And we want collectively for everyone to move forward, have fun, and feel awesome, regardless of where you're coming from or where you're going to.

Speaker 1: So ultimately, yeah, we want you to jump in, reach out to us on Twitter, talk to us, talk to us out in the hallway out here and talk about how you can, you know, be more of a lifeguard in other areas.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. And in the words of Nelson Mandela May there be justice for all. May there be peace for all. May there be work for all. May there be bread and water and salt. For all.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And uh may there be swimming for all too? Like

Speaker 2: absolutely. Thank you so much. Jay Miller.