Make an IMPACT with Django

Wow, beautiful crowd. So have you ever sat back and thought about the impact an action you made 20 years ago would have today? And I sit and think about the fact that Django is almost twenty years old, at least the initial thing that became Django that got released in like 2005. That that thing that decision they made twenty years ago To basically make people's lives easier for publishing things to the web has had, I think, a pretty tremendous impact on why we're all sitting here in this room together today. Yeah, I want to thank you know the founders, you know, Adrian, Simon, and Jacob for uh you know having that interest in open source and doing, I feel like, good in the world.

And it it's gone on to allow others to do very impactful things as well. When you think about some journalism nerds being able to publish uh PolitiFact. com. uh without having to have too much of a technical background and then later on going and getting a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for their national reporting on the election. That's pretty incredible when you think about the kind of impact that we've now have seen 20 years later. You know, I strongly believe That everyone in each and every one of us here can use technology to make a world a better place. I think we all have a role to play. You know, as technologists, we have the opportunity to find solutions. To complex challenges.

And I think Django has the superpowers that we need. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Calvin Hendrix Parker. I am CTO and co-founder of Six Feet Up. And our company makes the world a better place by accelerating tech leaders' impact. Our engineers specialize in app development, AI, big data, cloud consulting. And our impactful clients focus on climate action, clean energy, and initiatives to benefit all of humankind. In fact, our goal as a company is to complete 10 impactful projects and defined as projects that are impressive, purposeful, and transformative by 2025.

My uh wardrobe department wants to make sure that you all know this. Uh so you can see we are full in on the impact and our commitment to making a positive impact in the world. And if you actually want to know, the the word impactful is actually an acronym. And all so People who work at Six Feet Up, you'll hear ourselves referred to as sixies. So if you see a sixy wearing the impactful shirt, the back of it is going to have on it the acronym which we use to judge what an impactful project is. And uh what's interesting is we're here to support and commit to supporting our friends as well, who are making impact too. I already mentioned the uh Politifact site that was also assisted

by our friends from Repsys who are also doing impactful work. Groups like Octopus Energy, so if you see there's some of the sponsors out here in the expo hall, they're using Django with a really cool name for their project called Kraken. uh to supply clean energy to millions of customers worldwide. Other groups like Cactus Have gone on to work with the United Nations to implement one of the very first SMS voter registration systems for the Libyan elections Groups like Torchbox are working to protect our oceans by building a donations platform for the Marine Conservation Society. And that's powered by Wagtail, another extension to Django itself, more

superpowers for giving greater impact. Lincoln Loop has used Django to support the Energy Solutions Company. They provide a cost-effective market-based carbon energy and water management solution. And it's six feet up. I mentioned we were dedicated to doing impactful projects. Have done numerous projects recently, uh one of which I'll be talking about this afternoon. So if you come to my predicting lightning with Django talk, uh that's actually we've helped Productions a API for just what was an idea that ran only in a Jupyter notebook before. We've also used Django to help map forest fire trajectories. and save lives and help those put out those fires. We've also then gone on to use Django to streamline

battery energy storage operations. So helping to mitigate the economic and environmental impacts of climate change. So while these are some of the ways I know Django is making an impact in the world, I know there are many, many more. And I want to hear about them, so stay tuned. So at this point, I know it's like sounding, this is all great and all. But it's probably not that easy. It's actually true, it's not easy to define what is a do-gooder. Took our company three years Of going back and forth in nearly weekly meetings thinking about this problem and how do we define what is a do-gooder in the world? Uh so it's actually again really a a hard problem uh when you think about it. So I'm gonna focus on we decided to actually focus on what we do know.

And what I do know is that I care deeply about the other human beings on the earth we live in. I do know that I work with some of the best experts software engineers who spin who span nearly every continent. And we've got six of seven covered right now, which is pretty incredible for a company of only like 35 people. And I know that there are global challenges that affect us all. And so the United Nations has identified the 17 sustainable development goals. And so those go on to kind of define what these intentions are, how we can basically you know, improve health, uh, economic conditions, education, reduce inequality, uh spur economic growth. And so I know together with them, you know, while tackling some of these terrible, you know, hard problems,

That we can go together to build a better world. We must work together to do our part. And so I know that software can actually accelerate the transition, for example, to clean energy. And so that's one of the areas we're providing a lot of focus on right now. So what's next? I want to challenge all of you. To be intentional about using software and technology for good and for picking projects that can be impactful. For us at Six Feet Up, we are focused on climate action, clean energy, food sustainability, good health and well-being, and other initiatives that would benefit generally humankind. So while these areas of focus are important to us, this is just the important

beginning of this journey. I'd love to hear about the impact that you all are making in the world. I'd love to hear about the projects you're working on that are impactful. So if you're here in person in the beautiful San Diego area, please stop by the booth and actually talk to one of the 60s who is there. They want to hear about your impactful projects. We want to tell more stories like the ones I shared with you during this talk. So make sure you look for someone who's got an impactful shirt on. You can also register when you uh actually tell us about your impactful project. We're giving away some Adafruit Metro Infors, some cool little IoT uh embedded circuit Python devices. So each day we'll give away one of those.

So come by and register and I'd love to give you some cool fun little tech toys to play with that run Python. And for those of you at home who are watching us over the Loudsworm platform, please drop me a note. I'm CalvinHP on Twitter. I'm not a hard person to find, and I love talking to people. So thank you so much for giving me a moment to be up here and share all that with you. Go forward and make impactful changes in the world. Thank you.