PyCon

[mattp]

The fact I couldn't go to the science festival in York actually worked in my favour. On a mailing list of which I'm a member, one of the other subscribers wrote about a Python conference in Birmingham. It took place over the weekend when the science festival started, so I was able to go to that instead. I go the train up on Friday and stayed with bethanthepurple - t'was fab to see you and catch up.

Organisation-wise, having been to other cons in the past, two things of note stand out, and they may be of interest to other con-goers/organisers. 1) double sided name badges. (when on a string they tend to flap about and sometimes turn over) 2) lightning talks. These take the form of a long slot in the timetable for several speakers to have a 5 minute slot in which to make a short presentation, have a rant, whatever.

Reading over this post I realised that when I say going to this event instead worked in my favour, I missed out why. I ran a lightning talk of my own, on the subject of genetic algorithms. I ran out of time, annoying so was cut short at the 5 minute point. That said, I quite enjoyed doing it, and aroused some interest because a number of people spoke to me about it afterwards.

Interestingly someone else had written a python suite for GA stuff, though his app was to solve the timetabling problem.

I might re-run that as a longer talk at the London Python group. Ideally I'd like to record it and put it online because it's qute an academic subject and I'd like to make it a bit more approachable. If not at London Python then I'll record it myself.

It's odd - having done training in previous jobs, and teaching the Edgware band to ring, i'm still very nervous when doing the standup and talk style of teaching. Ì might book myself on a course, because it will be useful even though I don't do a lot at the moment.

Comments

[misterfallen.livejournal.com]

I thought you meant Monty Python...

[mattp.livejournal.com]

The language was actually named after the comedy team :-)

[angeoverhere.livejournal.com]

You know, I've been sat here reading this first thing in the morning and dozily trying to figure out what genetic algorithms have to do with Monty Python... *doh*

[figg.livejournal.com]

The con looks interesting. A couple of things:

I've seen lightning talks at most of the (tech) cons I have been to, including NTK/Mute, WhatTheHack and 22c3.

I always thought that the timetabling problem was generally solved by linear programming/simplex method (although he does admit it as an excuse to play with GA/GP)