pre-release: Pygotham meeting announcement

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Subject: 
ANN: Pygotham at Plenary Space Fri June 8, 10p


Pygotham
=========================
When: 10 AM Friday June 8, 2012
Where: Plenary Space

None

Topics
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1. Keynote
Eliot Horowitz

Keynote
 recording release: no  

2. Data analysis in Python with pandas 
Wes McKinney

In this talk, I'll give an in-depth overview of the features of the pandas library (http://pandas.pydata.org) and the kinds of problems you can solve with it. I will give a number of examples and demos to illustrate its use.
 recording release: no  

3. GPU Computing with CLyther
Sean Ross-Ross

GPU computing has come a long way over the past few years but still requires knowledge of CUDA or OpenCL. Similar to Cython, CLyther is a Python language extension that makes writing OpenCL code as easy as Python itself.
 recording release: no  

4. Introduction to Python
Joseph Versoza

This is a whirlwind tour of Python to get attendees prepped for the other classes offered at PyGotham.  It'll be geared towards novice programmers with little
to no Python experience (though exposure to some other programming language is expected).  There will be hands on exercises
interleaved with lectures.

(Time includes a one hour lunch break)
 recording release: no  

5. Implementing Awesome: An HTML5/CSS3 Workshop
Shoshana Roberts

We'll go over what parts of HTML5 and CSS3 you can use right away and how to degrade gracefully in order to appease the older browsers. Then, we'll play with some of the awesome visual candy you can make using the latest properties.
 recording release: no  

6. Feminist Technology (for Male Geeks)
Annina Rüst

Yes, this is a talk about feminism and feminist technology especially for male geeks! As the majority within the technical workforce, men can make a huge difference. Statistics have shown that diversity drives technical innovation. However, the onus is often on women to make diversity happen. This does not have to be! This session will help attendants turn their workplace into a more diverse, and gender-friendly place. The session will also include some demonstrations of feminist technologies. It will be fun, weird, technical, and unconventional. 
 recording release: no  

7. Exploring Python Code Objects
Dan Crosta

Python is an interpreted language, right? Wrong! In this talk, dive deep into Python bytecode, and learn what actually happens in everyone's favorite Python program, 'print "Hello world"'. Learn to use the compile() builtin and its best friend the exec statement, understand what your Python code is doing with the dis and compiler modules, and discover new ways to explore and enjoy Python at a low level.
 recording release: no  

8. Lunch served on premises, included in conference fee. 
Gloria W

Lunch served on premises, included in conference fee.
 recording release: no  

9. Time Series Data Analysis with pandas
Wes McKinney

In this talk, I will give an overview pandas's time series capabilities and new features coming soon in pandas 0.8.0 (currently in beta). This includes time zone handling, resampling, calendar logic, plotting, and moving window functions.
 recording release: no  

10. MapReduce with the Disco Project
Christopher Mueller

MapReduce frameworks provide a powerful abstraction for distributed data storage and processing. Our friend, Chris Mueller, will talk about the Disco Project, a refreshing alternative to the Hadoop hegemony that uses Python for the front-end and Erlang for the back-end. More importantly, he will discuss when a MapReduce framework makes sense and when it doesn’t.
 recording release: no  

11. Reclaiming America: The Open Source Alternative Economy
Edward Twitchell Hall III

How we're building an alternative economy and the tech backbone.  Workshops on building Darknet infrastructure, soldering mobile laser tag gear for real life RPG activist organizing system, mobile image recognition and augmented reality. 
 recording release: no  

12. Web Performance Testing with Python Multi-Mechanize
Daniel Kuebrich

Getting ready for a big event on your website?  Re-architecting for better performance or scalability?  Releasing a hot new feature?  Load testing can help you plan and provision accordingly.  In this talk, I'll briefly discuss load testing strategies, then dive into how to DIY with Python using Corey Goldberg's open source library multi-mechanize as well as how to gather performance data from your tests.  Real-life examples against a deployment of a popular open-source Python web app (reddit!).
 recording release: no  

13. Python Asynchronous Web Frameworks and MongoDB
A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

Python async web frameworks -- why and how to use them, and how they work. Async and MongoDB.
 recording release: no  

14. Notable Features of Python
V James Powell

Covers some of the more notable features of Python: functional
programming basics, as well as decorators, iterators and generators, and
context managers.  Discussion of where and why these features are
useful, motivated by simple examples of real-world uses.
Focuses on Python 2.7< but includes brief mention of relevant changes in
Python 3000.

1. functions are "first-class citizens"
    what does this mean?
    how does this allow us to write better code?
    what "patterns" does this eliminate?
    what common patterns/idioms are there?
2. functions, objects, and callables
    what are functions under the hood?
    what is a callable?
    what are the various ad hoc protocols?
3. function decorators & class decorators
    where might these be useful?
    where do these show up in the standard library?
    what is a function decorator?
    what is a decorator-generating function?
    what's going on under the hood?
4. iterators
    how does a for-loop work? how do iterators work on standard data
    types?
    how do I define my own iterators?
    how can I define my own tuple unpacking?
5. generators
    what is a generator?
    how do generators relate to comprehensions?
    what other things can be done with `yield` (e.g., coroutines)?
6. context managers
    where are these useful?
    what commonly used context managers are available?
    how do I write one myself (using a class, using a generator?) 
 recording release: no  

15. Declarative UIs with Enaml
Steven Christopher Colbert

Chris Colbert, the primary author of Enaml, will give an introduction to the brand new Python-based declarative language for developing non-trivial user interfaces.

 recording release: no  

16. How to build a native push-enabled iOS App using xCode
Dan Gesser

This is a quick primer for web app developers that want to see what it's like building a native mobile app using Objective C in xCode. We'll also talk about push messaging using Xtify's SDK.
 recording release: no  

17. Python Packaging for Humans
Dan Crosta

Turn your project into a good Python citizen by leveraging Distribute (the successor to setuptools) to write re-usable, installable, testable, and well-documented Python packages.
 recording release: no  

18. Interactive Plotting with Chaco
Naveen Michaud-Agrawal

Most “big data” problems don’t stop with distributed computation. You have to render your results in a way that a larger audience can understand. Chaco is an open source library that offers both static and interactive visualization.
 recording release: no  

19. Mobile Strategy in an ever-changing landscape
Nick Borth

HTML5 vs. native? Cloud vs. on-prem? Apples, Berries, Droids? Mobility is full of diversity, of which many developers are capitalizing on specific needs and quick-build apps. Join the mobile team at Infor to learn about what has worked in their technology strategy, and what to avoid in running a lean mobile operation.
 recording release: no  

20. Flexible Spam Control for the Web
Paul Winkler

Comment spam continually evolves. No single anti-spam measure is a silver bullet; what works today will be defeated tomorrow. Can we write antispam software for our websites that allows us to adapt in the future in a framework-agnostic way?
 recording release: no  

21. Building an application for timeseries data management
Deepankar Sharma

Analyzing, storing and visualizing time-series efficiently are recurring though difficult tasks in various aspects of scientific data analysis such as meteorological forecasting, financial modeling, ... In this talk we will explore the current Python ecosystem for doing this effectively, comparing options, building a complete application using only open source packages that are mature yet still under active development. The class will be the last step of the HPC course and will tie multiple components together. 
 recording release: no  

22. Plover Sprint and Mini-social (beer/pizza/art)
Mirabai Knight

Friday, June 8th from 6PM to midnight, we will be sprinting on The Plover Project at the 10gen offices:

578 Broadway
7th Floor
New York, NY 10012 

Contact Mirabai Knight to register for the sprint: askeladden@gmail.com

There will be beer, pizza and an awesome art demo using sound to manipulate a medium, all sponsored by Galleray. You're welcome to drop for a bit. 
 recording release: no  

23. Best Practices Panel
Gloria W

This is a one hour Q & A with a panel of experienced developers from a variety of fields and backgrounds. 
 recording release: no  

24. Introduction to Pyramid
Chris McDonough

We'll show students how to begin using the Pyramid web framework by walking them through the creation of a small web application.
(time includes one hour lunch break)
 recording release: no  

25. Effective Programming for Parallel Python
Michael McKerns

The talk will cover some advice every developer should know for writing effective parallel python. Many of the examples you find on parallel python focus on the mechanics of getting the parallel infrastructure to work with your code, and not on how to actually build good portable parallel python code. The talk is intended to be a broad introduction to writing effective parallel python, and is well suited for newbies as well as experienced developers.
 recording release: no  

26. Web framework basics
Gloria W

We will go through some very common paradigms in Python web frameworks, starting with the basics: HTTP protocol, how your data gets to the database and back. Then we'll execute small code examples from popular web frameworks. You'll be able to see how data and protocol are handled, how HTML is rendered, and database calls are made. 

Please install web.py, cherrypy, django, werkzeug. A pre-install meeting will be held Friday evening for people who want assistance.

(We break for one hour for lunch)
 recording release: no  

27. A python petting zoo
Devon Jones

Pettingzoo is an open source python and java library for doing distributed configuration, discovery and coordination of services via zookeeper.  We'll discuss it's value and usage for coordinating distributed services in a scalable environment.
 recording release: no  

28. Crash Course in Steno
Mirabai Knight

An introduction to the stenographic keyboard and the basic principles of this blazingly efficient phonetic-mnemonic text entry method using open source software and low-cost hardware. (includes a one hour lunch break)
 recording release: no  

29. Managing a large scale content system
Henrik Lindström

Learn about how to use Python for managing content on a large scale. We will talk about choice of databases, distribution of content, efficient processing of data etc.
 recording release: no  

30. Lunch served on premises, included in conference fee.
Gloria W

Lunch served on premises, included in conference fee.
 recording release: no  

31. Scaling python services - the Spotify way. 
Kinshuk Mishra

The talk will focus on the techniques Spotify employs to scale several services like playlist, radio, ads, etc to offer the complete music experience around the clock to millions of users. We will talk about how we scale horizontally by making our services stateless, by smartly caching and sharding data and several other tricks like using SRV DNS records for service discovery.
 recording release: no  

32. Web Panel
Gloria W

This is a 60 minute Q & A discussing frameworks and practices with a panel of experienced developers form a variety of fields and environments.
 recording release: no  

33. Metaclasses Gone Wild
Andy Fundinger

Metaclasses will be explained and demonstrated by using them to alter the normal syntax of python and then progressively revising into more practical applications.  The intent of this talk is to show the flexibility and power of metaclasses rather than the justifications for using them.
 recording release: no  

34. Geeky Knitting for all!
Jennifer Creighton

Geeky knitting has a huge cult following, with many active online and in-person groups. Jenn will introduce you to this concept, teach you some basics, and you too can let your inner geek shine through the art of knitting. 
 recording release: no  

35. Large scale collaborative filtering
Erik Bernhardsson

Implementing a recommendation system
 recording release: no  

36. Introduction to DB ORM concepts via SQLAlchemy
mike bayer

In this three hour tutorial, I'll review basic relational database concepts and introduce the SQLAlchemy Database Toolkit for Python and Object Relational Mapper.  The talk assumes the audience has at least some past experience using relational databases at a rudimentary level, as well as basic Python programming knowledge.   The talk will fully introduce SQLAlchemy's Core and ORM components completely in a series of four sections, and also include a brief "SQL Review" section.

 recording release: no  

37. Hornblower Tech: Ship Geekery
Gloria W

The Hornblower engineering team will give a talk on the tech behind the scenes, how the ship runs, and all of the geeky-cool equipment involved and how it works. This will be quite interesting. 
 recording release: no  

38. pytracemonitor
David Jensen

Trace program execution by storing most or all objects during execution and later analyzing the results. Upgrade of PyGotham I presentation, including more documentation and examples.
 recording release: no  

39. How did we build Spotify?
Jon Åslund

We are quite big now, but as most companies, we started small. This will be a history lesson if how it started, leading up to where we are now, describing many of the services that make up our backend, why we choose Python, what frameworks and tools we use to build our backend services and how to deploy them. We learned a lot. We still are.
 recording release: no  

40. Afterparty, 6PM to midnight
Gloria W

PyGotham attendees: Enjoy a night of music and microbrew made just for us! RentShare.com is sponsoring an excellent night of fun at the Projective Space Lower East Side offices. We'll have control of the projection system, Spotify is DJ-ing with our own event playlist, and a microbrewer is making a special PyGotham brew. This will be night to remember.
 recording release: no  



Location
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Plenary Space


About the group
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