Confirmed Pythonista

Well, that was a fantastic weekend. If anyone is considering going to PyCon for the first time, I totally recommend it.

I was excited when I arrived in Cardiff on Friday, but I didn’t really know what to expect. Would the topics be too complex and go over my head? Would people be welcoming, and would they take me seriously? Sometimes I get a bit paranoid that people will think I’m too old for all this and a bit daft to think I can change career – especially when I’m not doing a full-on Masters in computing or data science.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong. For the most part I enjoyed and understood all the talks – and in the data visualisation one, while it was great to follow along the demo, I realised ‘I know all this…’.

And people were just great! I met so many fascinating, friendly and encouraging people that I’d kind of like to live my whole life in the PyCon world 😊

Highlights

• Cardiff City Hall – walking in the door that first morning was great. It’s such a beautiful building, and to go in and collect my badge, then climb the stairs to the chandeliered hall, it just felt great.

• Python people – everyone was super friendly and just seemed happy to be there.

• Lightning talks – I almost skipped these, but they were great.

• Realising that I do have decent understanding of python – and yet a huge amount to learn

• The ‘optimal pub’ – the Tiny Rebel

• Fish and chips and real beer were a reminder of all that’s great about the UK…

• The bacchanalian scenes in Cardiff city centre on Saturday night were something to be seen, too!

Regrets:

• I wish I’d done all three days, and been able to stay for the sprints. When I booked, I thought that three days would be too much. And staying for the sprints sounded a bit unnecessary – I’d have had to stay a whole extra day. But now I wish I had!

• I won’t be able to come next year, as I’ll be in Australia. It was quite a trip to come from Marseille – flying over from Sydney might be a step too far!