Saptak's Blog Posts
PyCon Pune : Contributions, DevSprints and So Much More (The Web Developer's POV)
Posted: 2017-04-05T20:33:00+05:30 |
| Pycon Pune Homepage |
Unlike most others my main work related with the conferences was much before the conference. In fact most of the work was completed more than a month ago. Firstly, the entire website was made using staticjinja. It was my first experience with staticjinja but having worked with flask, it wasn't very difficult. As one after the other keynote speakers got confirmed, I was to add there pictures and details in the website. Then after few days, I got a call from Sayan saying we need to make a registration page. I was to implement a 3 column UI with all the details. As including bootstrap only for getting it's grid help would be too much, I wrote the grid system in CSS from scratch. Which might not be a big deal for most but since it was my first time writing a grid system from scratch, I felt great when it worked.
 |
| Static Jinja Codes for the Website |
Then, apart from that was looking into the responsive UI of the website. Since no front-end framework was used, so responsiveness was also something I wrote a sketch. Yes, another happy moment for me. Then we started getting few contributors as well helping us with some of the components. So the next thing was to review and merge pull requests. Thanks to the already written grid structure, it was not much pain to make the other pages. And, obviously deploying the code to the server. It was a really great experience to be involved in the web development team of a PyCon.
Conferences for me was one of the ways of spending my GSoC stipend. This time we, a group of 4 friends decided we go together, book a proper airbnb apartment and have some awesome time along with the conference. So it was also an outing for us from the college days.
Conferences as I learned from PyCon India was not only for learning stuffs and listening to talks. It was more about meeting awesome people and getting to connect with them and to grow and help grow the community. So, PyCon Pune also I was eager to meet a lot of new people and to reunite with a lot of people I met before. Also, being a volunteer I had work to do.
So the first day started of by work in registration desk. I was late ( as usual ). But anyhow got busy with work, distributing ID cards, figuring out names, meeting people whom I have met only over IRC. Soon after, the keynote started which was followed by some pretty interesting talks. There were different booths where you could learn about some exciting and cool new tech stuff and communities. The venue was awesome... And so was the food (yes, I have to tell about food)... After the day ended with some awesome talks and meeting some awesome people, it was time for the speaker and volunteers meet. Got to talk with many speakers. And again I can't keep myself from saying, the food was delicious...
Second day was a special day because one my best friends, my ex-roommate, my project partner, Vivek Anand was going to speak for the first time in a conference about his project, Pagure with Fedora, along with Farhaan Buksh. I was super excited (and he was super nervous, I guess). And it was really good. Well, most of the things he said in talk he had already told me before but his talk didn't make me fall asleep (that's the best I can manage). After that the day was filled with sticker collection, tshirt collection, tshirt distribution, group photo and all the cool stuff associated with conferences. At the end it was all bidding goodbyes with promises to meet again on internet and in some different conference in some different place.
After that, we four friends - me, Vivek, Shubham(Bhendi) and Medozonuo decided to go for a movie. Well after all The Lego Batman has hit the theaters. I know this has nothing to do with PyCon Pune but after all It's Batman. So can't help but mention.
 |
| Medozonuo conducting Dev Sprint on Open Event with me |
Next 2 days were devsprint. Few people were presenting their own projects. Others were contributing. I was presenting the Open Event Organizer Server project along with Medozonuo Suohu. The devsprint was at Redhat office in Pune. We got some 3-4 contributors who were really excited to know about and contribute to the project. We were ourselves solving some of the bugs that we were supposed to solve while debugging installation problem on Macs (yes, we need to improve the documentation). We managed to get 2-3 Pull Requests as well which was really good because we were getting new contributors which we really needed. There were many other projects including CPython itself which got a lot of attraction. I also sat there for sometime knowing about the codebase and scopes of contribution. Sadly, I couldn't contribute to it till now. Also, there were hardware devsprints which I was interested in but also couldn't participate.
Sadly, the second day of devsprint i was really really sick and couldn't make it to the devsprint. Had to spend the rest of the day in apartment. This was a little sad for me but after all the remaining conference was awesome. Meeting people I had met in PyCon India and SHD Belgaum again, connecting more with them, talking more than just tech stuff... Maybe Nokia and Conferences are synonymous - Connecting People. Waiting for PyCon Pune 2018... Hoping to start working in the Web Team again...
PyCon India 2016 : A weekend to remember
Posted: 2016-10-05T01:29:00+05:30
PyCon India is one of the best experiences I have had in recent past. PyCon India this year was held in New Delhi from 23rd September to 25th September, 2016. Three days filled with learning, interaction, meeting like minded people; couldn't have asked for anything more. The entire was one of python and development and I loved it.
Day 1 - Devsprint
The first day was special. I was conducting a devsprint on my GSoC project, Open Event Organizer Server under FOSSASIA. To represent the project at such a huge platform was a real great honor for me. The devsprint was a real good experience. Pitched about the project to an audience which comprised of people from many different organisations who were much more knowledgeable in Python than I am. I got to meet a few developers, helped them setup the project and walked them through the various components of the project, told them about In the Heat of Code, a contest by FOSSASIA which involved my project. To see so many eager faces willing to contribute was such a great experience. Also, got to meet a lot of great python developers and discuss my project with them. All in all an experience to remember.
Apart from the DevSprint, met some fellow GSoCers, organisation heads and pythonistas, had an awesome lunch and also had the experience of volunteering. The day ended with a volunteers assembly where plans of the next 2 days were discussed. The first day had pretty much established that the next 2 days are going to be awesome.
After the closure, had the opportunity of going out with Sayan Chowdhury who is associated with both FOSSASIA and Fedora Projects and other Fedora Project contributors. It was a great meetup between the people of 2 organisations and led to discussions about various things. Later we went together to grab some food together and enjoy ourselves. After that, it was time to call the day off.
Day 2 - Volunteering Experience
Woke up early in the morning all excited. This was a big day. First chance of volunteering in a PyCon, meeting some awesome people and pythonistas. Who wouldn't be excited, right? So, went to JNU Convention Center, quickly completed my breakfast and was there in Audi 2 ready for the awaiting experience to blow me away. Meanwhile, booths of RedHat, Digital Ocean, goibibo, JetBrains, ZeOmega and IAMAI. I roamed about in the booths meeting representatives of each organisations, knowing about what and how they work on various things - from containers to cloud services to IDE, it was simply a great learning experience. Plus, got goodies from the booths. So that was awesome as well.
After that it was time for the keynote by Baishampayan Ghose or better known as BG which was followed by some real awesome talks - some of them I understood, while others interested me to learn new things. Apart from the talks, attended the open space and lightning talks as well while also meeting people like Kushal Das whom I have intended to meet for quite some time.
At the end of the day, it was time for volunteer speaker party at Bar-b-Que Nation. The delicious food mixed with discussions about open source and development in various organisations, one of the best parties in my life.
Day 3 - Last Day
Everyone was a little sad because it was the last day but at the same time it was time to make most out of this day. So, my aim as well was to meet, connect and interact with as many people as I can and also attend the talks that interested me. I roamed about trying to gather as much information as I can. It was all so overwhelming. Then we had a staircase DGPLUG meet, where Kushal Das talked about how open source inspires us all and why one should at all do open source. He was surrounded by many students who were new to this entire world, and his talk was so inspiring I felt proud to be a part of open source community.
The day ended with a vote of thanks. Group photos were clicked, promises were made to meet again, last time discussions and sharing of contact details. Though it was the last day, it actually marked a beginning for me - a beginning to be part of such conferences, to meet awesome new people. So now really looking forward to any developer conference and being a part of it.