Join us for our monthly virtual PyDistrict. We'll be welcoming back a former organizer and seasoned PyCon speaker: Andrew Baker.

Andrew Baker - How I built a $10k ARR side business with Django

Ever thought about bootstrapping your own Software-as-a-Service business?

If you're like me, you registered dozens of domain names over the years for ideas that didn't always see the light of day. After many failed attempts at creating a self-sustaining side project, I finally got one off the ground last year: Gator - smart scheduled delivery for your Slack messages.

After about a year and half of nights and weekends work, Gator now pulls in about $1,000 in revenue per month - which makes it $999 more successful than my previous best attempt. In this talk I'll share the story of how Gator got off the ground and some lessons I've learned along the way. I'll also cover some details of the Python stack I used to build Gator, the APIs I rely on to be successful, and some communities I found which could help you, too.

Andrew Baker is on a mission to empower developers to change the world with software.

As Director of Developer Education at Twilio, Andrew leads the teams responsible for Twilio’s documentation and training programs, including TwilioQuest.

Andrew started his career as a Python web developer in Washington, D.C.. He discovered his passion for teaching developers after running Docker workshops at meetups and conferences before joining Twilio in 2015.

Since then he has sought out new ways to challenge and empower developers through documentation, training, and other aspects of Twilio’s developer experience.

Some of his previous presentations:

• 5 ways to deploy your Python web app in 2017
• Demystifying Docker
• Docker 101: Introduction to Docker

Join us for our monthly virtual PyDistrict. We have two great speakers who will be presenting: Robert Townley and Ewa Jodlowska.

Robert Townley - K(snake)s: An intro to kubernetes using python

Kubernetes (aka “k8s”) has changed the way we run, deploy, and think about applications. The learning curve for k8s is a steep one, but it’s surmountable and worthwhile. And the platform has real particular advantages for python developers, who need to deal with issues (both real and imagined) around python’s ease of deployment and scalability. In this presentation, we’ll take a Django application through full deployment to a k8s cluster. We’ll spin up the cluster, dockerize the app, publish the app to a container registry, set up a CI/CD pipeline, and deploy the app. Even better: we’ll go over what all of those odd words mean. So whether you’re a curious beginner looking to learn, or a devops veteran who feels a moral responsibility to save DC’s python community from my copious k8s mistakes, this talk is sure to have something for everyone!

Robert is a developer for Upside Travel, where he dabbles in everything from mobile development to SRE. He’s originally from NYC and comes to DC by way of Montreal. In his free time, he enjoys farming-based video games, playing classical guitar, puttering around the city while listening to audiobooks, and buying domains for half-finished projects and ideas.

Ewa Jodlowska, PSF Executive Director - How the Python Software Foundation Fared Through the Impact of the Pandemic

Like a lot of other organizations, the PSF has had a tough year. With the help of some special guests, we'll find out how things stand, ways to get involved in the Python community now, and what to expect in the coming months.

Ewa is the Executive Director of the Python Software Foundation. She has been with the PSF since 2012 and prior to that she assisted with PyCon as a contractor. Ewa's responsibilities include managing the staff, giving direction and leadership to the Foundation, working with the board of directors on long-range strategic planning, and overseeing financial and program operations to name a few.

Join us for our June virtual PyDistrict. We have two great speakers who will be presenting: Mike Brown and Rami Chowdury.

Mike Brown - Before you commit, every commit: how to automate code quality

The python community has many tools for linting and enforcing pep8 coding standards, such as flake8, pylint, and black. Wouldn’t it be nice if these tools automatically ran — and automatically fixed — your code before it was pushed?

Rami Chowdury - Type Checking in Python

You've definitely heard of mypy, and possibly one or more of pytype, pyre, and pyright.

Holy cow -- that's a lot of options! What should you use? Rami talks about typechecking your Python for fun... and maybe profit?

Rami has been writing Python for over 10 years and checking types for less than half of them. He currently helps companies scale their use of Python at @CoiledHQ. Twitter: @necaris.

Join us for our 2nd virtual PyDistrict. We have two great speakers who will be presenting: Zuri Hunter and Justin Slay.

Zuri Hunter - 4C or Not 4C? That is the question...

This was a question I posed to myself when I was trying to come up with a presentation with Python. I wanted to know if it was possible to train a computer on how to determine whether an image had a 4C hair type. This presentation will cover the trial and tribulations that I came across when trying to answer that question.

Zuri Hunter is a software engineer at Black Cape, based out in Washington, DC. She attended the illustrious Howard University where she obtained her bachelor’s in Computer Information Systems. While completing her undergraduate degree, Zuri taught herself Ruby on Rails and applied this knowledge at several local hackathons. She worked on several projects such as the US Presidential Innovations Fellow, Hack the Pay Gap and AngelHack Incubator, SlimSpace. After her 5th hackathon she was presented with her first introduction in the tech industry with opportunity at HumanGeo with web applications in a microservice architecture.

Outside of building amazing applications, Zuri is heavily involved in increasing diversity and inclusion within the DC tech community. She volunteers regularly with Women Who Code as a Ruby on Rails Lead, Black Girls Code as a Technical Lead, Bison Hacks as a Hackathon Organizer and DCFemTech as Leadership Lead. As of 2018, she was nominated as DCA Live Power Women in Tech. When she isn’t volunteering or coding she loves to spend her free time, playing video games on her PlayStation, watching American Football, doing arts & crafts and playing billiards at a local club.

Justin Slay - Decorators and Wrappers, Extending functions with superpowers

Justin will cover decorators and wrappers, how to use them, and common use cases where you might need them.

Justin is a Senior Python Developer and Senior DevOps Automation Engineer at Excella, based in Denver Colorado, and has extensive experience building micro-services in Flask and other Python frameworks. He likes to utilize his skill set to improve the DevOps sector in multiple facets, focusing around Kubernetes in the most recent years. He has worked for several companies at large scale, leading innovating projects to bring software and hardware together.

Join us for our 1st virtual PyDistrict (formerly Django District) meetup of the year. We have two great speakers who will be presenting: Emma Price and Zuri Hunter.

Emma Price - Decision Trees

Decision Trees are used in a wide variety of applications and are great starting algorithms for visualizing machine learning at work. But what are they and how can we build them? I hope to provide a more in depth understanding of performing classification with Decision Trees. This presentation will cover general terms, examples, and common pitfalls of using Decision Trees for Data Analysis.

Currently, Emma is a Technologist for Black Cape working on full stack development for DoD apps. Previously, she was a Software Engineer for Leidos for 2 years, where she built and researched machine learning algorithms. Emma received an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering and is passionate about technology and learning how to harness the power of processing to increase efficiency in the workforce.

Zuri Hunter - 4C or Not 4C? That is the question...

This was a question I posed to myself when I was trying to come up with a presentation with Python. I wanted to know if it was possible to train a computer on how to determine whether an image had a 4C hair type. This presentation will cover the trial and tribulations that I came across when trying to answer that question.

Zuri Hunter is a software engineer at Black Cape, based out in Washington, DC. She attended the illustrious Howard University where she obtained her bachelor’s in Computer Information Systems. While completing her undergraduate degree, Zuri taught herself Ruby on Rails and applied this knowledge at several local hackathons. She worked on several projects such as the US Presidential Innovations Fellow, Hack the Pay Gap and AngelHack Incubator, SlimSpace. After her 5th hackathon she was presented with her first introduction in the tech industry with opportunity at HumanGeo with web applications in a microservice architecture.

Outside of building amazing applications, Zuri is heavily involved in increasing diversity and inclusion within the DC tech community. She volunteers regularly with Women Who Code as a Ruby on Rails Lead, Black Girls Code as a Technical Lead, Bison Hacks as a Hackathon Organizer and DCFemTech as Leadership Lead. As of 2018, she was nominated as DCA Live Power Women in Tech. When she isn’t volunteering or coding she loves to spend her free time, playing video games on her PlayStation, watching American Football, doing arts & crafts and playing billiards at a local club.