Here's a thread from divers...@python.org, archived here for easier linking (open archive). The connections to education are multifarious e.g. PBS has web sites for teachers running in Django.
Mostly I'm thinking high schools are going to design more around an inhouse intranet (not outsourced) so that year books, school plays, sporting events, all go to a central repository. If it's more like GeoDjango, then you've got some core infrastructure for "place based" education, a theme in my blogs, maybe even with immersive videos ala Google Street Views? The thread itself speaks to the diversity of the Django community, stressing its friendliness and openness to not-Django and not-Python developers. For example we had lots of input from a Smalltalk guy (keynote). As the followup makes clear (by James Bennett, a core player), this is somewhat of a tradition with DjangoConf, and a good one. Some of you will have already seen the below as we have some cross-enrollment. Kirby ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: kirby urner <kirby.ur...@gmail.com> Date: Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 5:06 PM Subject: Diversity Report from DjangoCon To: divers...@python.org <report type="diversity"> Just a quick Diversity Report for readers here.... The 2nd annual Django conference was held here in Portland, Oregon, DoubleTree Hotel at Lloyd's Center (eastside, easy access to downtown by Max light rail). We had lead developers from Australia, UK, and of course Kansas. To the community's lasting credit, "why Django sucks" was an allowed topic at open mic, where we had Armin Ronacher, the Austrian dude behind Werkzeug (not to be confused with Flugtag by Red Bull), very like Django but rather prettier in some ways, now branching into Solace, all about i18n. Gender did not arise as an issue. When I delivered the PSF snake to the core leadership, I handed it off to a tech lead at NASA, Katie Cunningham. In my experience, women show up in the workplace more frequently at higher levels (CHR, CFO...), so as geeks rise in status and clout, they'll naturally encounter more FOSS bosses of the female persuasion, only a matter of time, not really worried about it. What was more remarkable was how open we were to Smalltalk and Perl communities, also Apple's new Sproutcore community, where Ruby is the more used agile in some ways (Sproutcore is still a small project, sorta comet on steroids, has dreams of becoming a Flash killer someday). We didn't see much Microsoft, although I did get Sara Ford's tweets about Codeplex releasing Sperm (don't ask -- it's the right DNA according to Redmond). When it comes to diversity, I think this is where Python really shines: it's a tight design yet a showcase for turn-of-the-millennium great ideas e.g. list comprehensions, special name __ribs__... significant whitespace. In this sense, it's cosmopolitan, like Holland itself (not just Amsterdam). Portland, with aspirations of becoming more like Amsterdam in some ways (i.e. we want our own Paul Treanor maybe? **), is proud to be selected as the conference venue next year as well, same bat time, same bat station, mas o meno. Congratulations to all on a conference well organized. Congrats to Andy McKay in particular, with already well-developed Python muscles from working in Plone, recently back from Kenya and Malawi, where Django is used to switch cell phone text messages regarding children in need of medical attention (the numbers are already improving). Ian Bicking, a keynoter and track talk presenter (virtualenv, pip...), recently back from Buenos Aires, was eager to foster this kind of collaboration with the medical community, nurses especially (they seem open to open source by training i.e. sharing core knowledge in the face of grave needs is a fact of life in that profession). He quoted from Richard Stallman's GNU manifesto, underlining why he'd always liked it (since first encountering it as a teenager, inside of gnu emacs): because it took the bull by the horns. Back to our diversity theme: make room for Harry Potter and the whole DaJango Code lore, fortified castles, opportunities in Europe (not to mention "down under"). I've got more in my blogs, for those curious about the details. http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2009/09/django-conference-day-1.html http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2009/09/more-from-djangocon.html http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/09/djangocon-day-2.html http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2009/09/geodjango.html http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2009/09/djangocon-day-3.html http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/09/more-djangocon-talks.html The PSF snake totem (sent by FedEx ground) also made it to PPUG, where the Idealist.org away team was just back from Switzerland instead of the usual Buenos Aires (Jason Kirtland, Michel...). Adam Lowry was also at Djangocon. http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/09/ppug-200998.html http://wiki.python.org/moin/PortlandPythonUserGroup I've continued to pioneer good relations with Middle Eastern players, via Ambassador Tag (written about earlier in this archive), a gender studies professor among other things: http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/09/ppug-200998.html http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157...@n00/sets/72157622226456717/ </report> Kirby PS: for those who don't remember my earlier posts, I'm a diverse kinda guy, mostly hang out on edu-sig community list with Sir Laura (diversity resident), Gregor (Vienna circle, manages Python's SL turtle module), Andre (university president in Canada), other characters.... ** http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/index.html ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: James Bennett <ubernost...@gmail.com> Date: Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 7:04 PM Subject: Re: [Diversity] Diversity Report from DjangoCon To: kirby urner <kirby.ur...@gmail.com> Cc: divers...@python.org A couple of comments and addenda from another participant... On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 7:06 PM, kirby urner <kirby.ur...@gmail.com> wrote: > To the community's lasting credit, "why Django sucks" was an allowed > topic at open mic, where we had Armin Ronacher, the Austrian dude > behind Werkzeug (not to be confused with Flugtag by Red Bull), very > like Django but rather prettier in some ways, now branching into > Solace, all about i18n. FWIW, that's becoming something of a tradition; last year's US DjangoCon established the theme of keynotes by relative outsiders to/critics of the Django community, and I'm glad that this tradition was kept up. Conferences make it far too easy to toot one's own horn, and having smart people around to keep us reality-based is a good thing :) > Gender did not arise as an issue. When I delivered the PSF snake to > the core leadership, I handed it off to a tech lead at NASA, Katie > Cunningham. In one sense I guess it's true that the "issue" did not arise, but by my (unofficial) count the gents of Django outnumbered the ladies roughly 20:1. There were a few new faces, though, which I take as at least somewhat encouraging despite the otherwise dismal gender-canyon ("gap" being too small a word) present at the conference. > I've continued to pioneer good relations with Middle Eastern players, > via Ambassador Tag (written about earlier in this archive), a gender > studies professor among other things: One other multinational item of note: Dimitris Glezos' talk on Transifex, a web-based tool which greatly simplifies the process of collaborating on and contributing to translations of software projects of all sorts. Slides are here: http://djangocon.pbworks.com/f/dc09tx.pdf Finally, it's worth pointing out that DjangoCon had what may be a first for a Python-oriented conference (at least, a first at those I've attended): in the evening after the second full day of the conference, a group of us who'd been hanging out in the hotel lobby before heading downtown were invited out to the adjacent park to witness the wedding of Mark (a developer from NASA) and Ariel, whose surnames I'm not quite certain of at the moment. Once I get in touch with them to find out how they'd like photos of that event to be handled, I hope to get some of them up on Flickr. -- "Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct -- the best kind of correct." _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
