First of all, thank you Brandon Rhodes for the amazing Welcome to Pycon and Portland speech; especially for taking the time to make it absolutely clear that at the end of every talk if you want to ask a question, it must be an actual question.
I managed to not wear myself too thin by prioritizing down time and eating veggies. Conveniently, Pycon videos are online within a day of when the talk was given, making it very easy for me to skip every talk scheduled right before lunch.
Also I met Guido!
Highlights reel:
Seriously Strong Security on Shoestring
Kelsey Gilmore-Innis
I have a soft spot for security talks, but also a general fear that I wont understand what they are talking about or how to use the information, but that is not the case with this talk. Probably for the first time ever, I left a security talk feeling like I could actually use the information presented.
Do not watch this video with headpones on; there were some issues with the sound and you could hurt your ears.
What Is and What Can Be: An Exploration From Type to MetaClasses
Dustin Ingram
This talk falls pretty heavily in the “I hope I never need this information” pile, but I enjoyed learning it any how, and the talk was suprisingly easy to follow.
Also check out these totally pro slides: Slide contents
Teaching Python: The Hard Parts
Elana Hashman
I am just in love with this talk. Any one who has seen me speak about teaching git knows I try really hard to not overload students with information, and Elana has a very clear idea of what a beginner needs to know when learning python versus what they can learn later.
Removing Pythons Gil: The Gilectomy
Larry Hastings
I do not even know what to say about this, other than, I hope it works. Larry Hastings is attempting to remove the Global Interpreter Lock and this talk lays out what wont work and what might work.
When is it Good to be Bad: Web Scraping and Data Analysis of NHL Penalties
Wendy Grus
This talk was so much fun. It starts with a little intro to hockey which I needed, clearly introduces an interesting problem to solve, and then solves it Python. I will be using this talk as an example to all beginners of what conference talk should look like.