PyLadies Austin In 2013

2013-01-10

This year is shaping up to be a busy one. On my arrival in Austin I founded a PyLadies chapter, and our first meeting is scheduled for tonight. We'll be doing a round of introductions, then brainstorming about what projects we'd like to get to work on in 2013. We'll also be talking about some of the exciting Python community events coming up in Austin, around Texas, and on the national stage.

And what are some of those events? January's calendar is mostly clear, with the exception of two PyLadies meetups, two Austin Python meetups, an All-Girl Hack Night, and some time set aside for planning for the rest of the spring.

In February, I'm hoping to attend the local Rails Girls workshop to "dive into the magical world of Ruby on Rails". Don't hiss at me, Pythonistas (see what I did there?) - I just want to try something new, and I'm a strong believer in diversifying skill sets.

On Sunday, February 23, the Women in Engineering Program (WEP) at the University of Texas will be hosting "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" as part of Engineers Week. Local PyLadies members will be pitching in to give high school girls a glimpse into the world of professional programming.

Don't expect to be able to reach me in March. The month kicks off with SXSW - the EDU track runs from March 4-7, with the main body of the festival spanning March 8-17. I don't have plans for attending any specific SouthBy events, but this will be my first year experiencing it as an Austin resident, so I'm sure that I'll get sucked into a party or two. There's even been talk of a get-together sponsored by a coalition of the local women's programming groups - PyLadies, GDI, RailsGirls, DevChix and others have a presence here.

Overlapping SXSW is PyCon 2013, which stretches from March 13-21 (including tutorials and sprints). I'll certainly be there for the tutorial days, although whether or not I stay all the way through sprints is TBD - I'm still considering an appearance at PyData 2013, which takes place nearby on March 19-20.

On returning to Austin, I'll be teaching a Python workshop over the weekend of March 23-24 (location and schedule are TBD, but I'll be sure and post once all the details are ironed out).

March 30 brings us to Data Day Texas 2013. I'll be going to see special guest speaker Wes McKinney, main author of Pandas as well as author of the O'Reilly book, Python for Data Analysis.

We'll continue with workshops and meetups until June 24-29, when SciPy 2013 hits town. PyLadies Austin will have a presence there, whether that takes the form of speakers/poster presenters or a booth (or both).

Then later in the summer (dates haven't been set yet), PyTexas will be returning to College Station, this time (hopefully) with PyLadies speakers.