The last two weeks were pretty miserable, for some
scientific/collaboration reasons as well as some personal reasons
(visiting sick parents != fun). Two things that weren't miserable
-- that were in fact quite fun -- were PyOhio and the Science 2.0 talks in Toronto.
PyOhio was a nice little community-based conference, and I got a
chance to give my perspective on a alternative to buildbot, as well as
Snakebite and the Python Buildhaus; you can watch the recording if you want details. I'll be
posting more about pony-build (the aforementioned buildbot
alternative) as things progress; I'll just say that I have now fired
it "in anger" and I'm working on a release.
PyOhio was well-run and had a wide attendance, although attendance
waned by the end of the second day. I'd suggest that they do a single
track with 30 minute talks next year, as the 1 hr talk format left
some people flailing for material, and others rambled. We stayed at
a nearby Red Roof Inn, which wasn't unpleasant but was not exactly
wonderful, either.
One of the highlights of PyOhio for me was the opportunity to bring
two students along from MSU, Owen and Eric. I think they would have
been a bit more wary of the crowds at PyCon; PyOhio was a gentle
introduction to the very nice Python community.
The following week, I navigated the passport renewal process in
Detroit and took VIA Rail (the Canadian train company) from Windsor to
Toronto. The trip itself was awesome -- business class: meals +
coffee served, wifi, and power -- and gave me a chance to rewrite my
talk in a better direction. The following morning I attended the
UToronto CS dept summer projects demo session which was stunning, and
then gave my talk at the Science 2.0 meeting. Others
have covered that meeting in detail -- in particular, see Steve
Easterbrook's liveblogging, which makes me seem more
coherent than I was, and of course the Twitter feed -- so I'll just say
that I felt quite at home with the other speakers. It was great to
meet Jon Udell, Cameron Neylon, and Michael Nielson; Victoria Stodden blew me away with some actual
research! numbers! on the problem of openness and reproducibility. I
will be paying attention to her work in the future and making use of
her publications in my classes.
My talk was OK; I felt like it was a rather lightweight collection of
opinions, however justifiable. You can judge for yourself: Jon Udell
blogged the whole thing in great detail.
Probably the best one-sentence summary of the event was given by
Milan Davidovic:
The main message today seemed to me to be: get your work out there
(i.e. on the Web), open it up to collaboration, and stop worrying so
much about your precious IP; those who play their cards too close to
the chest will be left behind.
Yep. Nail on the head.
I gather that videos and slides will be posted soon, if they're not already
up somewhere; Google is your friend.
The whole event made me realize that while I want to be a leader in the
Science 2.0 arena, I want to lead by example and not by giving lots of
talks. I'm much more comfortable with data than opinions, despite my
tendency to be heavier on opinions these days. It also renewed my
determination to blog: hence this post ;).
After making it back down from Toronto, I then collapsed into a small ball
and slept off the two weeks. (j/k: I came into work and had to deal with
Issues.)
--titus
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