PyCon US 2018

PyCon US 2018
Name	PyCon US 2018
Genre	Technology conference
Frequency	Annual
Venue	Pennsylvania Convention Center
Location	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
First	2018
Previous	PyCon US 2017
Next	PyCon US 2019

PyCon US 2018 was the 2018 edition of the annual United States conference for the Python community, bringing together developers, educators, researchers, and industry representatives. The event featured keynotes, tutorials, sprints, and a diverse program that connected attendees from open source projects, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, and commercial vendors.

Overview

PyCon US 2018 continued the tradition established by earlier gatherings such as PyCon and regional events like EuroPython and PyCon UK, reflecting trends seen at FOSDEM and Grace Hopper Celebration in community scale and inclusivity. The conference combined elements common to technology conferences such as those produced by O'Reilly Media, ACM, and IEEE, while maintaining ties to open source foundations like the Python Software Foundation and projects including Django, NumPy, pandas, and SciPy. Attendees included contributors from organizations such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Red Hat, and Amazon, alongside academic participants from institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and University of California, Berkeley.

Venue and Dates

The conference took place at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, mirroring venue choices of other major US technology events like DEF CON and Oracle OpenWorld. Scheduled across multiple days in late April and early May, the dates aligned with travel patterns seen for conferences hosted in cities such as New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. Nearby landmarks like Independence Hall and institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania provided cultural context for attendees arriving from regions served by Amtrak, Philadelphia International Airport, and regional transit networks.

Keynotes and Featured Speakers

Keynote speakers spanned leaders from corporate, nonprofit, and academic spheres, echoing speaker rosters similar to Strata Data Conference, KubeCon, and PyData gatherings. Featured presenters included figures affiliated with projects and organizations such as Python Software Foundation, The Linux Foundation, Mozilla, NumFOCUS, Anaconda, and technology teams from Stripe, Dropbox, and Instagram. Speakers discussed topics resonant with communities tied to Jupyter Notebook, TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, and research groups at Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard University.

Conference Program and Tracks

The program comprised tutorials, talks, poster sessions, lightning talks, and sprints with tracks that reflected ecosystems like Web development, Data science, and Machine learning as practiced with tools from Flask, Django, FastAPI, NumPy, pandas, scikit-learn, and TensorFlow. Community-focused initiatives paralleled efforts at Open Source Summit and All Things Open, including diversity and inclusion sessions inspired by organizations such as Women Who Code, Black Girls Code, and Ada Initiative. Workshops engaged contributors to projects like CPython, pip, setuptools, pytest, and virtualenv.

Attendance and Community Impact

Attendance figures reflected growth patterns seen in conferences like PyCon US 2017 and PyCon US 2019, drawing professionals from companies such as Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, and Airbnb, as well as students from universities including University of Washington and University of Michigan. The event fostered networking among maintainers of repositories hosted on GitHub and funders represented by venture firms and foundations such as Mozilla Foundation and The Sloan Foundation. Community impact included local outreach in partnership with groups like Philadelphia Science Festival and educational programs influenced by curricula at Harvard Extension School and MIT OpenCourseWare.

Notable Events and Announcements

Announcements at the conference included product updates and community milestones from vendors including Anaconda, JetBrains, and Microsoft alongside open source project releases for CPython and ecosystem libraries like NumPy and pandas. Side events mirrored hackathons and sprints characteristic of HackMIT and Major League Hacking, while employer recruiting and job fairs resembled practices at CareerBuilder and LinkedIn career events. Panels and birds-of-a-feather sessions addressed governance topics relevant to organizations such as the Python Software Foundation and projects hosted by the Apache Software Foundation.

Organization and Sponsorship

The conference was organized by volunteers and staff coordinating with the Python Software Foundation and local partners, following governance practices similar to community conferences overseen by Linux Foundation and Mozilla Foundation. Sponsorship tiers attracted corporate partners ranging from platinum to community sponsors, including companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Red Hat, IBM, and Intel Corporation; smaller sponsors included startups and nonprofit organizations. Logistics, code of conduct enforcement, and volunteer coordination employed best practices common to events run by ACM and IEEE Computer Society.

Category:Python (programming language) conferences