Newsletter

Hello friends,

I've been struggling to make time to write because, as my lil' bro likes to say, "everything is a lot".

The last few months have been quite full as usual. There have been a lot of warm, connecting, interesting things - friends, conferences and community interactions.

There have been challenging things, like figuring out my business (marketing is not my best) and taking on more leadership responsibilities in different places.

There have been fun things like climbing and guitar.

And a tragic thing - the death of a good friend. And the pain and lessons that came from that. There's a lot to process. I wrote something about it because I felt it needed to be written, but it is outside of my usual niche so I'm keeping it out of the main flow of things. You can read it here if you would like.

Now... onto the good stuff, and the future.

Current focuses

For the next few months I have 3 main focuses:

1. Delivering a new training product
2. Organising PyCon Africa
3. Building a mentorship program for the Guild of Educators

1. Delivering a new training product - Teamwork dynamics

I was approached by a large multi-national organisation and asked to help them to polish up some interactions within one of their teams.

This is an area I am very passionate about.

I spent some time with their leadership, working to understand their challenges, and then developed a 12 week team dynamics course that:

• addresses known challenges
• is adaptable based on feedback from the participants
• aims for real behaviour change

When it comes to corporate training, motivation is always a big challenge. If someone is only attending the training because the boss told them to then they are likely to be disengaged at best.

The way I am tackling this is by:

• making extra time for personal connections with anyone who is either struggling or resistant to the work
• keeping the work grounded in the actual challenges people are facing and demonstrating value early
• making sure there is space for concerns to be voiced

This training aims to make real changes happen quickly - it's about behaviour change.

Of course this is hella difficult - if you have ever tried to build a good habit (exercise, meditation, etc) or break a bad one (smoking, candy, etc) then you will know that simply knowing what to do, and knowing the value of the action, is not enough to make the new behaviors stick.

Training people for behaviour change is tricky. If you are interested in that kind of thing, here is a good book. There is also a lot to be said about habit formation and peer accountability.

If you are interested in this kind of thing for your organisation or team, please get in touch. I'm happy to talk and see how things can be adaped for your challenges and aspirations.

You can see a little write-up of the training here

2. Organising PyCon Africa

Planning for PyCon Africa is underway.

Chairing a conference is no joke, it's a lot more work than I was expecting. It's coming along pretty nicely though.

The challenging thing is really the fact that every single person working on the conference is a volunteer (including me). Nobody is getting paid, everyone taking part is very part time - people have jobs, families and other commitments. But they also have mad skills and a commitment to the community.

Here are a few things to know about:

PyCon Africa will be happening from 8 to 12 October at The Wanderers Club in Johannesburg, South Africa.

There will be tutorials on the 8th, talks on the 9th and 10th, and contribution sprints on the 11th and 12th.

Our call for proposals is open so if you want to speak or run a tutorial, make yourself an account on our website, and apply.

Sponsors

PyCon Africa is a completely non-profit event and we do our best to include as many people as we can. We also aim to spread the love by helping people who don't have the funds to attend.

It's not an inexpensive exercise.

What we do is made possible by our sponsors. We are still finalising some details so I can't mention specific names right now, but we have a few very interesting sponsors stepping up to make this happen.

And why do they step up?

Sometimes it's about a dedication to a community - the Python community is magic. We build tools that shape industries, we plant seeds that change lives, we connect people and foster innovation. Many companies rely on the Python programming community, many choose to pay it forward.

Sometimes it's about brand awareness - PyCon Africa is the biggest Python programming conference in Africa. A lot of people in Africa and beyond pay attention to what is happening here. It's often useful for a brand to be recognised as a supporter of what we are doing.

If you know anyone who might be interested in supporting this event, please get in touch!

3. Building a mentorship program through the Guild of Educators

I've been spending a lot of time interacting with software development educators all over the world. I've seen many people doing incredible work, and many people who need support.

I was recently visiting some pretty-resource constrained schools, helping to teach some kids some basic Python. I got to interact with some of their teachers - these teachers were hungry to do good work, they wanted to boost their own technical skills so that they could better support the kids. The teachers clearly needed quite a lot of support.

I've also had the opportunity to interact with many volunteer-run educational events such as DjangoGirls and Humble Data - here, folks with technical knowledge but often little teaching skill show up and share their time and their expertise with people who want to start learning to code.

Joining some dots can be very powerful.

So here is the basic plan:

I'll be setting up a teacher mentorship program where people who want to teach code, and people who want to help teachers can apply to take part.

I'll gather information like:

• teaching experience and aspirations
• technical experience and aspirations
• numbers of students effected
• age groups of students

And then match mentors to mentees.

Even junior developers would be able to add a lot of value here - if someone has a year's worth of coding experience then they'll still be in a good position to help some of the people I've met.

The general idea is that folks will be paired up for 12 weeks, and they will be set up with some basic structures and recommendations in order to make their time effective. There will also be space for people to share notes and recommendations more broadly. We can see what works and what doesn't.

I've set up a similar mentorship program in the past and it worked very well. So it's just a matter of doing the work.

This is in the very early stages - the doors are not open yet. But if if this sounds interesting to you then please join the guild here.

Filling in the form will add you to an email mailing list. And joining the Discord server will give you access to conversations.

Sponsors needed

If this kind of work is something you or your organisation would like to support please get in touch. Currently the Guild of Educators is quite resource constrained and financial assistance will help make this work possible.

There are many reasons to support - of course the impact is a big one: If you pour resources into empowering those who empower others then it can have a very big impact - if we lift up teachers we lift up the generation they support.

There is also the fact that supporting this work will get your name and brand in front of a lot of people - there are developers from across the world who would step up and help. Your support can help us reach even more people.

Recent conferences and appearances

I recently had the opportunity to attend a few conferences. I got back home just a few days ago.

PyCon US

For a change I didn't do a regular talk. Only a lightening talk. It was weird.

For the most part I was there as a part of the PSF Education and Outreach Workgroup (EOW) that I'm co-chairing. We rebooted the thing a few months ago (it had been dormant for years). This reboot has not been as productive a journey as I was expecting - there has been a lot of bike-shedding. I think we are mostly done with that now and can move onto the real work.

PyCon was useful for the EOW because it gave us a lot of information about what the community needs, where the gaps are. This has helped us refine our goals. Stay tuned if this kind of thing is of interest to you, I'll share updates soon.

If you want to stay in the loop with EOW news and announcements, please join our mailing list here.

I also got to attend the excellent Education Summit and meet the people that run it, Kelly and Shaun. They host the Teaching Python podcast. I'm hoping to take some of the lessons of the PyCon US Education Summit back home to PyCon Africa.

Besides that, I spoke to a lot of people. Really a lot. It was overwhelming in a way - my poor introverted brain took a beating. But it was brilliant.

For me, the hallway track is gold. I can always watch talks online, but it's hard to connect with people online in the same way. I think I found a few more friends, allies and potential partners.

PyCon Italia

I flew straight to Bologna after PyConUS. I had a few quiet days to gather my thoughts before PyCon Italia started.

PyCon Italia is not the same as PyCon US- it's not as huge and busy. It feels more personal. I felt much less fried by it all for the most part.

I took part in a Djangonaut workshop where I introduced a bunch of people to Django and explained why I think it's worth paying attention to.

I also got to talk about DjangoGirls. Django Girls changes a lot of lives, if you don't know about it please check out the website.

I also did a talk at the main conference - I was speaking about modern frontend tools for Python web apps and why the current HTMX craze is a lot more than just a craze. I'll share the recording once it becomes available, it's a good one ;)

INX Prime

I was also invited to appear on a local lifestyle TV show called INX Prime. It was an interesting experience - I was interviewed about software dev education, women in tech and web frontend development. You can see the conversation here

Recent articles and things

As always, I wish I had more time to write! I did manage a few articles over the last while, but life has been very full.

Here are some recent articles:

• Some HTMX Inspiration: A collection of videos and posts about HTMX. If you are on the fence about HTMX, need to convince your boss it's a good idea, or want to see how far you can push it - this resource pack could be helpful.
• Another reason to visit Africa - A lot of people want to visit Africa because it's a great tourist destination. But interacting with local communities can lead to a much richer experience. This one is based on a lightening talk I gave at PyCon US that went down very well.
• Temporary things - This is something I wrote while processing the death of a strange and special friend :/

I have also been working on a Django template repo. It's a starter project that I'll be using for a few of the things I plan to build in the near future. It has a heavy focus on frontend tooling. It is still a work in progress (as so many good things tend to be).

You can find it here.

Upcoming Conferences

I have a few more conferences coming up soon:

• EuroPython: I'll be talking about a topic close to my heart - teamwork. We've all heard of 10x developers - these are hard to find, and 10x skills are hard to develop. But 10x teams can be built. A lot goes down to small behaviours and intentional interactions.
• DjangoCon Africa: I'll be talking about modern web frontends. There are a lot of younger devs there and I hope to set them up with some useful ways to build cool things quickly. I'm also possibly going to take part in a DjangoGirls event there - the plan is to spend some time coaching the coaches to make the event more effective, but this has not been confirmed.
• UbuCon Africa: I'll be talking about how I set up my Ubuntu machine for Python (etc) development and life
• PyCon UK: I can't talk about the details yet, but I'm doing something special there.
• PyCon Africa: Of course

The end

That's all for now!