Kiwi PyCon 2023 – Waihōpai Invercargill – 15th-17th September 2023

(Post theme: ‘Not Given Lightly’ by Chris Knox)

TL;DR

Kiwi PyCon had two days of scheduled talks followed by one day of lighting talks and unconference sessions, held over a Friday plus weekend in mid September in Waihōpai Invercargill. I’ve attended Kiwi PyCon once before, but ten years ago.

The talks were almost all at a beginner level, with a few reaching intermediate. I would have preferred a mix with at least a couple at a more expert level. Some were well done but even for novice level talks not all were great quality.

I thought these talks were good (details below):

Moving from unittest to pytest
A practical guide to using OpenTelemetry in Python
Using React as a template language in Flask
DuckDB: Supercharging Your Data Crunching
Sometimes this is a pipe, or close enough
You’re Doing Great! The underappreciated art of appreciation
Automating Victory: Beating browser games with accessible Python
Building Kubernetes Operators with Python and Kopf
Several lightning talks

The venue was good, and the conference was generally well organised (despite several hurdles), although had significant microphone issues. There was minimal organisation of any social activity (just a quiz night), although obviously the usual meal break socialising took place. There were strong anti-COVID meaasures in place, and a lot of work on diversity & inclusion (but not great gender/ethnic diversity of speakers). They have a good Code of Conduct, but ruined that by ignoring it.

I’m glad I attended for non-conference reasons (the surrounding travel and an induction session I tacked on), and to re-evaluate my opinion of the conference. However, I can’t recommend attending it, unless you’re very early in your Python journey, or are attending strictly for the socialising/networking aspect.

Note that for the last 14 years, Kiwi Pycon has moved around AoNZ (normally alternating between the north and south) but from 2024 will be permanently held in Wellington.

Overall comments

This was the second time I’ve attended Kiwi Pycon (the first was 10 years ago in Auckland), and the first time I’ve travelled for one.

I re-read my notes from attending in 2013 and my recollections of being underwhelmed seem accurate. A lot of this is that conferences in general aren’t that appealing to me (much of the value is in the social aspect and that is extremely unappealing for me, particularly attending solo), rather than anything specific to Kiwi PyCon. This is one of the reasons that I haven’t attended one since, but it’s also partly typically on dates that are personally difficult (close to my son’s birthday, right at the end of the sports season, not coinciding with school holidays or any other natural holiday point). Working more on the product side in the last few years also made it a more difficult sell, although I’m pretty sure I could have managed (or just taken personal time) if I had felt it would be worth it.

(I see that all the links in that post to the schedule are, sadly, now invalid, although the wayback machine appears to have them.)

This year, when I initially decided to attend, I wasn’t sure what I would be doing in September – I knew I would not be with N-able any more, but I didn’t know at that point that I’d have started with Canonical. There was some risk, since asking for time off just after starting a job isn’t a straightforward proposition, but the ticket was inexpensive and I held off booking accomodation and travel until after I’d accepted the offer from Canonical and discussed attending with the hiring lead and hiring manager in advance of actually starting.

(Canonical has a really great policy around travel to relevant Conferences, so even though I’m only just finishing up my second week, I didn’t need to use up my brand-new leave allotment to attend, and probably could have even claimed some of the cost (I felt that wasn’t necessary, since I made the decision to attend prior to even applying at Canonical)).

Last time, I wrote up my experience in prose; this time it’s more bullet-pointed – I’m not sure what that says about how I have changed over the last decade 😀

The conference is more polished than (what I recall of) the last time, which you’d expect being the 12th iteration (Auckland was maybe 4th or 5th?), although it was still pretty good in 2013. In my post at the time, I wrote a lot about how inaccurate I thought the “intended audience” labels were. Interestingly, those do not exist now (I’m not sure for how long). I wonder if that was because of the accuracy issues, or for other reasons. I do think a label (if accurate against some fairly agreed scale) does provide value.

(Amusingly, in 2013 I was keen on being able to attend virtually. That’s very dated now, given both the rise of streaming and making video available and then also the last few COVID years).

Kiwi Pycon
Videos
Company presence (all recruiting?) from: Sharesies, Heenge, Kraken – Octopus Energy, DuckDB, Hype & Dexter, Integration Glue (confusingly similarly named to IT Glue, an N-able competitor)

(Also amusingly: I applied for a position with Kraken earlier in the year, and literally never heard anything back, not even a “thanks but you’re not what we’re after”. So while they had a lot of cute swag on offer, I recommend against applying to work for them).

Friday was more lightly attended than Saturday. I assume this must be people that can’t/don’t want to arrange time off a Monday-Friday job, but can/will do a weekend. It’s interesting because I would much rather have the entire conference during the Monday-Friday period and ‘save’ my weekend (even if I was using a general leave allowance rather than conference leave). Sunday morning was the lightest of all (at least the half I was there for) – probably to be expected given that it was the unstructured part of the conference.

Good

Serious about COVID
Free childcare (although I did not make use of this, so don’t know how good it was)
Use & promotion of te reo, given that it’s the conclusion of Te wiki of Te Reo Māori (this dropped off a bit after the start, unfortunately)
Single track: no need to choose which talks to attend, no awkward talks with minimal attenance, no distractions from people moving from room to room (particularly when tracks get out of timing sync)

Less Good

Waihōpai Invercargill seems like a nice place, but it’s not just far away from the rest of the world, it’s far from pretty much all of AoNZ (intestingly this is changing from 2024 – more on that below) – bad weather can happen anywhere, but this was extra noticeable at the end of the conference when many people got stuck after flights were cancelled and diverted
Single track: some talks are very basic, and it’s awkward to skip
Not a very diverse group of speakers (in terms of gender & ethnicity), with quite a lot from sponsoring organisations
Whoever was doing the AV was very impatient with the speakers and spoke condescendingly and briskly to them – some people are giving a talk for the first time or inexperienced with mics, and it doesn’t take much effort to be patient and a bit kind
Poor mic’ing
The Saturday start almost clashed with the second pool game for the All Blacks in the men’s Rugby World Cup 2023 (I left my room less than a minute after the final whistle, walked through to the main room, and arrived 2 minutes before the opening). Maybe the expectation is that the percentage of people wanting to watch a rugby game is lower at a Python conference than for the wider population, and that this wasn’t likely to be an amazing match, given the history, but this is AoNZ, and it’s the All Blacks, and it’s a World Cup game. There was a Slack ‘#rug-py-con’ channel but there was only two of us there – some sort of communal viewing and starting 30m later would have been nice (there was also a critical Warriors game on the Saturday, with kick-off was 30 minutes after the end of the day’s sessions, so I suppose shifting to be a little later would have hit that)

Bad

Good CoC, social/employment stickets, etc. But the CoC was ignored!

The CoC is a bit messy (it’s confused about what colour t-shirts people will be wearing, and I don’t believe there was a phone number offered as it says) but generally ok. However, I reached out to the CoC team via the provided email, and never received any response at all. It was a minor issue (although from an influential person) but if they ignore reports that are minor, I have to assume they ignore everything. A “thanks for your report – we don’t agree this is a CoC breach, but please discuss more if you wish” type response would have been sufficient, but complete silence is unacceptable.

There are many possible reasons:

Deliberating ignoring messages – this seems very unlikely
Ignoring this specific message because it didn’t seem important – this seems possible, and if so it’s not ok
Ignoring this specific message because of who the subject was – this seems possible, and if so it’s not ok
Getting distracted with the conference and forgetting about the safety channels – this seems most likely to me, and if so it’s maybe the least bad, but still not ok

The best action I could take would be to volunteer to help in 2024 and ensure that it was handled better. If I was considering attending then I would do this. However, since I’m not, I have to recommend that unless you are willing to do this yourself, or unless the organisers publicly address the shortcomings and how they will fix them, you don’t attend.

Value

(For reference, attending Kiwi Pycon 2013 cost me around $400 ($509 in 2013 dollars, although I had no accomodation costs since I lived locally).

My travel was a bit indirect – I took the opportunity to spend 3 days in Christchurch with my new colleague & manager Ben on my way, so flew to Christchurch, then flew to Invercargill the day before the conference (those 3 days were really great). Rather than immediately flying home, I took up a kind offer from Bernie to drive me to Queenstown (checking off another one of the scenic AoNZ drives I had on my list) and stayed a night there before flying home from Queenstown. Canonical kindly paid for my flight from Christchurch to Invercargill (approximately the delta of going directly) as well as some of my accomodation cost in Christchurch.

Flights: $650 (I actually have a lot of AirNZ credit to consume, so in some ways this was ‘free’, and also meant I didn’t take much care in selecting cheaper flights)
Accomodation: $510 (I paid for a nice room; not really necessary given how much it was used, but since I was paying rather than a company I figured I might as well)
Food: $31.50 (dinner Thursday), $24.50 (breakfast Friday), $31 (dinner Friday), $24.50 (breakfast Saturday), $33.20 (dinner Saturday), $24.50 (breakfast Sunday). Morning/afternoon tea and lunch were included with the conference ticket, although I generally skipped morning & afternoon tea (if I was being cost-conscious, I would have skipped buying breakfast and eaten the included food instead). I ate from the restaurant at the accomodation (Thursday it was too late in the evening to be trying to find something else, and Friday I was too tired to bother and the weather wasn’t great) – I’m sure I could have found much better value meals elsewhere
Airport travel: none in Invercargill (courtesy shuttle when arriving, a lift from a friend when departing); I drove to/from the Auckland Airport, roughly 80km/75min (it would take 30 minutes to drive to the closest PT, and I would have multiple transfers, so it’s not particularly viable, unfortunately) – at IRD rates this would be roughly $150; parking at Auckland Airport $107 (this is cheaper than having someone drop me off and pick me up, as well as being considerably more convenient); I was given a lift to Queenstown Airport
Ticket: $296 (early pricing, including a t-shirt – late was $330 plus ~$70 for a shirt)

In total, approximtely: $1,890 (note that this was entirely a personal expense, not paid by Canonical or anyone else)

Conference swag: t-shirt (included in early ticket purpose price); socks & a mini octopus plush, and a large octopus plush (from Octopus Energy); a “gentle steam eye mask” (Japan has such weird cool things that we don’t have!), foldable hand fan, ‘erasable’ pen, and screen & keyboard cleaning tool from Hennge; a small booklet about Te Reo & one promoting Waihōpai Invercargill & Murihiku Southland; post-its and note paper from Hype & Dexter; (cheap) pens from Google; assorted stickers; and a pack of COVID RATs & a mask (not really swag – intended to replace the ones used getting to the conference, although I ended up 5 RATs ahead and 2 masks down).

Venue

As a hotel, the venue was nice – perhaps a little dated, and not amazing, but certainly comfortable. My room had two nicely sized desks, a comfortable bed, and plenty of space. The conference room was large and looked nice, and was generally well set up. The food (both conference and food service) was average at best.

The mic’ing setup was very problematic (surprisingly poor for 2023). There were considerable issues with the signal dropping out (to a receiver that was a few meters away, so definitely should not have been the case), almost always a light echo, and several talks where it was even worse. I’m not sure how this will turn out in the videos.

Session Summaries

Opening 0907-0920

Started 7 minutes late 😦
Paired experienced (Tom) and inexperienced (Jordan?) MCs (and also throughout the conference) – good sustainability/training approach
Conference Director (Carlos) got sick 2 days before the event, so taken over by a new volunteer (who is volunteering at a conference for the first time) at that point!

Keynote 1: Robin McNeill, CEO Space Operations New Zealand 0920-1020

spaceops is one of the conference sponsors (presumably that came with this speaking opportunity)
Nice tying of space to the (Earth) environment (and environmentalism, climate, etc)
Bit of general space history, NZ space history (William Pickering onwards through to Rocket Lab etc)
Covered what spaceops do (owned by local govt, indirectly), and so forth, tangentially related to dev (they have devs, but only offhand mentions)
Good speaker
Several oblique references to Apple 🙂
Some talk about the Warkworth satellite station (very close to where I live)
Very good introduction to space (particularly radio & space) and particularly where AoNZ and especially Southland fit into that picture
Nice ‘soft’ introduction to the conference with a talk generally interesting for people who are into science, without delving deep into technical details

Interesting note: Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for conservation work

Python Code Organisation Without Tears, Grant Paton-Simpson (2degrees) 1047-1112

Essentially an introduction to an opinionated way to handle (project-local) module/package imports
Very introductory (for example, I would expect everyone @ Canonical would already know this and/or have their own opinions on it)
Argues against using relative imports (seems counter to my experience where absolute runs into collisions with paths, like collisions)
Core is an argument that everything should be “import core.module.submodule” where ‘core’ is the top-level code folder
Grant feels that the issue that that existing documentation on this is generally outdated, unclear, or delves deeply into internals instead of giving a “how to”
Good speaker
Unfair comparison with his talk in 2013: I don’t remember the 2013 one in great detail, and my notes on it are minimal, but I believe I liked this one more

Interesting note: prior to his Python work, worked in social sciences on interesting topics like alcohol and gambling issues. All the papers seem locked away (as academic papers often are, sadly).

Moving from unittest to pytest, Tim Penhey (Stacklet) 1021-1200

Had the same realisation as I did (in the shuttle ride to the accomodation) that some of the younger people may have been born after we started using Python!
Talked about initial dislike of pytest because of the implicit magic (conftest.py, and fixture naming matching) (agreed!)
Not entirely convincing arguments about why he changed his mind – basically this came down to “the good outweighed the bad”, which I suppose is also where I have landed, but it seems like you could have most of the good without having to have all the magic. Maybe there’s some other testing framework that does that, although it seems like everyone is standardising on pytest (for these use cases, rather than others like Hypothesis, Playwright or Robot)
Nice examples from real-world (slightly simplified) code unittest->pytest
Several examples of fixtures from real-world code that they find useful (lots of composition)
Medium level, expects understanding of non-trivial code, but would all be known to anyone that knows pytest moderately well (aimed more at people familir with unittest and not familiar with pytest)
Very good speaker

Interesting note: previously worked for Canonical (on Launchpad)

Automate business processes for all your companies with Odoo, Danny Adair & Graeme Gellatly (Roofing Industries) 1333-1417

Automating business process (from a roofing material company, not a software company)
Graeme is from the business side, Danny is the tech side (he was core to the early Kiwi PyCons, started NZPUG, etc)
Considerable amount of LoB automation (seems like a huge amount for a roofing supplies company, but perhaps that’s just ignorance on my side). For example, email comes from supplier with an invoice attached, automatically extract that, match to a purchase order, raise issues if there are differences, otherwise automatically approve an pay, with no human involved
A “this is a tool we use and really love and this is why” talk
General introduction to Odoo and how it’s used
Deep dive into the way that you customise Odoo, with a system that builds classes (and figured out a MRO) on the fly. Interesting, although complex (in implementation, but simple to actually use)
Interesting talk, although not sure that it was to the right audience?
Good speakers, handled the dual speaking well
Some mic issues 😦

Interesting note (Danny): Event Director for Kiwi Pycon 2013, when I previously attended

Interesting note (Graeme): (Previous?) Board member at Waitakere Primary School

A practical guide to using OpenTelemetry in Python, Tom Eastman (Kraken) 1423-1455

Very good introduction to OpenTelemetry (probably too basic if you know OpenTelemetry but as someone who has some experience with observability but not much with OpenTelemetry it was good, particularly since OpenTelemetry has improved a lot in recent time and is a fairly young project)
A “this is something I use and really like and this is why” talk
Very good speaker
Inferior mic’ing
Unfair comparison with his talk in 2013: both good quality, but I liked the fun aspect of the 2013 one more than the practical aspect of the 2023 one

Interesting note: source of the fairly viral quote about the internet being 5 sites filled with screenshots of text from each other (CW: Twitter/X link)

Using React as a template language in Flask, Paul Hallett (Sharesies) 1457-1525

Replacing server-side HTML with React, but page-by-page rather than as a SPA. In particular, keeping the routing done with Flask. At the same time, wanting to have strong types that are shared between the Python and Typescript code. Created tooling to automate generation of Typescript that had type definitions based on the type definitions in Python.
Then expanded this to also generate Typescript that provides types (and generally code-competion in an IDE) for API use, but without using (e.g.) OpenAPI since everything is in one local space.
It seems like using something like Vue would have been a simpler way to solve the “TypeScript/JS Framework but page by page” problem, although the coupled typing in the API would still be an improvement over that.
Explained the Sharesies use, but also has a similiar OSS implementation
Interesting, assumed an ability to keep up with examples without much context, which generally worked (started out with some overly basic explanations, like “this is how decorators work”, but jumped quickly past that)
Very good speaker

Interesting note: has a (very new) blog reviewing (HTTP) APIs

DuckDB: Supercharging Your Data Crunching, Richard Wesley (DuckDB) 1550-1624

Significant mic issues 😦
General introduction to DuckDB and where it fits in the DB space, and what the advantages it offers are
Good level (would be known to people that use DuckDB, but e.g. if you use something like Clickhouse and don’t know DuckDB this is a good intro)

Interesting note: worked for Tableau for a long time

Sometimes this is a pipe, or close enough, David Hood 1628-1657

Non-technical talk
Aimed at where he (a data journalist) sees developers needing help when moving into working with data
Important to always consider and document the context and the bias, how valuable the data is depends on what you are wanting to do with it
Can do much with very simple analysis – complicated models are really needed more when figuring out ranges
Very interesting, even though it seems like it would maybe would have been better at a different conference
Talked about examples have seen previously on Mastodon (e.g. time of day/week driving injuries/fatalities, changes in COVID incidence after changes in legal requirements)
Important to understand what you are doing with the data and the context
Good speaker

Interesting note: yes, it’s the David Hood

Using Python to build gateways to space, Chris Bull (Space Operations New Zealand) 1703-1739

Book-ending the first day with spaceops
MIMO scheduling (multiple ground stations, multiple spacecraft, need to maximise the communication, choosing which station to talk to which craft)
He mentioned that he put together the talk the day before, and it was a little apparent. He spoke well and knew his material, but it didn’t have a lot of structure – some of it was praising GNU Radio, some was about what spaceops does, some was (overly trivial) why Python is good/bad, some was about how they’re using Python – it was like 2 good and one less good lightning talks merged into one
Good speaker

Interesting note: interned in Whangārei – maybe from there?

Saturday Conference Opening 0906-0915

No notes

Keynote 2: You’re Doing Great! The underappreciated art of appreciation. Loren Crary, Director of Resource Development of the Python Software Foundation 0917-1007

Very good speaker
Brief intro to the PSF
Brief speaker bio
Why expressing gratitude (written, spoken) matters, tips on how to get better and more regular at doing this
Really good (non-technical) talk
This is something I am also super passionate about (particularly in work, where I think it’s forgotten or overlooked more than elsewhere, and where ‘forced’ appreciation is common and not useful). Hopefully this changes how people behave

Interesting note: was asked to speak at Kiwi PyCon 2023 in late 2012, just days after starting work at the PSF!

Python: from the perspective of an applied mathematician, Indranil Ghosh (Massey University 1041-1107

A speaker in shorts & a t-shirt, many thumbs up!
Generally covering his journey to Python, and what he uses it for as a PhD mathematics student
Simple to understand although some mentions of mathematical concepts

Interesting note: a poet!

Refactoring for fun and profit, Evan Kohilas 1117-11:58

Polished talk (given previously at PyConAU I think)
Good speaker
Advocating using formatters (black), linters (ruff), IDEs (PyCharm), annotation (monkeytype, mypy), enums/databases, function signatures, documentation, DRY/SOLID, tests, profiling (scalene)
Very introductory (but very good as an introduction)
Would likely have been better as a 15 minute shorter talk (or maybe just not as the slot before lunch)

Interesting note: interesting talk from 2020 on hacking playable Ads

Panel: A conversation for inclusion in tech, Samantha Nickson, Loren Crary, Kelsey Vavasour, Daisy Brenecki, Tom Eastman, and Christopher Neugebauer (replacing Carlos Cordero) 1220-1302

(I’m cis, straight, white, middle-aged, male, and work in a well-paid industry (the privilege jackpot), so that and my lack of experience on the minority side may bias this)
Held during lunch, quite lightly attended
No intro of the panelists 😦
Weird having the moderator stand while everyone else sat
Moderator too quiet
Very low energy
Loren was great, although didn’t say a lot; Kelsey was the strongest panelist; Daisy had notes, which seemed odd for a panel
No opportunity for questions from audience, which seems odd for a panel
Speaker diversity at the conference was noticeably lacking PoC, was light on women (every single session on Friday was given by someone that presented as male and ~white (I realise that there are issues with assuming gender & ethnicity) – Saturday was better, but not hugely). It would have been interesting to have introspection on that

Delivering Customer Projects in a Rapidly Evolving Python Landscape, Romi Dexter, Benoit Chabord 1331-1412

Talk from Integration Glue and Hype & Dexter (sponsors), these are the founder/co-founders of the two businesses (which are connected in some way I didn’t fully get)
Practical suggestions particularly around improving devex
Quite a practical talk for a sponsor talk
Talked about the specific tools they use (Ruff, Pyright, Black, pytest, coverage.py, Github Actions, Sentry, GCP, Clickup, Google Docs, Cookiecutter)
An introductory level talk
Good speakers
A little on the long side

Interesting note (Romi): was previously CIO for GrabOne

Interesting note (Benoit): first AoNZ role was at Yellow (Pages)

Building Kubernetes Operators with Python and Kopf, Sam Bishop (Runaway) 1422-14:50

Much more interesting level (it felt intermediate, although if you know k8s then probably more novice) and nice speed and consistency working through it
Nice slides
Exactly what the topic says (not that much else to say: exactly what was on the label)
Good speaker
Easily the best talk
Recommended packages: pendulum for datetimes (I believe I’ve seen this recommended before), deltaman for parsing human-readable time intervals, dynaconf for configuration management
Recommended tool: Lens

Interesting note: had previously seen his very good talk on timekeeping

Robust Data Workflows Made Easy: Classes with Pandera and Pydantic, Nathan McDougall 1500:1522

Essentially exactly what the topic says (not much else to say: exactly what was on the label)
Good speaker
Entry-level to Pandera/Pydantic, but very good for that

Interesting note: interesting project for citation checking

Building an OAuth2 Authorisation Server with Flask and Authlib, Sam Watson (Runaway Play) 1548-1611

Walkthrough as per topic (not much else to say: exactly what was on the label)
Intro level, technical, assumes can keep up with code

Interesting note: the OAuth2 auth server described went live a ~week before the conference (and is working well so far)

Automating Victory: Beating browser games with accessible Python, Jon Gaul (Heenge) 1620-1651

Very good speaker
Project management, useful I/O libraries
Reminded me of Tom’s talk from 2013. Fun but pratical
Technical issues with live demo (screenshoting/GUI automation with projector screen secondary) but had backup videos
Close second for best talk of the conference
Basically: scripting an app by taking screenshots, using (basic) computer-vision to recognise the board, some (simple) rules to decide on moves, and then GUI automation to make the move, aiming to beat the speed run times (the game is like Minesweeper, but with levels of the dangerous squares, so much more maths, Momono Sweeper)

Interesting note: wrote a kid’s book (my guess is that it’s this one)

The Complexity of Simplicity, Christopher Neugebauer 1655-1725

A lot of words to not really say anything
Basically delved into “simple is better than complex”, pointing out that often “simple” is achieved by moving complexity elsewhere, and that it’s best when complexity is managed by those who are most familiar with the domain

Interesting note: obnoxious to audience members but received an award from NZPUG; pfft.

Quiz night

Python trivia knowledge (teams of 8)
I skipped this. I needed a break by this point, and I didn’t believe the extra COVID risk was worth it for taking part in a quiz. I also lacked the energy to find 7 other people looking for an extra team member (it seems like the conference could have facilitated something here, even if it was just a whiteboard where you could post teams looking for people, or a Slack channel – except that most of the attendees seemed missing from Slack)

(Interestingly, this was the only organised social activity – e.g. there was no conference dinner).

Sunday Opening and Awards 0906-0927

Typical conference thanks etc – done early to accomodate people needing to get a limited number of flights out of Waihōpai Invercargill
General AoNZ Python history & update
Dropping having the conference in the location of the organiser (rotating North & South island), having it in Wellington every year instead

Changing where the conference is located going forward is an interesting choice. I’m sure there must have been much debate about this (although I’m a NZPUG member and don’t recall seeing it). I can see both advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

I assume some logistics are easier, particularly if you tend to stick with a single venue and so forth
The ‘average travel’ probably decreases, given that Wellington is located in the (rough) centre of the country, although this sort of calculation is tricky, because in reality it really depends how the origin is distributed
Travel is likely much simpler for international travellers, since you can potentially arrive in AoNZ in Wellington, or at worst would have one connecting flight from Auckland (and there must be many flights Auckland/Wellington every day), rather than travelling to more off-the-path locations like Waitangi or Invercargill

Disadvantages:

A drawcard (I assume for others as well) is seeing other places. This was certainly the case this year for me. I’ve been to Wellington many times (likely most people have) so there’s no appeal there, and even if you haven’t been, then you will have after attending once.
Either the organiser needs to be located in Wellington, or have members of their team in Wellington, or you have to do a lot of organising remotely – this is probably not too difficult this year, and if you’re re-using pieces (e.g. a venue) then it matters less
There are no cheap travel/accomodation years for anyone outside of Wellington (although every year is a cheap travel year for those in Wellington). Not having to pay for accomodation or flights was definitely a drawcard the first time I attended, and I imagine that it still would be if I was early in my career – maybe a lot of this is handled by companies, but it still hits students for sure
Development/boosting the local Python communities (outside of Wellington) is lost

It’ll be interesting to see how this goes.

Lightning Talks, Christopher Neugebauer 0933-10:55

I enjoyed many of these, although a lot were good as lightning talks rather than something where I’d want to see a 30-45 minute version.

Jonas, Promo for PyCon APAC 2023 and other PyCons in the APAC region
David, Live Updating the COVID Info site
Grant, Opinion that Python (and Python-like, e.g. Mojo) will become the norm for development and other languages all exceptions (by 2045)
Sarah Greeff, Issue of low uptake of programming by females in high school education
Sam, “Loss & Grief” (the Tamagochi Effect, need to be careful about downstream consequences of development)
Simon “DevOps for Highly Regulated Environments” – comes up against arguments that devops practices conflict with security regulations, but argues that it’s entirely possible
Kristina Photos of the conference – Kiwi PyCon is about people, and not only developers, basically thanking everyone through photos (started with te reo & a mihi :tada:)
Steve Baker Wavetable Synthesis, live demo playing an instrument (electric ukelele) (music and live demos always very popular)
Kelsey Vavasour How to bring more people into programming (started with a te reo greeting :tada:)
Kesara PyPI Supply Chain Attacks (brief history of improvements that PyPI has made recently, and where there is still work to be done)
Warwick ?Walter? Basic introduction into binary/logic gates for addition (half/full adders), live demo of a home-built 1-bit adder with transistors (again live demo with hardware always popular)
Chelsea Finnie Learn A Sea Shanty (audience participation, learning a sea shanty), mostly just an excuse to get the room to sing a song together (audience partipation and music popular with a subset)
Hugh Davenport Showing a toy OS he has written (in x86 assembly), how he debugs issues with it using Python, live demo (one-handed), includes extremely minimal Python in the OS
Vicki McKay What to do when you don’t have a plan (decide to do something, follow intructions, listen and learn, follow the most passionate person), plan things, unclear on the message of the talk (maybe it was that people should participate in groups?)
Joelle Maslak How Networks Surprise Developers – works for Netflix, examples of how physical networks aren’t always as expected, how distance matters to speed
Daisy Talked far too fast (not the point of lightning talks), history of supermarket development in Austrailia and AoNZ (!)

Unconference

During the first two days of the conference attendees could suggest topics for ‘unconference’ sessions, and vote on suggested topics. My ride for Queenstown was leaving just before this, and none of the topics were ones I was particularly wanting to take part in, so I skipped this.

I think the rise of social media over the last few years have significantly decreased my interest in unconferences. It (possibly unfairly) feels like this would just be 30 minutes of ‘arguing with someone on the internet’ but in person. If there was a practical point, that would be different, but if it’s just a discussion, then I don’t feel like this is going to give me value, and will just get me annoyed. Again, this could definitely be unfair, particularly since I didn’t try these.

The topics were:

Can the Python Community Support Python Education in NZ? (answer: yes – and for the details this really relies on having people from education here, and I don’t think there were enough)
How Do We Improve the Python Packaging Experience, Especially for Beginners? (this seems like a talk for a bigger PyCon or elsewhere)
What are the Most Fun Things You’ve Done with Python (seems like this should just be lightning talks)
What Should Change in the Python Language Over the Next 10 Years / What Are Python’s Biggest Regrets or Mistakes? (this seems like it would drive me crazy)
Southern Tech: Is There Interest in Setting Up A Tech Advocacy Group Across Invercargill/Dunedin/Lakes District (probably good, but entirely out of my scope)
Is ChatGPT/Copilot etc Ruining Programming (this would also drive me crazy)
What Does Best Practice Python Data Science Look Like in 2023? / Do Notebooks Rot the Brain? (just not interesting for me personally)
What Can Python Learn from Other Languages? (another drive me crazy one)
Linters: Who Should Use Them? Which one? (Everyone, whichever one suits you/your team)
GNU Radio Live Demo (probably better during lunchtime)

Conference Closing

I obviously skipped this as well.

Closing Thoughts

I had three reasons for attending Kiwi Pycon this year:

To re-evaluate my now 10-year-old conclusion that attending Kiwi Pycon was not high value for me
To continue exploring areas of AoNZ that I haven’t travelled to
Originally, I was potentially not going to have a full-time development job at this time, and thought it could possible have some job search value; instead this became the value from combining the trip with working in Christchurch for a few days

I did get to see more of Christchurch, and visited Invercargill for the first time, and did the Invercargill->Queenstown road trip that I was keen on, so from that perspective it was a win. The tacked on induction visit in advance was really great (and also very valuable) and I doubt I would have done that without having this additional reason (Christchurch isn’t that far from Auckland, but it’s far enough, as compared to Christchurch and Invercargill when already travelling), particularly since Ben & I would be meeting in Riga in a few more weeks anyway. It’s interesting that the most positives from my trip are in this area, which vanishes when the conference becomes anchored in Wellington.

I did get a chance to re-evaluate attending Kiwi PyCon, and that was valuable. My conclusion ends up the same: I don’t get enough value out of it to attend. This is even more the case than in 2013, since I could watch any of the talks when the videos are available (fairly soon, I expect), so it’s really the experience and the networking that’s providing value. There were plenty of interesting and smart people, and I had some interesting conversations, but nothing that was so amazing (or so unable to be replicated online) that I would pay >$1000 and consume 3 days for it.

If the conference had more of the really great talks, and especially more that were aimed at people that have been using Python for 10+ years, then that might change my opinion (this is something I thought would have changed since 2013), although there’s still the “videos are all online” counter. I would like a mix something like 10% beginner, 80% intermediate, 10% experts, and 20% ‘fun and interesting’ rather than entirely practical, and roughly 30% soft, 70% technical talks. Obviously, other people will have other tastes.

If you’re someone that really enjoys the social & networking aspects (I don’t) or looking specifically to be hired by one of the sponsors or are very early in your Python journey or want somewhere to practice a talk you’re going to give elsewhere, then it could be worth it for you. However I have to recommend everyone against attending Kiwi PyCon because of the Code of Conduct issue. That’s a complete blocker to attending, and should be for anyone in 2023 and beyond (unless it does get publicly addressed).

Thanks to Ben for reviewing a draft of this post.

Kiwi PyCon 2023 – Waihōpai Invercargill – 15th-17th September 2023

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