Obey the Testing Goat!

Coming to Pycon? Want to help some beginners to get to grips with Python, and get the most out of the conference? I need your help!

Having observed the surprising number of beginners to be found at Python conferences, I organised a "beginners' day" at last year's EuroPython in Bilbao. We had about 30 beginners attend (from a crowd of 1200 at the conference) -- quite a few science types, some people who already knew another language but wanted to learn Python, and a few total beginners. Everyone seemed to leave with lots of nice things to say about it.

Here's a couple of clips:

• A happy beginner

• The oath of the mentor

I'm running something similar at Pycon this year, on the first day of the tutorials:

Python Bootcamp at Pycon USA 2016, May 28th

The basic idea is shamelessly stolen from the awesome DjangoGirls, and is mainly structured around:

• self-directed learning based on a selection of Python tutorials (one for total beginners, one for sciencey types, one for web developers, one for programmers who already know another language, and so on)

• coached by friendly Python developers sitting near each attendee

• supplemented by a few short lectures on the Python "ecosystem" (what is the cheese shop / the bdfl / a pep / pip / requests / IPython notebook / etc etc)

There's more info in the repo.

I need more coaches! I would love to get to a 3-to-1 ratio of attendees to mentors. You don't have to be an expert Python developer, you just have to be a friendly person, that remembers how tough it can be as a beginner, and that wants to help. I expect quite a few "data science" people in particular, so if you have skills in that area (even if you've only just learned them yourself), I want you!

Check out the DjangoGirls coach manual for a flavour of the kind of attitude I'm trying to cultivate. And don't forget you'll have to swear the "Oath of the Mentor", as per the link above.

Helping beginners is a great feeling, I hope you'll join me! Emails to [email protected] please :)

PS: This is not a free event for attendees, but I am donating my entire fee for it back to the PSF. Minus, perhaps, a small budget set aside for "thankyou" drinks and cakes for coaches :)