We are happy to introduce our Gold sponsor Visible Alpha!
Visible Alpha is transforming the way Wall Street firms collaborate on research, financial models and other services. With more than 500 employees globally, the rapidly growing company combines advanced data correction methodologies, a secure distribution network and sophisticated analytical tools on the front end to drive efficiencies and transparency into the research process and help firms generate alpha in new and differentiated ways. Visible Alpha has relationships with 600+ sell-side firms and works on four financial content sets - models, research, events and interactions. We specialize in large scale financial data processing and generate deep analytics from that data. Visible Alpha is backed by some of the largest and most respected banks in the world, including Bank of America, Citi, Exane BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Jefferies, Macquarie, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada, Santander, UBS and Wells Fargo. For more information on Visible Alpha, please visit http://www.visiblealpha.com/.
PyCon India Content Team
We are happy to announce that Devi A S L is a keynote speaker for PyCon India 2019!
Devi is an independent software consultant, based in Bangalore. She is a long term Pythonista and her work spans diverse domains ranging from developing high-performance math libraries and cryptography to architecting complex web applications.
Through her work that has surpassed over a decade, she has experienced diverse work cultures at small startups, MNCs and remote teams where she has been through the lows and highs women in tech from different perspectives. She has been an active member of the PyCon India community since its inception, as a volunteer and a speaker.
She can be reached at her Twitter handle: @asldevi.
PyCon India Content Team
We are happy to introduce our Gold sponsor Amazon Web Services!
For 13 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 165 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 66 Availability Zones (AZs) within 21 geographic regions, spanning the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, and the UK. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
PyCon India Content Team
We are happy to introduce our Gold sponsor JetBrains!
JetBrains creates professional software development tools for coding in Java, Kotlin, C#, C++, Ruby, Python, PHP, JavaScript and more languages, as well as advanced team collaboration tools. At JetBrains, code is our passion. For over 18 years we have strived to make the strongest, most effective developer tools on Earth. By automating routine checks and corrections, our products speed up production, freeing developers to grow, discover and create. Today, more than 1000 JetBrains colleagues work out of Prague, Munich, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Boston, and Novosibirsk. Five million customers in 225 countries trust our tools daily. Kotlin, our own programming language, became an official language for Android development in 2017.
Website Link: https://www.jetbrains.com
PyCon India Content Team
We are happy to introduce our Platinum sponsor AQR Capital India Services LLP!
AQR is a global investment firm built at the intersection of financial theory and practical application. We strive to deliver concrete, long-term results by looking past market noise to identify and isolate the factors that matter most, and by developing ideas that stand up to rigorous testing. By putting theory into practice, we have become a leader in alternative strategies and an innovator in traditional portfolio management since 1998.
At AQR India, our employees share a common spirit of academic excellence, intellectual honesty and an unwavering commitment to seeking the truth. We’re determined to know what makes financial markets tick – and we’ll ask every question and challenge every assumption. We recognize and respect the power of collaboration and believe transparency and openness to new ideas leads to innovation.
PyCon India Content Team
The workshop tickets are open, the list of workshops are provided below. Each workshop is 2.5 hours duration. There are a total of 6 parallel tracks, with two workshops in each track, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. You can attend a maximum of two workshops, morning and afternoon.
The ticketing platform is designed to allow booking of only one morning ticket and one afternoon ticket. But if you are booking tickets in two separate purchases, ensure that you are not booking two workshops in the same session i.e. two morning or two afternoon.
It might be possible to attend one workshop and the devsprints. If you book two workshops, you will be able to attend the devsprints only on the second day.
Building, testing and profiling efficient micro-services using Tornado
Geospatial API with Python and PostGIS
Demystifying Natural Language Processing using Python (Scikit-Learn / Keras)
Advance ML - On Improving Performance of Machine Learning Models by Optimizing Hyper-parameters
Serverless with OpenFaaS and Python
Pyro Demystified: Bayesian Deep Learning
Deploying Machine Learning Models at the Edge
PyCon India Content Team
We are happy to announce that Jake VanderPlas is a keynote speaker for PyCon India 2019!
Jake VanderPlas is a long-time user and contributor to the Python data science ecosystem, and author of the Python Data Science Handbook. An astronomer by training, he currently works as a software engineer at Google in Seattle, WA. Recently, his efforts have been focused on data visualization tools, particularly the Altair and Vega-Lite libraries.
He can be reached at his twitter handle: @jakevdp.
PyCon India Content Team
PyLadies @ PyCon India blog series consists of articles that share the experiences of women who have been a part of previous PyCon India conferences. In this blog post, we talk to Aroma Rodrigues, who did a talk at PyCon India 2018.
Aroma Rodrigues is an alumnus of National Institute of Technology Warangal and is currently working as a software engineer for JP Morgan Chase & Co, Mumbai. Her talk on Demystifying Terms and Conditions using NLP in Python at PyCon India 2018 was both informative and enthralling. Read on to find out more about her Python journey and her experience of being a part of PyCon!
Aroma: I started learning Python of my own accord in my third year of college. Till then I had coded web applications for the college registrations/websites, done basic courses in C++ and just learnt Java. I took a specialization on Coursera; it was free back then. It is a very popular course by Dr Charles, who also incidentally spoke at the PyCon 2018 in Hyderabad. It was a pretty hand on course and had specific assignments designed to help a person understand the nuances of coding in Python. The capstone or the final project associated with this specialization was an end to end system to make a crawler, load data, clean up data and visualize it. At the insistence of one of my college seniors, I tried out a few Machine Learning examples off Kaggle, took the learning course on the site and some others on Coursera. My latest was the Neural Networks specialization by Andrew Ng. I used Python in my previous workplace as a scripting language. I used it to automate test cases, create sanity check scripts and basically automate a lot of manual processes, and all of this was not a part of my deliverable tasks. I also used Python for certain POCs (Proof of Concept projects) involving AWS Athena and Alexa. In my current workplace, Python is the primary language of the stack I work in. Python I believe is a very simple language. I also think that once a programmer is comfortable with say two/three languages and the basic concepts of computer problem solving, switching languages and syntax is not a big problem. I love Python's ease, all the open source libraries and features that already exist that make it a very handy language to use for a variety of purposes.
Aroma: One summer morning, my inbox was inundated with emails because of the GDPR regulations imposed by the EU. This made me think, as a citizen of India, or rather any other country out of the EU, what protection weren't we getting? What exactly were we agreeing to when we were clicking on the "I agree with these terms and conditions" button without reading any of them? Because terms and conditions are in principle a legal contract, NLP was the way to go about it. I chose Python because it already had a lot of support/features/libraries for NLP. My main motivation was to find likeminded individuals and helm an open source project because I realized over some time that my project would need more effort than what I could put in. Unfortunately, my workplace (which changed over the months from the PyCon 2018 event) does not allow it's employees to contribute to open source without vetting the project, and this one wasn't approved as it would defy their no-compete clause. My experience when presenting was a little let down as we had a few technical difficulties playing the slides. This also meant that I was swamped by people once I'd come down. So, I got to meet a lot of interesting people. Some people had very different perspectives to what I was trying to achieve and all those ideas are something I've been waiting to try out. I would also rather this project be open source because I don't want to see it monetized, I don't want the world divided in haves and have-nots when it comes to understanding legal agreements based on their financial buying power.
Aroma: The first conference I ever attended was GDD in Bangalore. The fact that I got to speak at one is something precious personally. I got to meet so many prominent personalities in the world of Python there. A conference is where some of the first features of a library, or an application are first unveiled. Apart from this very technical knowledge, the authors, creators and others involved in the projects are generally present there personally. Some projects presented end with a call to contribute, which apart from being a good resume point also adds to your experience and is sort of your first step into the world of open source. The diversity of perspectives when approaching a problem, not only help you in your professional life but also personal, sometimes. It's literally ground zero for the attendants to try out their networking skills and build some relationships. All the job fairs and the goodies are an added bonus.
Aroma: I believe that there is a huge gap when it comes to women and men, in general, even in today's world. For most of us technologists, it started with the girls to boys’ ratios in our colleges. It increases further as you go from being a mere technologist to a senior executive member. And that is exactly where all the decisions are taken, that's who most governments defer to, that's where the directions our lives may take are sometimes taken. This also means that around half of the population of the world is barely represented by their own when such decisions are taken. For this gap to close it is imperative that our ideas be heard.
So, my advice to you as technologists is to apply to events as such, not just to attend, but also speak. Work on your own great ideas, they do not need to be polished and "scrum ready", a small level implementation works. I've observed that women have a very different view of the world, generally a "greater good" perspective. These ideas if ever implemented would lead to the closure of the gender gap that has existed in the human world for centuries.
Lack of inclusion, diversity are not just societal problems, they are also technology problems. The fact that we, being women, are technologists today would also mean that we are one of the privileged few in this world, at least for our gender. Empowering the rest can also be a technology-based problem statement. I've been given this platform, and I feel blessed to have it, looking forward to sharing it with y'all in the near future.
The vision of PyCon India 2019 is to create an inclusive environment that promotes knowledge sharing and diversity in thoughts and ideas. If you're interested to attend, give a talk/workshop or present a poster at PyCon India 2019, please visit: in.pycon.org
PyCon India Content Team
The vision of PyCon India 2019 is to create an inclusive environment that promotes knowledge sharing and diversity in thoughts and ideas. To quote
We would like to ensure that the conference approaches everyone with respect, and that we resolve differences peacefully. In particular, we will proactively extend our invite to women, provide support for students, and ensure that people with disabilities feel welcome at the conference.
Along those lines, we would like to offer the following facilities for women to welcome their participation:
For parents travelling with young kids, childcare services will be provided at the venue for kids aged 5 years or below. If you want to avail childcare for your kid, please mark the checkbox for the same in the ticket registration page.
The organizers will arrange a Kids Corner with games, entertainment and activities for kids of age 5 to 12. If you want to avail Kids Corner for your kid, please mark the checkbox for the same in the ticket registration page.
A separate room will be available for mothers of very young kids for breastfeeding.
The above mentioned facilities are available only for the conference days Oct 12th and Oct 13th, 2019. If there is sufficient demand we will consider extending this to the workshop day and devsprint as well.
On the second day of the conference, a PyLadies Lunch will be hosted, which is focused on the discussion regarding the challenges, problems, solutions, and experiences among the women in technology.
PyCon India 2019 takes the experience of the attendees in the conference very seriously. We are committed to providing a positive, harassment-free conference experience for every women participant. We hope the spirit of the Python community will transcend to create an harmonious experience. We have a strong Code of Conduct to set the right expectations and a Reporting Guide to effectively handle any issue that might arise.
Our team will be happy to help you and assist you to feel safe during the duration of the event.
You may want to bring a companion/caregiver with you who will not be attending the conference. They may just accompany you because you are travelling from afar or you have an young kid for whom would prefer your own caregiver. In such essential cases, you can email us at tickets@in.pycon.org and we will help you through the necessary details.
PyCon India Content Team
As stated in the vision of PyCon India 2019 team, we would like the conference to be as inclusive as possible. Here are a few things we can assure our physically challenged / neuro-divergent attendees, to ensure they have a comfortable and safe environment to connect with the Python community.
We will ensure our website in.pycon.org is accessible, and that our website follows accessibility guidelines.
We will ensure that announcements (like speaker details, schedule, etc) that we circulate before the conference, is accessible.
We will avoid the presence of blinking text, glaring colors in the announcements.
We will ensure that sign boards are designed with good contrast between background and foreground, so that it is visible clearly.
For those who cannot use our ticketing platform, an alternative booking mechanism through NEFT transfer will be provided. Please contact tickets@in.pycon.org
During the registration, you can specify if you have a disability. We will contact you directly to find your needs. We will accommodate requests on a best efforts basis.
If you need a caretaker, you can specify during registration. We can have a special discounted ticket for a caretaker to accompany you.
We have ensured the following at both the venues:
Main entrance, meeting rooms and lunch area are wheelchair accessible.
Ramps near the main entrance will have "No Parking" signs to ensure the way to ramps are not blocked.
Wheelchair accessible restrooms are available at the venue.
Doorways and important routes are at least 32 inches wide.
Stage is accessible for wheelchair users.
Empty spaces in front or back of halls for wheelchair users.
Elevators in the venue where applicable have Braille markings.
Direction signage with optional distance information.
Proper lighting in the pathways to make the navigation easier.
The pathways will be obstacle free. The stall owners, volunteers and attendees will be briefed on the importance, of this.
Layout information and the session schedule, will be provided in advance.
We will make lapel mic available for people with disabilities.
Keep a few chairs reserved in the front for people with visual and hearing disabilities.
The printed session schedule will also be available electronically, in large print.
Presenters will be reminded that all slides, videos and visual demos will need to be described as part of the spoken presentation.
Volunteers to help with slide advancement.
Request presenters to ensure presence of Closed Captions (CC) if there is any video displayed.
A dedicated contact number to call in case of any need or issue. We will share this with you a few days before the conference.
Paramedics will be available at the venue. Their contact information and contact information on local doctors, hospital facilities will be provided.
Volunteers/Office Bearers will be sensitivised to the needs of the physically challenged and neuro-divergent participants.
We hope to collect the feedback from the participants with disabilities so that any gap in facilities can be filled in future events and the best practices can be emulated.
If you have any specific needs, you can enquire at contact@in.pycon.org. We are ready to help.
PyCon India Content Team
