I was lucky enough to be the part of PyCon India 2009, a community conference by the Python developer community. The Conference was held on 26th and 27th September, 2009 at Indian Institute of Science (IISC) Bengaluru. I attended the conference with Nithin Kamath. In this post, I am going to share my experiences in the conference.

Day 1 , 26 September 2009

The day was started off with the registration and a introductory keynote by Mr. Prabhu Ramachandran, professor at the department of Aerospace engineering, IIT Bombay. In his talk, he spoke about his personal experiences using Python. (mainly in scientific computing). He also gave a introduction to Mayavi/TVTK tool, which is used for the interactive data analysis. The talk was impressive and stressed on the point that Python can be learned by anyone.. no programming knowledge is essential for it.

The second talk I attended was ‘Buildout for Development and Deployment’ by Baiju Muthukadan. The talk gave a knowledge on python-based build system for creating, assembling and deploying applications. The talk basically included a demo of deploying the application in the production environment, building applications using multiple software components with different configurations.. etc.

‘Waffle – A schema-less data storage on top of RDBMS’ was the third talk I attended, The talk was given by Mr Srinivasan R. The talk gave a introduction to the Project Waffel. Waffle is a project to create an open source implementation of Friendfeed’s “schema-less” storage system on top of a RDMBS using SQLAlchemy. This talk explained about the design, code and usage of waffle.

The forth talk was interesting, ‘Test Driven Development in Python’ by Mr Siddharta Govindaraj. The talk stressed on the practice of writing the test then write the code to pass the test. He also spoke about the Python Testing Framework (unittest, py.test and nose).

The fifth talk was on ‘Automated Testing of Web Applications’ by Sai Venkatakrishnan. The talk focused on the popular web application testing tools available in Python.Tools discussed in this talk include. Windmill, a cross browser and cross platform based testing framework. Twill, a headless browser testing tool which uses Mechanize to emulate a browser and known for its incredible speed. Pylot, a performance testing tool written in python to load and stress test web applications.

Three speakers, Lakshman Prasad,Chandrashekar Jayaraman,Thejaswi Puthraya gave a talk on ‘Django: A blessed webframework for perfectionists with deadlines’. A basic talk running through the features of the django web framework. The talk is concluded with live demo of how django site can be created in a minutes.

Last but not the least for the first day, ‘National Mission on Education through ICT & Python’ by Asokan Pichai and Prabhu Ramachandran. The talk focused on the adoption of Open Source Software in Science and Engineering Education and minimizing the use of commercial tools in Indian science and engineering education at the college level.

Day 2 , 27 September 2009

Second day, Mr. Keerthi Shankar Sekar gave a talk on ‘Python and .NET’, the talk was an introduction to IronPython – a Python interpreter for the Microsoft .NET platform. Mr Keethi gave a demo on setting up IronPython for application development and explained some of the major behind-the-scene differences between CPython and IronPython.

Next session, I was introduced to NLTK by G Jaganadh. NLTK is a Free and Open Source Python package for Natural Language Processing(NLP). The presentation talked about the introduction and demonstration features/functions in NLTK.

The PyCon-09 had some Lightning Talks by various people, to name some them, Mr Arun Ravindran, gave a talk on Pyglet-an object-oriented programming interface for developing games and other visually-rich applications for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Mr Dinesh – a social worker of NGO, gave a beautiful talk on how python (open source) can be used for the welfare of the society by developing softwares for the community.

To conclude the post, it was amazing to be the part of such a big conference. I got chance to meet the python programmers. The conference focused on sharing and pooling the knowledge of python among the developers. The conference was attended by good number of college students. It shows the popularity of Python among the college students. Finally the IIS’s environment is awesome…

Yes Just Three phrases can enrich every relationship. These are just three little But Very Powerful words:

I Respect You / I Trust You:

Respect and trust is another way of showing love. Its conveys the feeling that another person is a true equal. If you talk to your children as if they were adults you will strengthen the bonds & become close friends. This applies to all interpersonal relationships.

I Thank You.:

Gratitude is an exquisite form of courtesy. People who enjoy the companionship of good, close friends are those who don’t take daily courtesies for granted. They are quick to thank their friends for their many expressions of kindness. On the other hand, people whose circle of friends is severely constricted often do not have the attitude of gratitude.

Maybe You’re Right:

This phrase is highly effective in diffusing an argument and restoring frayed emotions. The flip side to “maybe you’re right” is the humility of admitting maybe “I’m wrong”. Let’s face it. When you have a heated argument with someone, all you do is cement the other person’s point of view. They, or you, will not change their stance and you run the risk of seriously damaging the relationship between you. Saying “maybe you’re right” can open the door to further explore the subject, in which you may then have the opportunity to get your view across in a more rational manner.

Please Forgive Me:

Many broken relationships could be restored and healed if people would admit their mistakes and ask for forgiveness. All of us are vulnerable to faults and failures. A man should never be ashamed to own up that he has been in the wrong, which is saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

I Understand You:

People become closer and enjoy each other more if they feel the other person accepts and understands them. Letting your spouse know in so many little ways that you understand them, is one of the most powerful tools for healing relationship. This applies to any relationship.

Go For It:

We are all unique individuals. Don’t try to get your friends to conform to your ideals. Support them in pursuing their interests, no matter how weird they seem to you. Everyone has dreams, dreams that are unique to that person only. Support and encourage your friends to follow their dreams. Tell them to “go for it.”

And Lastly I Love You

We are all unique individuals. Don’t try to get your friends to conform to your ideals. Support them in pursuing their interests, no matter how weird they seem to you. Everyone has dreams, dreams that are unique to that person only. Support and encourage your friends to follow their dreams. Tell them to “go for it.”

So use these magical three words in your daily life to enrich your relatioships.