We went through how to build a blog using Django and its class-based views.  We also went over Model-View-Controller concepts, and how they apply to Django.  We wrapped up with a quick overview of how easy it is to deploy an application on Heroku (way too easy!).

I’ve made a GitHub repo for people to fork & contribute.  I didn’t find an easily accessible tutorial for building a blog, or for building a simple app using Django’s class views, so hopefully this will grow to something useful in the Django community.

Til next time!

I’d say we had about ~50 attendees for our first event, which is awesome.  There was so much excitement in the room that I couldn’t even get a chance to hack on my projects!  Klout had a great space for us, and LinkedIn provided [too much] food.   And a huge thanks to Robyn Navarro for taking time out of her schedule to come take some awesome pictures of the event!

I’ve seen some very positive reviews on the meetup site, and I hope this group continues to grow with such energy.  Many women really appreciated the space and time to either learn Python or to hack on projects with new friends.  I even had the pleasure of meeting folks from the Udacity team; I think it’s such a great thing they’re doing: free online classes, specifically CS classes taught with Python.  We scored some free t-shirts too!

There was about 2/3-ish women with their +1′s.  I was really surprised how a few folks stepped up and helped out folks learning Python and Django.   For one of the newbie corners, we worked through Learn Python the Hard Way, where people earned stickers for each exercise they completed (cute, huh?).  Same theme with learning Django.  Who doesn’t like earning gold stars?!

PyLadiesSF is hoping to host an event or two in May, including an intro to Python & Django workshop, and perhaps a Speaker Series.  Stay tuned!

—–

I am proud to present the founding of PyLadiesSF, the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of PyLadies, a global mentorship group for women in the Python community.  Our mission is to promote, educate, and advance women in the field of engineering who love (or loathe…) Python.

We will have monthly events, ranging from all group hack nights to various experience level bootcamps to weekly study groups.  We have folks who want to learn programming, who use Python as a hobby, or develop in Python.  Ladies coming from a different language, a scientific & academic background, or making a career transition.

It’s so fantastic to see these women so excited about learning and about making PyLadiesSF and every PyLady succeed.  I’ve had many folks, women and men, approach me asking how they can help out.

What surprises me the most is someone hasn’t done this before; why no SF chapter until now?  We’re Silicon Valley!

But I am so excited to be a part of this, to bring the Python community together in a big wave of support for women.  I found that folks in the Python community, in the CS/engineering community as a whole, recognizes that there is an imbalance of gender.  It is partly a great thing because it is very easy to find resources to help women learn and grow.  But it’s also unfortunate because no one puts an active effort towards advancing women.

The ladies I’ve met and worked with are extremely enthusiastic about learning.  It’s certainly difficult to pursue such an endeavor; coding is hard!  But it’s a lot easier to ask those “stupid”, naive questions in a non-competitive environment.  Kaitlyn Trigger of Lovestagram had a great metaphor for programming:

How in the h&ll do you get from step 1 to step 2?  Either a magic wand, or you are a carpenter by nature.  Similar with engineering: talk to development folks, ask for a product and it magically appears all constructed.  I had a hard time grasping how a for loop, classes, and methods can turn into an architecture for a cloud fileshare system, or a social networking site, or even a simple greedy change calculator.  I found that having someone that also comes from this “what is this wizardry?!” point of view helps break down the steps to actually create a meaningful program.

Enter: ME!

I invite anyone who has an interest in Python to come check us out.

The talk is tentatively scheduled for July 19th at 1:40pm, at the Oregon Conference Center.  The conference, including tutorials and such, runs Monday July 16th through Friday July 20th.  Hoping I can actually make it to a lot of the conference this year, it looks like to be an awesome schedule.

Three of the speakers were not strangers to me, odd enough!  Christine from PyLadies in LA spoke about increasing involvement of women in the Python community.  And of course, spreading the Pyladies ingenuity to San Francisco with the help of yours truly!

Kaitlyn Trigger of lovestagram.com, a valentine overlay to instagram photos, spoke as well.  I had the fortunate opportunity to invite her to one of my Women Who Code python workshop nights.  I loved her message that one can not learn how to code by herself; it takes a village!

Lastly, Sasha of Women Who Code gave a great talk on how she starting the group, and her motivation behind it.  Too bad she’s now in NYC :-/

I would highly recommend attending a Girl Geek dinner in the future!

Kaitlyn Trigger from Lovestagram

I should post more so I don’t have to do such a digest of what’s been going on!

It all started when I took my first CS class.   Well, it sucked. Learning first in C, I thought, “Well, I know some of these words.” I [re]assure you, C does not come naturally to a (former) financial analyst.  I felt I was drowning: I failed both exams.

I had the pleasure of attending Science Hack Day, where I was first exposed to Python.  Then it was all downhill from there…

My final project was inflatr.com, which used the awesomeness of Python and my undying interest in economics.  Python is actually an interesting language; it poses as an easy-to-learn language for beginner coders, but it more so leverages the coder to build programs and scripts efficiently by taking away a lot of the tediousness that other languages are known for and where beginners drown.

So then I had the audacity to start up a study group for women wanting to learn Python.  Standing on the shoulders of the newly founded Women Who Code group (growing at a linear rate of 100 members a month without skipping a beat!).  Never had I organized a group like this before, but let me tell you: it was so easy, it begged to be done.  Within a few days of conceiving of the idea, I had gotten the ‘okay’ from Women Who Code, found space at Dropbox who generously agreed to hosting the group for 8 weeks and join them for dinner every meetup, and secured Guido van Rossum, the Benevolent Dictator of Life at Google, aka the founder and creator of Python, to kick off the first event.

The first meetup guest list filled up within hours.

By the time the study series got into its grove, I received sponsorship from PyLadies to attend the mecca of all Python users – PyCon, down in Santa Clara.  On top of that, I received a grant that included two free PyCon registrations (normally ~$300) as well as $100 off registration, and $300 to rent a car to bring these women from the SF area to PyCon.  Lastly, I scored a FOSS Sponsorship booth that allowed Women Who Code to represent and promote the group at the conversation.  Seeing as how we didn’t have any of the typical ‘marketing materials’ that one would need at a conference, I asked for and instantly received another grant for $200 to get a banner, a poster, some stickers and 5000 business cards all with Women Who Code’s name and mission.

It was one of the best experiences ever, both attending PyCon and working with the women that attended my study group.  My name and actions within this community are known before I arrive anywhere now.  There is so much energy and crave to learn Python in a safe environment that I just can’t stop now. PyLadies approached me a couple months ago to start a San Francisco chapter, and now I’m going full force!

As an aside, as a result of PyCon, I applied to be in the NAO developer program, which means I can develop applications for a robot, a really awesome, cute little robot that I want to make my friend.  My application ideas are geared towards natural language processing and machine learning with Python.  Now, all I have to do is raise about $4200 to get the robot over here from France.  Any takers?  Generous benefactors?

So now my current projects are to get PyLadies SF going, to clean up and implement new applications to my inflation site, to continue coding in Python and increase my algorithms education, and to continue being awesome.

Stay tuned: this weekend I’ll produce a postmortem on my recently passed laptop.

Hey you!

…

YEA YOU!

check it: inflatR.com

My new site.
Still raw – soliciting for feedback.

SO GIVE FEEDBACK.

kthxbai.

I just had an awesome weekend.  I attended San Francisco Science Hack Day  and it was awesome!  It was two full days, so let me lay it out for you:

about me: programming & science n00b
mission: to make & hack things with SCIENCE
vision: to hack data from Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider for better accessibility and understanding, esp for enthusiasts but n00bs like me.

results:

• my knowledge of particle physics went from 0 to … some? probably 1 if it’s on a scale of …100.
• crash course in python and javascript programming
• +5lbs from bountiful free food and alcohol
• Increased tolerance to caffeine
• I made THIS!
• The group collectively put THIS website together!
• 10 GBs of LHC data, out of the gazillion terabytes of data both available & unavailable to the “public” (I say with quotes because not exactly sure where I could even get the publicly released data…)

Note: If you’re interested in the source code, it can be found on GitHub under mattbellis.

So, what those two graphs mean that I put together is [I THINK, IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY] a reflection of two different ways to calculate mass of muons. Muons produce when two protons collide together, along with other particles, including mesons. The second graph (using Einstein’s equations/special relativity), you can see a second “hump”, signaling that there actually is a second meson existing that the first graph didn’t show.

All ‘n all, thanks to my intro course to computer science, I was able to have somewhat of an understanding of what was going on, as well as built upon my skills (especially for my final project coming up!).   All I have to say for those n00bs to any new skill: Dive right in.  That’s the best, most fun way to learn!

♠

Other hacks that were done over the weekend here.

Just a bit of an update for my very few readers .  I’ve just relocated to the San Fran bay area for the significant other.  So far, I’m loving it!  So much to do here, great weather, I can’t complain.

I’ve also started taking a computer science class through Harvard.  Boy, am I loving it!!  Wrote my first few simple programs in C this week.  It’s really funny how much one can focus with the task at hand is so fun.  Doing these problem sets for the class remind me of some math courses I took a while back.  I’d be excited to get started on homework.  I’m thinking this won’t be my last compsci course.

’til next time, folks!

I sit here at work begging to be distracted.  At my former job, I’d sit in a single room with 4 other people around my age, no cubical, just a big desk, and TVs blaring 3 different news/financial channels.  It was awesome!  If I needed to focus, I’d tune out everyone; if I needed a little break, I’d watch Squawk on the Street for 5 minutes; if I needed help, I’d pick up my head and ask my neighbors.  In college, I’d always study in my sorority lounge and/or with CNBC on.  It’s how I learned to do things.

A complete 180° at my current job.  I absolutely hate it when it’s quiet.  I read some news (or blog…) while concurrently keying in some forecasting assumptions.  I fear that my employer will think that I’m not being productive, when in fact this is the only way I can be productive!  Maybe my employer will think that I’m not “present” at work when I have my phone at my desk.

I’ve grown up not with a silver spoon in my mouth but a computer always at my finger tips (thanks, Dad!).  As the tech scene comes up with new ways to become even more connected to the world around us, it’s now becoming a part of me, how I work, how I need to do things.  I’m certain others share this sentiment.

This is a change in generations.  If I’m going to be chained to a desk, I will work at the desired speed and productivity level to please my employer, but under the conditions that I know I can focus: with distractions.  I hope that employers in the future will be tolerant of the everyone’s-a-blogger-now-a-days worker-bee.