PyCascades 2025 - Postlude
I'm back home from PyCascades. I'm glad to be back home, but I sure did have a great time in Portland. Seeing old friends, and meeting new ones. I'm also really happy that my talk seemed to resonate with at least a few people. It's always nice to hear someone come up to you after a talk and hear them say that they liked it. I don't know that I did enough of that this weekend, because there were a lot of really great talks.
The flight back home was a bit of an adventure. My initial gate was at the very end of C terminal at PDX. It was then moved to B terminal so there was a little more walking than I was thinking there would be. Normally this wouldn't be such an issue, but my daughter Abby decided that she wanted to buy about 8 books and I was lucky enough to carry her bag.
Once we got to our new gate the plane was delayed about an hour. I still made it home at a decent enough hour, but it was a longer day than I was really expecting it to be.
Going to conferences can be hard, but they are a hard thing that is worth doing because of the new people you get to meet, and the old friends that you get to see. Ten out of ten, would recommend.
PyCascades 2025
I spoke at PyCascades today giving a talk I gave at DjangoCon US 2024 in Durham last September. The title of the talk was Error Culture and I got some really good feedback from several people in attendance about it. During the talk I saw a lot of head nods, and even got a few laughs (which feels very good as a speaker!)
The one thing that was 'missing' from this talk was the 'nerves'. Before I gave the talk at DjangoCon US I was pretty nervous, but this time I was really calm and I'm not sure why ... or if I was glad that I wasn't nervous.
Maybe I wasn't nervous because I had given the talk before ... or maybe it was because of the amount of time I had practiced. Or maybe it was something else. I'm just not sure.
I'm also not sure if I prefer the lack of nerves before a talk or not. There is something about being nervous before getting on stage that makes you feel a bit more alive, so I did miss the nerves. But that being said, I was happy that I wasn't nervous all day. My talk was at 5pm so if I had been nervous I would have had that feeling ALL DAY!
All that being said, I'm really happy to have been able to give the talk at PyCascades this year. It's been a great conference so far, and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow.
Social Events
I arrived in Portland for PyCascades 2025 earlier today. There was a pre conference social at Hawthorne Asylum Food Cart Pod where we could pick up our badges and register and just get to meet some of the other attendees. There was exactly one person I knew for sure that I would know at the conference (Hi Velda!) and I was hoping that I'd run into her so I would have someone I knew. I'm terrible at social events where I don't know anyone.
I got to the venue a few minutes before the start time (because if you're not early you're late!) and I didn't really see anything that appeared to be related to the conference. I checked the site a few more times to make sure I was in the right place, and then resigned myself to just sit on a bench and play on my phone for a while.
And then, after about 10 minutes, I heard Velda call my name out. I saw her smiling with her contagious smile and knew that my night was going to be alright.
It was a good time, and I got to meet a few people.
It's funny ... sometimes you just need 1 person that you know at a social event to immediately make you feel a little more at home.