I had the privilege of attending PyCon AU in Melbourne over the 22nd-24th November 2024. After my experience at PyCon US I was excited to attend the Australian version for the first time. In this article I’ll discuss my experience, how it compared to the US version, and some constructive feedback for the PyCon AU team.

Where: Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Center.
When: 22nd – 24th November 2024.

I attended talks on Friday and Saturday morning. Due to other commitments and a very sick cat, I wasn’t able to attend the whole conference.

Talks

The talks I saw were extremely high quality. My highlights were:

• Serpents and Ducks: wrangling data with Python and DuckDB: Simon Aubury gave an awesome introduction to DuckDB which is a tool I’ve wanted to try out but never quite got around to it. Most of my professional work occurs with pandas or polars, so I was excited to see what DuckDB brought to the table. I came out of the talk with concrete use cases and a better understanding of how it fits into the data ecosystem.
• Performant Python: Anna Tisch helped demystify a thought process and toolset around finding code bottlenecks and fixing them. While I was already somewhat familiar with the process, Anna helped fill in my knowledge gaps and made it make more sense. I have a newfound understanding of the cProfile results, for instance!

Volunteering

I’m a big proponent of throwing your hat in the ring to volunteer to get the most out of your PyCon experience. It’s the best way to meet new people, have great conversations, and give back to the community. At PyCon US I worked the registration desk for a few hours, and I thought this time I’d try out session chairing. As a session chair I was responsible for introducing and thanking the speakers, giving them timing cues, facilitating Q&A, and ensuring the session ran close to schedule. I chaired the Saturday morning session in the Goldfields Theatre and it was an awesome experience that I will definitely sign up for again!

My experiences volunteering have been extremely positive. Don’t be afraid to put up your hand when the opportunity arises.

General Experience

The Melbourne Convention Center was a great choice for a venue, and there was a layer of polish on many parts of the conference. The talk intro cinematic was nifty, the food was great, and the talks were excellent. The organizing committee did a great job with so many parts of this conference.

While I have great respect for what was achieved, I do think there are some low-hanging fruit in terms of improving the attendee experience:

• Better layout & signage: Much of my time at the conference was spent just figuring out where things were. From the check-in desk to the lightning talks submission boxes, I needed to ask for help. At PyCon US – the check-in desk was well sign-posted and the first thing you saw when you walked in. Improving this would certainly help the experience.
• Over-reliance on Discord: Things like the birds-of-a-feather sessions were run exclusively on Discord. This relied on you knowing how to use it, find the server, consistently check it, etc. I think relying on it for conference events is not optimal. These would be better served through the PyCon AU website, or physical whiteboards / signage at the conference.

However, I think the most important change to improve the experience the most is creating more space for the birds-of-a-feather sessions or “open spaces”.

Birds-of-a-feather Sessions / Open Spaces

These sessions were my favourite part of PyCon US. For those unfamiliar, these are small unstructured sessions to discuss any topic they wish. I liked them because they were the place to actually meet people and have discussions. Talks are great for content, but meeting someone new at a talk is nigh impossible. At PyCon US, these ran every hour of the day and were co-ordinated through a large physical board. At AU – these were organized on the Discord. This was mostly people trying to organize, I didn’t see a lot of groups actually go ahead. Why are these sessions so important? Well, a conference where the talks will all go on YouTube afterwards needs to offer value to those attending in-person. These open spaces provide both an opportunity for networking and an experience that you can’t upload to YouTube. I understand the logistical issues involved with getting sufficient space for these to occur. There are also concerns about splitting the audience too much between open spaces and the talks. However, I think this is the best part of the PyCon experience and it deserves to be a first-class citizen.

Next time, PyCon AU should have a board like the US conference, and reserve some space for these to go ahead. Make it clear as well that it’s OK for these to run over the top of talks.

Next Steps

It’s easy to throw stones from the outside of a process, but it is harder to actually implement these suggestions. So, the question I ask myself is, what am I going to do about it? While it’s early to start thinking about PyCon AU 2025, I should start preparing myself to step up and help. Not only will this be a great way to get to know others and contribute, I think it will be an opportunity to shape space for Pythonistas in Australia to meet, collaborate, and learn.