I was lucky enough to go to PyCon US 2024, held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from May 17-19. A long trip from my usual home in Melbourne, Australia!

Getting There

I flew from Melbourne to Pittsburgh via San Francisco on United Airlines. I had a very long stopover in San Francisco, about 14 hours, so I left the airport and went into the city! I arrived around 8am, set up my Cutter card, and ventured out on the BART to the Embarcadero. It wasn’t my first time in San Francisco, having spent three months there as a twelve year old, but it was nice to see with adult eyes. I bought a ticket for the hop-on hop-off bus and spent the day exploring. Highlights were walking through Golden Gate Park and watching the EPL at a bar. I also saw a dog that had some John Lennon glasses – he was a real cool cat.

After San Francisco I took a red-eye flight to Pittsburgh, I was pretty exhausted by this point. I managed to get a bit of sleep on the plane but it had been about 40 hours of minimal sleep by that point. I checked in at my hotel and got some breakfast and went straight to PyCon!

Conference Structure

Plenary Sessions

These were in the main hall and consisted of keynote speakers. These were interesting and informative, and an important part of the experience. The lightning talks also took place in the plenary hall, these were short talks that anyone could sign up to give, and you got to hear a lot about the awesome things that others are doing with Python! Highlights for me were the robotics demonstration by deshipu and learning to count using binary by Anthony Shaw.

Talks

I’m sure that you’re familiar with PyCon talks, and being in the room was a very similar experience to watching them on YouTube. I found it more difficult to meet people in these sessions as there was enough space that everyone spread out and didn’t sit near each other. The highlight for me was the talk on Hatch. However, after attending these for one day, and knowing that they’d be available on YouTube eventually, I ended up prioritizing Open Spaces.

Open Spaces

Open spaces were the highlight of my PyCon experience! Each day there were many free rooms that were able to be booked by attendees to discuss whatever topic they’d like. These sessions were free-form, interactive, and non-recorded. I attended some great discussions, including a session on Cyber Security run by the OWASP foundation, a discussion on Python in Excel, a general Data Science meetup, and discussions about what made a Python application “production ready”. I also felt like I got to network more in these sessions than in the talks.

Volunteering

Large parts of PyCon only exist because of volunteers, and it’s great to give back to the community. Examples of things you can do is to volunteer on the information booth, at the check-in counter, or to be a facilitator at a talk. I volunteered on the check-in desk for a few hours on my first day, it was an awesome way to meet people (and combat my jet lag!). The process is simple, signing up via the PyCon app, and people extremely helpful and friendly!

Sprints

These occurred after the main conference, and were an opportunity to contribute to an open-source project. I initially worked on a Rust-based project, and my Rust skills were not up to the challenge! I then pivoted to work on BeeWare and ended up having two pull requests merged. They even gave me this cute challenge coin!

Meals

Breakfast, lunch, and coffee were provided by the conference and these meals were incredible! The organizing committee did an incredible job sourcing catering. It was also a great way to meet people, most tables were half-full, so you could sit anywhere and strike up a chat.

Pittsburgh

I quite enjoyed Pittsburgh while I was there. I spent a lot of time downtown, but it really shined when I ventured further afield.

Some highlights:

• Watching the Leeds play-off with the Pittsburgh Leeds Supporters Club (shout out to the Pitch on Butler)
• Watching the FA Cup Final with the Pittsburgh Man Utd Supporters Club (shout out to the Bulldog)
• The Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh
• Frick Park – this park was massive and I walked for hours!

I also went to see the mighty Pittsburgh Riverhounds play in their scenic riverside stadium. The stadium experience was great, I had a burger from the concession stand and enjoyed a great evening of soccer!

Overall

This was an amazing experience that I would definitely do again. I learned a lot at PyCon and was made aware of packages I wasn’t aware of, and the open spaces allowed me to learn directly from others. I’d highly recommend this to anyone considering to go!