PyCon ES 2022

After having my talk (in English) accepted, I was told that PyCon Spain will be in Spanish… I start learning the language a few months back and see if I can survive… and I did!!!

Day 0 - Arrival

Just before flying to Granada for the conference, I was on a Camino and was just passed the border and spent the night in a small village called Oía. So I already have an understanding that I cannot expect everyone to speak English. I am in the mood of trying to speak Spanish at any chance, and it was fun.

I met up with a few people including the organiser of the conference. We had tapas and I was mind blown by the amount of food that we were given.

Day 1 - Workshops

The first day of the conference is workshop day and for people to pick up the badges. The sponsors already have the tables ready. I mainly spend time staying in the “hall track”. I tried to speak with some people. Some of them are happy to speak English with me but what I love the most is trying to speak to people who do not speak English and I have to try my Spanish hard.

After picking up my badge, I spend some time working and finished working on my talk.

We also have the dinner for the minorities (PyLadies plus other communities that support minorities in the Python community). I would say the vibe is super nice, I got a chance to talk to different people (in English and Spanish). People asked about my work and I can tell them about Anaconda and PyScirpt.

The dinner starts and ends quite late (especially for me who is from the part of the world where we have dinner around 6 pm), by the time I get to bed it’s already passed 1 am.

Day 2 - Conference

Despite the lack of sleep, I arrived at the conference on time for the opening and the keynote.

After a brief coffee break, I have giving my talk. The audiences are very interested in the topic and maybe we will see PyCon ES having sprints in the future.

See my talk video recording

Then I went to a very interesting talk. From the technical point of view, it is about using MicroPython to control a mortar to vibrate. I would say the open-mind-ness and diversity of PyCon ES is one of the best in all the PyCon that I have ever been to.

After lunch, there is entertainment - a band is doing 90s anime and movie covers (I was told the performers are scholars in the university)

Then, I took a break from the conference and then prepare my first ever lightning talk in Spanish… I would say it is my light talk of the year.

After the conference, I attended the speaker and organiser dinner in a fancy dinner reception. I feel my artier for tech conferences are totally under-dress on that occasion. But the food is good and now everyone is so keen to teach me Spanish and that makes me very happy.

Day 3 - Conference

The last day of the conference is always challenging after all the socials every night. But I keep my discipline and be at the conference for the keynote in the morning. After that, I retrieved into the quiet room to do some organising work.

Then I went to a few talks after lunch, I try my very best to understand them and depending on the slides I can understand 10-30% of them even though it is in Spanish.

So, it comes to the end. People starts leaving after the closing and after some emotional goodbyes, they all went home. (There was a small drama for people taking the train to Madrid but I a not affected as I am flying)

Conclusions

I am impressed by the conference and so far there is a huge Spanish-speaking community (they sold out 800 tickets, and it is only in Spain) that I have not been in touch with much yet. They are also contributors and active users in Python (there’s a translation project for translating the official Python documentation to Spanish) and I wish I can discover and learn more about this part of the Python community.

I am glad that I started learning Spanish and they welcome me who still cannot speak their language good enough to have a conversation. I will keep learning and hopefully, I will go to another Spanish-speaking conference (maybe in Latin America) one day.



About Cheuk Ting Ho

After having a career as a Data Scientist and Developer Advocate, Cheuk dedicated her work to the open-source community. She has co-founded Humble Data, a beginner Python workshop that has been happening around the world. She has served the EuroPython Society board for two years and is now a fellow and director of the Python Software Foundation.

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Cheuk Ting Ho -  - building the open-source community