Talking Python

I tried to get some work done yesterday but after a long day and me being the lazy guy that I am, I just went to sleep after getting back… I woke up today morning and started working on the slide and had a few more practical examples comparing some Perl vs Python code and so on… I finally complete some changes, although quite not satisfied but I thought the slides, as they are, will have to just do.

Then, suddenly, there’s a power cut!! The horror! I had enough sense to mail the ppt to myself but didn’t have enough UPS backup to burn the presentation and programs to a CD .. :(

So, I got ready and was hoping that some cyber cafes would be open at 9 am, so that I could take my presentation on a floppy … my talk’s at 10 am! And just then, the power came back. Relieved, I burnt the stuff to a CD and rushed to the IISc campus.

I arrived at 9.50 am (traffic was heavy, as usual) and found out that my talk (and other talks in the same track) were shifted to the 60-seater Hall C for reasons unknown :( .. Vinay had brought his cool laptop so that I could do my presentation with it.. he was kind enough to get all the Python, wxPython and other stuff installed on it yesterday. Thanks, Vinay. There were some initial problems connecting the laptop to the projector but it was solved quickly. So, the talk started at 10.10 am… I just started, introduced myself, mentioned my book and got the Python talk going …. I explained the whole deal- What is Python? Why Python? Who uses it? What’s so special about it? How does it look like? and so on…. 20 min later, people are still listening to me! ;)

I went on and gave lots of examples on the basic syntax and stuff of what you would learn in any new language … I continued giving some examples on how Python code looks like and what makes it so ‘readable’. Then, I gave demos on wxPython and explained the Twisted and Jython and IronPython software and how it is useful. Twisted wasn’t installed on the system, so I couldn’t demo but I did talk about it and showed the screenshot along with code.  Jython didn’t have Swing installed :( but again I managed with the screenshot along with code.

This was followed by a Q & A session… the audience asked many questions… always a good sign… I think I was able to answer them appropriately.

Some people met me outside the hall (Kenneth started talking on web programming using Python) and some even mentioned that they have read my book and they liked it :)

All in all, things did finally go well. I knew I had spoken quite well but I had a feeling I spoke a bit fast. I got feedback later from lots of people that I maintained a reasonable pace and kept the audience involved throughout the whole session and they did show signs of interest in trying out Python after they went back home… which was the whole point of the session! So, I was happy things turned out well :)

Update

Talk details are put up at the LB site.

Slides available

Download the slides in case you were not able to attend my talk! :)