PyLadies is all about loving to code in Python. So to built the community we should have the people who uses Python for their jobs. In the rebooting phase of PyLadies Pune we decided that we should built the nexus with those people.
Keeping that in mind, I started contacting to local I.T companies. Tried to get in touch with them. Tried to get to know if they are using Python for their projects. Whether they want to introduce Python to their employees? Ericsson India Global Services Pvt Ltd was a Company who responded to it. They asked us whether we can hold a promotion kind of event at their office. Bidyut kumar Mitra, Head - Cloud & Analytics wanted us to give an introductory session on PyLadies and Python. Along with some basic ideas about Open Source and FOSS.
On 26th August, we had the PyLadies event at the office of the Ericsson India Global Services Pvt Ltd. We were quite happy to see that there were a good number of women employees present. As per their requirements we had set the schedule for the meet up.
Rupali started the session with an initial introduction to community. She gave an nice and useful introduction to what a community is and how does it work. She emphasized on contribution and giving back to the community. She had actually shared some incidents and her experiences on how she has started the community initiative at Red Hat. She suggested people to join other meetups, events that keeps happening in the Red Hat office every weekend. She also talked about PyLadies and its rebooting phase. Her talk had set the tone for the event in true sense. Personally I was very happy to have her in this event. She is one of the major backbone of the Pune Chapter of PyLadies. She stays in background, but provides all the infrastructures for holding the meetups. I am sincerely thankful to her and Red Hat for supporting PyLadies to grow.
The next was my talk on "The World of PyLadies". I stressed on the point that what do we do in our PyLadies meet up. Most of them were unaware of Python, Open Source, FOSS. So I re framed my talk. I initiated my talk with the basic philosophy of Open Source, FOSS, community and then Python. I gave them an quick overview of PyLadies, the organization its history and values. I explained them what do we do in the meet ups. I said that we learn some new Python API in the first half and with those newly learned skills we code in the second half. I informed them about next meet up venue and date.
Then Kushal took a Python workshop. Kushal started his talk with FSF, and PSF. Then he showed some basic Python syntax. He is emphasized on the point that how Python is an easy language to write and how it makes the life of the developers easy. To establish this by showing the same code in different programming languages. He showed some real life examples, some common interview problems( the girls got really excited about this).
After that there was the QA session and the most interactive session indeed. In this session there where several questions where asked like :
- Open source vs closed source?
- Advantages of Open Source.
- Why is it beneficial to the organisation?
- Why should employees learn to contribute in open source?
- How you can engage more women to technology via open source?
- How does open source community function?
- How to join?
The session ended with hope and happy note.